TrlE ARISOCRATS 
 

aristocrats; 
 
 Being the impressions of the Lady 
 
 HELEN POLE dur 1 * 6 her sojourn 
 
 in The Great North Woods 
 
 as spontan COU8ly recorded in 
 
 her letters to her friend 
 
 in North Brit 3 * the 
 
 Count of EDGE 
 
 and Ross 
 
 fotw Hane 
 
 LONDON-NEW YORK 
 1901 
 
Copyright, 1901 
 By JOHN LANE 
 
 Fifth Edition 
 
 ($&e (Crotu printing Cotnpanp 
 Iftewgorft 
 
Co 
 
 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. 
 
 2029808 
 
Letter I 
 
V 
 
 
 tie Lady HELEN POLE to the Countess of 
 EDGE and Ross. 
 
 Boulder Lake, THE GREAT NORTH WOODS, 
 Hamilton County, New York, U. S. A. 
 
 June i6th 
 
 Dear Polly 
 
 AM on top of a mountain 
 by a lake, with other moun- 
 tains 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 ap- 
 palling. 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 lin- 
 gered some distance behind and stared into this 
 
 [9] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 un- 
 canny, and I realise how overcivilised we all are. 
 Not that I am blasee at twenty-six. God forbid ; 
 and I never have been so keen about anything 
 in my life as I am to see every rapidly succeed- 
 ing 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 de- 
 murred, 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 con- 
 sented. 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 dar- 
 ling, 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 pol- 
 ished 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 liv- 
 ing room is a huge fireplace of stones with the 
 moss on, the low ceiling is crossed with heavy 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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. Aga- 
 tha 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 ser- 
 vants and took for granted that wherever there 
 were shillings there were porters. But at a city 
 
 [ 12] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 port- 
 manteaux 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 
 
 [ "3 ] 
 
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 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 res- 
 taurant 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. Aga- 
 tha had subsided beside Bertie, and would not 
 have cared if I had stood on my head on the plat- 
 form. 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, cal- 
 culated 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 
 
 [ H] 
 
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 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 Indepen- 
 dence. 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 
 
 [ 15] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 ennuyee, I fear ; so relieve your loneli- 
 ness after my fashion and write to me often. I 
 know that you have someone 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 rescu- 
 ing some one from the lions when they were walk- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ing 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 i8th 
 
 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 won- 
 der never have ventured here. It is Nature, virgin 
 and ignorant, and it often gives me the most unac- 
 countable sensation. Perhaps when I am more fa- 
 miliar with it, I shall be more successful in denn- 
 ing 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 re- 
 pose comes to the truly cultivated mind of middle 
 years. It is something between the two, beauty 
 [41 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 without tameness, solitude without calm, yet with 
 none of the feverish restlessness of the young civil- 
 isation at its feet, primeval wildness without its 
 terrors ; for scarcely a living thing that harms, hu- 
 man 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 moun- 
 tains 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 shrub- 
 bery, 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 ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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, some- 
 times a mingling of the most delicate tints, pink 
 and green and pearl and blue. Rioting every- 
 where 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 com- 
 fortable houses and gayly 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, 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 much less a chorus. Once in a while, there is the 
 tinkle of a cow-bell, and the wind is always play- 
 ing gently with the tree-tops. 
 
 For a few days I greatly feared that Bertie 
 would hate it, but he lies for hours in the ham- 
 mock, 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 con- 
 sumption. Agatha, dear old mother, is conscious- 
 stricken, because the disease did not attack her in- 
 stead 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 miser- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 able. 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 ex- 
 plain, she tells me I have no right to know any- 
 thing 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 undemon- 
 stratable 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 noth- 
 ing of the fact that all the girls who married in 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 fra- 
 grance may reach you. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 igth 
 
 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 hand-maiden 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' 4 your grace ' and ' your lady- 
 ship,' makes my flesh crawl." 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 "We are not proud," I began, but she in- 
 terrupted 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 wish- 
 in' 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 
 
 [28] 
 
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 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 be- 
 lieve 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 over- 
 coat, 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. 
 
 [30] 
 
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 h 
 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 co- 
 lossal 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 
 
 [33] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 leaves, in places, seem to fill the woods. Unless you 
 throw back your head you barely realise the exis- 
 tence 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 al- 
 most 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 intel- 
 ligent 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 re- 
 ligion 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. 
 
 [34] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 But to return to my woods. I have spoken of 
 the sleepless wind, but occasionally it goes else- 
 where, and I have sat for hours on one of the 
 boulders which strew these mountains, born of 
 some unimaginable convulsion, modelled by unre- 
 corded 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 hear- 
 ing 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 tur- 
 bulence in her silences, there is something dis- 
 quieting, 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 brush- 
 ing my waist, that broken green curtain motion- 
 
 [35 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 less against a colossal boulder, not a sound, not a 
 fleeting suggestion of any world beyond those an- 
 cient trees with their young leaves, those immeas- 
 urable depths with other mountains and other 
 forests beyond them, all beauty, the very idealisa- 
 tion 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 un- 
 heard 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 for- 
 est, 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, 
 
 [36] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 anyone 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 in- 
 nocent 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 ! 
 
 [37 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 '11 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 
 
 [38] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 smoth- 
 ered Bertie's face in their pink fragrance and en- 
 joyed 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 amus- 
 ing ; there is a touch of farce in every tragedy ; but 
 I am glad you have not answered his effusions even 
 
 [39] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 scan- 
 dal, 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 wilder- 
 ness 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 liv- 
 ing-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 impene- 
 trable. It creaks and bends and grinds, and the 
 beeches and maples shake wildly in the blast, but 
 
 [40] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 sug- 
 gest virgin sweetness no longer. That wall of wet 
 angry leaves surrounding a blind furious struggle 
 of forces, the writhing fighting trees raging at be- 
 ing 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 fic- 
 tion. 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 ener- 
 
 [41 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 gy, a great lusty young giant, full of good and 
 bad, sophisticated, but so busy as to have retained 
 a certain native ingenuousness; its cities present- 
 ing the very extremes of virtue and vice; the 
 monotony of its Western farms varied by pictu- 
 resque 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 
 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 of- 
 fices of the Morning .* 
 
 But the literature of the country ! It would give 
 * Deletions by the publisher. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 one a precisely opposite impression of" American- 
 ism." 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 anaemia, not yet 
 in the pernicious stage, but with blood dangerous- 
 ly watered. These books, judging by the extracts 
 from reviews at the back, and the number of edi- 
 tions 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 ; fre- 
 quently 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 
 
 [43 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 elevated ; the side of life shown is almost invaria- 
 bly 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 com- 
 pany, for even in a story of the slums, or one con- 
 taining, perchance, an irregular baby, the author 
 keeps you close to himself and whispers it all to 
 you ; he never lets the objectionable directly of- 
 fend your sensitive soul. I now am inclined to be- 
 lieve that old story of the drawers on the piano 
 legs, What is the keynote of this American lit- 
 erature *? 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 " aris- 
 tocratic." That is the only way in which we can 
 explain the literature of this most strenuous and 
 vigorous of nations. High above the hurly-bur- 
 ly certain of its cultivated members, gifted with 
 
 [44] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 a pretty trick of words, are endeavouring to create 
 a rarefied atmosphere which only the elect can en- 
 ter, where those that do enter prove themselves to 
 be of the elect. Roast beef, roast goose, plum pud- 
 ding and burgundy, bread and butter and pota- 
 toes, 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 ex- 
 pensive sweets, ice-creams of exceptional make, 
 never common vanilla or chocolate, and occasion- 
 ally 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 
 
 [45] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 " meth- 
 ods 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 
 
 [46] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge of life and mature our minds. The excep- 
 tional 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 treat- 
 
 [47] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 merit, 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 inconsisten- 
 cies 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 subter- 
 fuges as if any one cared ! We are almost frank 
 about our immoralities, carrying things off with a 
 high hand and contemptuously daring anyone to 
 question us. I am not an upholder of immorality, 
 and, so far as I have seen, it carries little happi- 
 ness with it neither does virtue, for that matter. 
 What does'? Living on a mountain top and 
 dreaming of ideals ? and I would advise women 
 
 [48] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 demor- 
 jdjging. 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 origi- 
 nally 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 re- 
 semblance 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 
 
 [49] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 turn- 
 ing abruptly, lured me on. Suddenly I saw straight 
 ahead for many miles, and at the end of that lof- 
 ty perspective was a great mountain, powdered 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 with mist ; afterward as I stood watching it, en- 
 tranced, darkening to a deep rich blue. And be- 
 tween 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 read- 
 ing 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 yester- 
 day 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. Hun- 
 ter, 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 
 
 [ 5*] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 hall mark 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 infor- 
 mant told me, your struggle will be a long one. 
 
 [ S3 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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, aristo- 
 cratic. 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), fas- 
 tidiousness, 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 
 
 [ 54] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 much of that, and used to say it was the highest 
 expression of the Ideal, put into the purest Eng- 
 lish that ever had been contributed to the litera- 
 ture 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 fas- 
 cinate 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 au- 
 thor 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 charm- 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ing 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 someone 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 beau- 
 tiful birds, one a bright corn-flower blue from tip 
 to tail, the other a deep orange with black wings. 
 
 [56] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 si- 
 lence 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 be- 
 long to the fashionable frivolous world, and well 
 you are not my idea of a Bohemian, nor yet ex- 
 actly 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 Bo- 
 hemians, nor yet middle class. The set to which I 
 
 [ 57] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 fashion- 
 able set of New York argued birth and breeding; 
 money was no passport in those days. But to-day 
 there is no other ; the 4 400,' as it is absurdly called, 
 
 [58] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 puz- 
 zling 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 in- 
 ferred 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 dis- 
 gustingly 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." 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " You don't mean that some are eccentric *? " I 
 demanded. " Surely you would not countenance 
 eccentricity." 
 
 "Certainly not!" he exclaimed, quite as em- 
 phatically as I had expected ; " no cultivated per- 
 son ever was eccentric and ' Bohemians ' are wel- 
 come to the monopoly of it for their vulgar adver- 
 tising. 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 re- 
 plenish 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 ambi- 
 tion is to get into your own set in England." 
 
 " I have met some charming Americans," I re- 
 plied, " and they always seemed bright and full of 
 
 [ 60] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 ap- 
 preciation, 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 hall- 
 mark 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 high- 
 est sense Americanism in all its wonderful dis- 
 tinctiveness, but polished, refined, cultivated, puri- 
 [61 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 fied 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 any- 
 where, 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." 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 lyth 
 
 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 mov- 
 ing 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 im- 
 agine but I am not going to horrify you with 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 ^fimes 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 friend- 
 ly 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 uncontroll- 
 able curiosity, " What were you cryin' for, any- 
 way?" 
 
 " My brother was very ill again last night and 
 I am terribly anxious about him." 
 
 " And do you high-toned English folks with 
 
 [65] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 everyday 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 cus- 
 tomary 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." 
 
 [66] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " Oh, but we did," I exclaimed, glowing as cer-'i 
 tain memories rose ; " and when he used to come . 
 home from long tiring sessions in the Upper 
 House, or Cabinet meetings he was a very con- 
 scientious 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.** 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 ex- 
 press 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." 
 
 [68] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " 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 Dock'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 var- 
 nished 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 any- 
 thing characteristic I'll write it out for your bene- 
 fit. He has promised already to spend our first 
 autumn in Yorkshire with us, so you will be the 
 more interested when you meet him. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 turquois. 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, al- 
 
 [70] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 though as I discuss our own with Bertie and 
 Agatha daily, and have lived in a political atmos- 
 phere 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. Rog- 
 ers 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 coun- 
 try ? " he added gently I mean his voice took all 
 sting out of the words. 
 
 I told him what I have just written. I added 
 
 [71 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 predilec- 
 tion 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 anal- 
 ysis would prick the bubble. Florida is perpetual 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 ? " 
 
 * t ls v 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 irreproach- 
 able Mrs. Cleveland, bustling about at six in the 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 Pptfsldent of 
 the United States ill at ease and ^ytilgar in the 
 presence of Ambassadors. Just as- eVery American 
 is animated by the desire to ^eiter himself, to get 
 ahead of his neighbours, X>Js he equally ambi- 
 tious for his country. I .should be willing to wager 
 my last dollar that if ^ryan did reach the White 
 House, with his malodorous tribe elbowing all de- 
 cent people out' of it, every self-respecting man 
 who had voteo! for him would read the\>ress re- 
 ports with a snort of disgust. Backslidmk will 
 never work, for we have not reached the surnmit 
 of our civilisation yet." 
 
 " I don't think much of the man you've got in 
 now," said Bertie. " He takes an imposing photo- 
 graph, but I infer that he is a sort of human mask 
 for Mr. Hanna." 
 
 " McKinley is, as yet, the great historical puz- 
 zle without a key," said Mr. Rogers, evasively; 
 
 [74] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " 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 re- 
 form 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 
 
 [75] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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." 
 
 [76] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " 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 will- 
 ing 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 back- 
 ground as possible." 
 
 Poor Mr. Rogers blushed and looked most dis- 
 tressed, for that word is tabooed in this country, 
 dear, and I doubt if the poor man ever heard it be- 
 fore. 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, Rog- 
 ers ? 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 
 
 [77] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 for help as there is here. I suppose there's a re- 
 spectable number of gentlemen in the country, 
 ain't there ? " 
 
 "A very large number. A highly respectable 
 proportion of the seventy millions. I am con- 
 strained 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 ho- 
 mogeneity 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?" 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 con- 
 cluded 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 an- 
 swer. " 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 off- 
 spring 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 some- 
 thing really clever. That is his little way. 
 
 " That was very well reasoned," he said, '* and 
 your theory has certain facts to substantiate it, 
 
 [79] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 com- 
 paratively 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 Para- 
 dise, 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 look- 
 ing 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." 
 
 [ 81 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 fin- 
 ished, 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 prayer for you, out in the forest although I don't 
 believe it does a bit of good to pray for anyone 
 but yourself. My theory is that by the intense ab- 
 sorption, concentration, alfi3~iaith of prayer, you 
 put yourself into magnetic communication with 
 the great Divine Force pervading the Universe 
 and draw some of its strength into yourself. Some- 
 times 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 en- 
 dure 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. 
 
 : U. 
 
 ^HM.,..*-. rft, 
 
 [83] 
 
Letter IV 
 
From the Lady HELEN POLE to the Countess of EDGE 
 and Ross. 
 
 Boulder 
 
 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 " mom- 
 mers." The men are a well turned-out lot, but look 
 tired, and anaemic. 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 
 
 [ 8? ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 dis- 
 contented expression which is reflected in their 
 voices an unbounded self-confidence, an annoy- 
 ing 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 
 [ 88 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 letters very often I will do my poor best to intro- 
 duce 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 pub- 
 lisher; Mrs. Laurence, a "wonderfully success- 
 ful " authoress, and Miss Simpson, the editor of 
 a " great " woman's magazine ; her name is Mar- 
 garet 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 ex- 
 
 [89] 
 
THE 
 
 ARISTOCRATS 
 
 pensively 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 be- 
 wildered. She is what is vulgarly and aptly called 
 a "gusher." She gushed steadily for three quar- 
 ters 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 ex- 
 press in French only, so inadequate is our common- 
 place 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 Ameri- 
 can 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, Nor- 
 wegian, Danish, Italian, and even Spanish classics, 
 old and new, but her only reference to those of 
 
 [90] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 illusive- 
 ness 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 deli- 
 ciously 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 in- 
 voluntarily 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 any- 
 thing just like other men. But indeed he spends 
 most of his time in the woods alone thinking^ 
 
 [91 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 com- 
 pensates for, and Mr. Rolfs equally insincere and 
 anaemic, 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 charac- 
 ters 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 * and * 
 
 * Deletions by the publisher. 
 
 E<>O 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 eclat 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 liber- 
 ties with her a goodish complexion, a rather thick 
 round profile, and a small hard mouth with a down- 
 ward bend. Success is emblazoned upon her, as 
 well as gratified power and ambition. She began 
 life, I am informed by one of her enthusiastic ad- 
 mirers, 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 
 
 [93 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 aristocratic from the first. She made herself invalu- 
 able on one of the " very best papers," gradually 
 wedged her way I fear that expression is my own 
 into conservative circles, dropping such ac- 
 quaintances as were detrimental, and finally gradu- 
 ated as a full-fledged editor of a woman's maga- 
 zine, capitalised by an eccentric but appreciative 
 millionairess. It was only a year or so ago, however, 
 that she " arrived " in this upper and rarified stra- 
 tum, 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 suc- 
 cessful business woman, tout mme, 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 
 
 [94] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 been so positive, so undeviating, so remorseless 
 (I have listened to six biographies of her), that 
 the human attributes have withered up just as un- 
 used muscles do. I asked Bertie what he thought 
 of her, and he said he had more respect for a har- 
 lot, 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 mys- 
 terious temptations. Personally, I should say her 
 virtue was purely a negative quality due to ab- 
 sence 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 her- 
 self in rather shoppy language. But she is ambi- 
 tious 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 
 
 [95] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 someone else 
 had spoken consecutively for five minutes. She is 
 a pretty woman, and the old word " elegant " ex- 
 actly expresses her ; our grandmothers would have 
 called her " most genteel." She has a cloud of 
 cendre 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 feat- 
 ures 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 Setoi 
 
 [96] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 fe- 
 licities ; 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 tire- 
 some 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 
 
 [97 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 manor born; I am sure I cannot understand why 
 some flower of nobility has not fairly flung him- 
 self and his hereditary acres at my feet." 
 
 All this before Bertie, and it reads like the most 
 engaging candour ; but as she fairly breathes insin- 
 cerity 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 inter- 
 est me. It is like living in a novel an American 
 one, it is true, but fresh and new, and full of un- 
 solved problems to the mere outsider. They cer- 
 tainly are not snobs in the old meaning of the 
 word, not in the least like those of their country 
 
 [98 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 who work so hard to be taken up by us, and imi- 
 tate our manners and pronunciation. No, they 
 are either snobs and something more, or not snobs 
 at all, but a different manifestation of the strug- 
 gle 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 fail- 
 ing 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 
 
 [99] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 July 4th. 
 
 Yesterday I went to the Club House to din- 
 ner; 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 qual- 
 ity known as elusive, not the old-fashioned kind 
 that you repeat and hand down to your grand-chil- 
 dren. 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 pro- 
 testing. But I scarcely opened my mouth ; and I 
 don't doubt they think I am stupid and have a 
 [ -co] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 doubt- 
 less 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 cosey 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 
 
 [101] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 to the brilliant Mrs. Laurence exhibit the most 
 wonderful fertility, ingenuity, and resource, switch- 
 ing her noisy tail round the polished floor till it 
 hissed like a harassed snake. She was in white em- 
 broidered mousseline de soie and silk Oh, much 
 and noisy silk and she wore turquoises, and al- 
 together looked like an advertisement for the call- 
 ing 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 en- 
 deavouring to look superior to contemptible fri- 
 volities. 
 
 " 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 con- 
 veyed to me that this remark was intended as 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 grim humour. " And if she were not, she's clever 
 enough to make people think so." 
 
 " Do you admire that particular form of brill- 
 iancy '? " 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 * which I had 
 
 * Elimination by the publisher. 
 
 [ I0 3 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 pleas- 
 antly 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 
 
 [ I0 4 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 fash- 
 ion 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 attain- 
 ing full growth. Well, at all events you will escape 
 decadency," I added lightly. " Good night." 
 
 I crossed the room toward Mr. Rogers, deter- 
 mined 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. 
 
 [ 105 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " 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 Remusat 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 inter- 
 ested 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 con- 
 versation 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." 
 
 [ -06] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " 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 loth 
 
 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 per- 
 vades the lake I am afraid I am not grateful 
 for all the kind attentions I receive is simply 
 delicious. Leaves, green leaves everywhere, riot- 
 ing to my knees and hanging in the air. You 
 never notice the slender branches, only the del- 
 icate 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, shad- 
 ing from a dark green to one that is almost white, 
 that covers the fallen trees, and the incompar- 
 able 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 
 
 C in ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 punctu- 
 ate 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 Mat- 
 thew 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 aris- 
 tocrats except their virtues ; those are superlative, 
 but in all other things they aim at simple perfec- 
 tion 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 Nat- 
 ure and cower there. I have no desire left to re- 
 turn to the world, and if Bertie can live comfort- 
 ably 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 won- 
 der 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 
 
 [ "3 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 hu- 
 mour 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 in- 
 stance, has not attempted to read everything in 
 every language ever written, but he can talk sen- 
 
 [ "4] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 sibly about most things, particularly the affairs oi 
 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 poor- 
 est short stories I ever read I have only a maga- 
 zine 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 cir- 
 cle 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 agree- 
 able 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. 
 
 [ "5] 
 
E ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 anyone 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 pro- 
 [ "6] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 posed 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 even- 
 ing when he was calling on us and we were sit- 
 ting 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 conversa- 
 tion, mostly dashes. 
 
 [ "7] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " 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 flat- 
 ter so with their laugh). "I am quite discomfit- 
 ed," 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 be- 
 loved brother thinking it worth while to say the 
 charming things these men do. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " Now tell me some more of your politics," I 
 persisted. " Mr. Rogers thinks politics are not re- 
 spectable, 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 dishon- 
 est 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 particu- 
 lar 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 de- 
 fence 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 in- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 variably 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 compara- 
 tively poor man once more." 
 
 " Are you self-made ? " I asked eagerly. 
 
 Once more he laughed heartily, and his re- 
 markable eyes expressed that I might say any- 
 thing 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 al- 
 though 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 immor- 
 tal 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 con- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 eluded 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 sur- 
 face, 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. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " 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 
 
 [ "3 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 prac- 
 tice 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 
 
 [ -HI 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 across his face I could see that sympathy which 
 comes not from a soft heart but an intense per- 
 sonal interest. But perhaps that interest is the 
 most highly prized of all by women, and what- 
 ever the mainspring, it was sweet to me, after all 
 these months or 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 anyone 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 break- 
 ing off abruptly. " I don't believe you ever lis- 
 tened 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 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 pri- 
 ority. He isn't capable of understanding you as 
 I do." 
 
 He took my hand suddenly in his warm mag- 
 netic 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. Wheth- 
 er 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 
 [ "6 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 time I am your friend, remember that, and Rog- 
 ers 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 mag- 
 netism. 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 
 
 [1*7] 
 
Letter VI 
 
From the Lady HELEN POLE to the Countess of EDGE 
 and Ross. 
 
 Boulder Lake, 
 July lyth 
 Dear Polly : 
 
 THIS afternoon I went over to Mrs. Lau- 
 rence's " camp " for tea. She wrote me the 
 most graceful little note with two witti- 
 cisms 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 un- 
 complimentary 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 
 cretonnes and frills and bric-a-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. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 charm- 
 ing 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 passee 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 delight- 
 fully. 
 
 They all greeted me with the utmost cordiality, 
 but Mrs. Laurence rose from behind the tea table 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 - .* 
 
 has a picture of me, a large libellous pho- 
 tograph, procured, heaven knows how, certainly 
 not from a friend ! Why should they use my pict- 
 ure *? 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 aris- 
 tocracy of letters to be flung into a cowshed." 
 
 I could not resist the temptation, although I 
 trembled at my temerity : " I read the - * every 
 morning," I said. "Now, had I not met you, 
 I should have been quite keen on seeing your 
 picture." 
 
 * Deletions by the publisher. 
 
 [ '33 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " How sweet of you but Lady Helen you 
 
 don't read the .* You surely don't take 
 
 it?" 
 
 I nodded, perfectly delighted at the twelve ex- 
 pressions 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 act- 
 ual 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 representa- 
 tive." 
 
 "Representative?" Those carefully modulated 
 voices were quite shrill. 
 
 * Deletion by the publisher. 
 
 [ w] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 an- 
 swered. " 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 any- 
 where." I longed to ask Mrs. Laurence if she 
 would prohibit if she could the 's* mil- 
 lion 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 edi- 
 tor 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 crit- 
 icism although very pretentious as compared 
 * Deletion by the publisher. 
 
 [ w] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 ex- 
 pected, she added that she was the brilliant editor 
 
 of The , * and that probably no one living 
 
 had a more exact knowledge of what constituted 
 literature, including matter, form, style and per- 
 fect 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 
 * Deletion by the publisher. 
 
 [ '36] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 with dark hair, mal coiffee, 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 scintil- 
 lating 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 apologeti- 
 
 [ 137 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 cally, *' he puts his best in his books, and some- 
 times lacks magnetism and fresh thought in talk- 
 ing." 
 
 For some reason Miss S. antagonises me. Per- 
 haps 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 : 
 
 44 1 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" 
 
 44 There is some truth in what you say," she an- 
 swered 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." 
 
 44 True, dear Lady Helen, but I need not re- 
 mind 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 
 
 [ 138] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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-fash- 
 ioned 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 im- 
 pression 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 pas- 
 sions that are common to all countries'? The re- 
 fined of ours prefer to forget that such things ex- 
 
 [ '39 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ist. 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 ir- 
 repressible virility who gives the world to under- 
 stand 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 para- 
 graph 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." 
 
 [ HO] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 "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 un- 
 pleasant, therefore they shatter and deface that 
 fine exquisite thing called style." 
 
 " Your style. Cannot you conceive the possi- 
 bility 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 Eng- 
 land, 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 nat- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 urally 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 sur- 
 face 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 fa- 
 vourites 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 aristo- 
 cratic 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." 
 
 I had hit her at last. She coloured and drew 
 [ 14* ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 herself up. " I do not understand your term ' aris- 
 tocratic middle-class,' " she said icily. " And I can 
 only assert definitely that we who give our brains 
 and time and culture to the subject are setting and 
 maintaining a standard that always will prevail." 
 
 I turned to go and say good-bye to Mrs. Lau- 
 rence, but I could not forbear a parting shot. I 
 waved my hand at the company. 
 
 " I wonder they marry," I said. " And I think 
 it positively indecent of them to have children." 
 
 20th July 
 
 I am very much alone these days. Bertie is so 
 much better that he spends the entire day fishing 
 or at the Club House, and frequently dines and 
 spends the evening there as well. Agatha has dis- 
 covered at least twenty neglected correspondents 
 and writes as hard as Mrs. Laurence or Mr. Rolfs, 
 all the morning. I do not mind that, for it keeps 
 her in the house and I can receive any of the 
 men who care to call ; but every afternoon, Polly, 
 she goes to Mrs. Chenoweth's and plays whist, 
 and I either have to shut myself up like a nun or 
 
 [ '43 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 walk in the woods alone. Of course I could defy 
 the dear old soul, but that would be the end of 
 an ideal domestic harmony, and as for Bertie he 
 would be furious. Mr. Rogers is the only person 
 privileged to walk alone with me, and I do not 
 know whether he is flattered or not. I had heard 
 a good deal about the liberty of American girls, 
 but Mrs. Chenoweth assures me that that is all a 
 mistake as far as the upper classes are concerned. 
 Still, I have had a good many conversations with 
 Mr. Nugent, and some day perhaps I'll relate 
 them to you. He calls in the evening and we 
 wander off the veranda to the edge of the lake 
 and stand there for an hour or so admiring the 
 sunset, and once or twice we have met quite 
 accidentally in the forest. After all, I do not own 
 the trail down the mountain even if it is my 
 favourite one. He certainly is interesting, Polly, 
 although in so different a way from all the men I 
 have ever known or read about that I really do 
 not know whether I like him or not. He fasci- 
 nates me, but that is his magnetism, the concen- 
 tration of his preternaturally clever mind upon 
 
 [ 144 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 myself, the brilliant and unexpected things he 
 says, and the truly delightful little attentions he 
 pays me, when I know that he is full of restless- 
 ness and hardness, and ambition and nervous con- 
 tempt of the details of life. But the moment he 
 comes near me I feel protected and surrounded ; 
 I am possessed immediately to drop my shawl or 
 handkerchief or worry about the punkies dread- 
 ful little beasts that he keeps off very effectively 
 with a fan or his hat. Once I made him go down 
 on his knees and tie my shoe, merely because I 
 wanted him to see that my foot was as small as 
 any of his countrywomen's, in spite of my five ft. 
 seven, and much better shod. On another day I 
 had a headache, and instead of remaining in bed 
 I had Henriette arrange me luxuriously on a 
 divan in the living-room, and received him when 
 he called. I had an uncontrollable desire to see 
 how he would act when I was ill. He was charm- 
 ing, in an abrupt, sincere, and wholly tactless way. 
 I think if I had known others like him or had 
 known him about five years I should almost fall 
 in love with him ; but how we cling to our 
 
 [ 145] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ideals ! Independence of thought ! \Ve are all 
 creatures of traditions. 
 
 I may just as well tell you first as last, Polly, 
 that I am sure both Mr. Rogers and Mr. Nugent 
 have made up their minds to marry me. Agatha 
 is blind and Bertie amused, for he cannot imagine 
 me falling in love with anything un-English and 
 new. You see, I look so well, traditional, few 
 know or suspect that I am impetuous and full of 
 curiosity and love of novelty inside. Of course, 
 as I said, I am in a way as traditional as I look, 
 but in another I'm not. I don't know if I have 
 expressed myself clearly. 
 
 I am sure that Mr. Rogers and all of them think 
 that he has the better chance, because he is so cold 
 and calm and correct. He really is charming in his 
 way and I think I might have had rather a jolly 
 little flirtation with him if Mr. Nugent had not 
 happened to be a guest of the Club. But he talks 
 to me about things that interest me so much more, 
 and he has made me talk to him about myself as I 
 never talked before even to you. If I could re- 
 member all of the nonsense we have talked I'd 
 
 [ 146] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 write it to you, but you know I never did have 
 any memory. 
 
 The other day a year-old doe mysteriously ap- 
 peared in our ice-house with my name printed on 
 a card lying on its chest. I know that either Mr. R. 
 or Mr. N. shot it for me, but I do not dare thank 
 one or the other or even hint the subject : the 
 game laws are so severe that it would be like a 
 breach of confidence. But it has made all other 
 meat insipid and we enjoyed it quite enough to 
 compensate the offender for the risk he ran. It 
 was one evening when both were calling that I 
 regretted being obliged to wait till September for 
 the game I like best. 
 
 Mr. N's first name is Luke. 
 
 22nd July 
 
 Well, I will tell you of one conversation at 
 least between Mr. Nugent and myself. A very 
 celebrated you may be sure he is in the superla- 
 tive class lung specialist came up the other day 
 to visit the Chenoweths. Although Bertie is ap- 
 parently so much better, the moment this doctor 
 
 [ H7 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 appeared I felt that I must have a verdict. At first 
 I thought of appealing to Mr. Rogers, but finally 
 concluded that as I had talked so much to Mr. 
 Nugent it would be positively unkind to pass him 
 over ; besides it is so much easier to speak to him 
 about anything. The one thing that keeps me from 
 feeling the perfect freedom of friendship when I 
 am alone with him is the fear that he suddenly will 
 lose his head and take me in his arms and kiss 
 me. He looks passion incarnate and I know that 
 if he ever did let go he would be like one of these 
 alarming electrical storms that visit us every two 
 or three days. However, I have managed him 
 rather well, so far. 
 
 Well, I confided in him, and he engaged to 
 persuade Dr. Soule and Bertie to meet for exam- 
 ination, and pledged himself to get the truth out 
 of the doctor and tell me every word of it. It was 
 finally agreed Bertie was a long time being per- 
 suaded that they were to meet this morning in 
 Mr. Nugent's room and that at four this afternoon 
 Mr. N. and I would meet at a certain spot in the 
 forest, where I should hear the fateful truth I 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 thought the appointment was justifiable in the cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 By three I was so nervous that I could not stay 
 in the house and I plunged into the forest, pray- 
 ing that I would meet no one else. Fortunately 
 our camp is alone on our side of the lake and the 
 others prefer the trails behind the Club House 
 and at the north end. I walked far down the 
 mountain to quiet my nerves a little, then re- 
 turned to the place where we had agreed to meet. 
 It was the rocky brook I told you of, but some 
 distance below the boulder. The opposite bank 
 sloped up gently, its gloom hung with scattered 
 leaves and sun-flecks. I sat down on a rock among 
 the alders, still nervous, my hand, indeed, pressed 
 against my heart, but what strange tricks the 
 mind plays us my terrible anxiety crossed by 
 imaginings of what Mr. N. would do and say 
 should he bring me the worst. In a moment, too, 
 my mind was diverted by the dearest sight. A 
 chipmunk a tiny thing no longer than my finger 
 with a snow white breast and reddish brown back 
 striped with grey and ivory sat on his hind legs 
 
 [ H9 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 on a stone opposite me eating a nut which he 
 held in his front paws. His black restless eyes 
 never left my face as he tore that nut apart with 
 teeth and nail, and he seemed to have made up 
 his little mind that I was quite stationary he did 
 seem to enjoy that nut so much. His bushy tail 
 stood straight up behind and curled back from 
 his head. It was quite an inch longer than him- 
 self, and not a bit of him moved but those tight 
 little arms and those crunching teeth. He ate the 
 entire nut, and when he had finished and dropped 
 the shell, he still sat there on his hind legs, glanc- 
 ing about, his eyes never wandering far from my 
 face, and absorbing my attention so completely 
 that I quite forgot the apprehension that had torn 
 me for the past four hours. But our mutual inter- 
 est was shattered by a footstep. I sprang to my 
 feet and he scampered into the ferns. 
 
 The moment I saw Mr. N.'s face I knew that 
 I was not to hear the worst, at all events; and 
 then, for the life of me, I could not let the subject 
 be broached. I hurriedly commenced to tell him 
 about the chipmunk and he sat down on the stone 
 
 [ 15] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 it had deserted and listened as if he never had 
 heard of a chipmunk before. 
 
 " I'll try and get you one," he said. " I think 
 one might be tamed." 
 
 " Oh, I should love it ! " I exclaimed. " It would 
 be company for hours at a time. I am sure it has 
 intelligence." 
 
 " I am afraid you have many lonely hours," he 
 said. " I think you do not like our people here." 
 
 " No," I said, " they fidget me. I really admire 
 them and I never in all my life believed that so 
 many clever people could be got together in one 
 place. But that is it they are not my own sort." 
 
 " No, they are not, and I have a plan to pro- 
 pose to you, that I think might be carried out now 
 that your brother is so much better. I have a num- 
 ber of friends at another lake about ten miles from 
 here. They are very different from these far more 
 like what you have been used to. They belong to 
 one of the worldly sets in New York, and, while 
 they are quite as clever as our friends here, clever- 
 ness is not their metier and they are not so self- 
 conscious about it. They bought Chipmunk Lake 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 and built cottages there that they might go into 
 camp whenever they felt that they needed rest 
 more than Europe or Newport Should you like 
 to visit there ? " 
 
 " Yes, but how *? " 
 
 " I should have said that my married sister is 
 there and that I have written to her about you. 
 She would be delighted if you would pay her a 
 visit. Of course Lady Agatha will go with you, 
 and the Duke can transfer himself to the Club 
 House for a time." 
 
 " He is there always, anyhow," I said, and I 
 suspect I pouted. At all events he smiled sympa- 
 thetically and said, 
 
 " I am afraid you have learned already some- 
 thing of the selfishness and ingratitude of man." 
 
 " It is a good preparation for matrimony," I 
 remarked drily. 
 
 " Are you contemplating matrimony *? " It is 
 interesting rather to bring some colour into the 
 face of an American. 
 
 " I am always afraid I might marry some time 
 when I am unusually bored." 
 
 [ '5'] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " It is not so great a risk to bore you, then *? " 
 " Oh, I mean by Circumstances. I should ex- 
 pect the man to descend suddenly into them with 
 the wings of an archangel and bear me off." 
 
 " Are you very much bored here *? Have I come 
 too soon 2 " 
 
 " I never have enjoyed myself so much." 
 *' Nevertheless you are not averse to a change." 
 " Oh, as my time is short in the United States 
 and as human nature is the most interesting study 
 in the world, I want to meet as many of your in- 
 teresting types as possible." 
 
 " Your stay may be longer than you think. Soule 
 says that the Duke must not think of leaving the 
 Adirondacks for two years." 
 
 He had me at last. " Two years ! " I gasped. 
 " Must we stay up here for two years ? " The place 
 has lost some of its charm since these people came. 
 ' k Not here, for you would be snowed in in win- 
 ter and uncomfortable in every way. I have sug- 
 gested to the Duke that he endeavour at once to 
 lease a house at Lake Placid. There you would 
 be close to an express train to New York which 
 
 [ '53 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 you could visit frequently and undoubtedly 
 could find a house with golf links, tennis court, etc., 
 to say nothing of good trails where you could 
 have daily rides. I know you are longing to be 
 on a horse again." 
 
 " Oh, I am ! How did you guess it ? That does 
 not sound so hopeless. I suppose our friends would 
 visit us occasionally." 
 
 " I can assert positively that some of them would 
 come as often as they were asked." 
 
 " It would be charity, of course. How kind you 
 and Mr. Rogers have been to think of everything 
 for us." 
 
 Again I had managed to bring the colour into 
 his face. " Rogers is a kind fatherly soul," he said, 
 tartly. " I don't pretend to be philanthropic." 
 
 Here I was afraid he would propose to me so I 
 said hurriedly : 
 
 " We have forgotten all about Chipmunk Lake. 
 I should like to see some other lakes and some 
 other people. But it is a great deal to ask of 
 your sister." 
 
 "My sister is undoubtedly pining for a new 
 
 [ 154] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 acquaintance. There are only four families at the 
 lake and they soon get talked out. Will you 
 go? I may as well confess that I have already 
 written to and heard from her. Here is her note 
 to you." 
 
 It was such a jolly letter, so direct and natural 
 and unwitty. I felt at home with her at once 
 her name is Mrs. Van Worden, and I liked her 
 further because she spelt Van with a capital V. 
 I am told that Van in New York is quite an 
 insignia of nobility and I met two of its proud 
 possessors in London who had it printed on their 
 cards with a small v. Considering that it is over 
 every other shop in Holland and Belgium, this 
 certainly is an instance of American progressive- 
 ness. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Nugent who is delight- 
 fully free of all nonsense, bless him. 
 
 " Yes, I do want to go," I said, " and I hope 
 it can be arranged if only for the pleasure of 
 meeting Mrs. Van Worden. I feel I shall get 
 on with her." 
 
 " Yes, you will get on, I am sure. She and 
 
 [ 155] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 her friends at the lake belong to the great world 
 without going in for all its frivolities and vul- 
 garities. Let us go back and arrange it at once," 
 he said, jumping up. "There is no reason why 
 we should not go to-morrow." 
 
 24th 
 
 But we did not go " to-morrow," Polly, and I 
 have not been really hopeful of going until to- 
 night. Agatha said quietly and impassively that, 
 better or not, nothing would induce her to leave 
 Bertie, that she would never sleep three yards 
 away from him until he was quite well again. 
 That left me without a chaperon, for although 
 Mrs. Van Worden had written her a charming 
 note too, she had not invited anyone else at the 
 lake, and I believe she knows several of them. 
 Whether this omission rankled she appears to 
 be quite a personage or whether they are all 
 determined I shall marry Mr. Rogers, I don't 
 know, but I was invited to the Club House to 
 luncheon next day and not less than four women 
 attempted to dissuade me from going. The road 
 
 [ -56 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 was " frightful," quite the worst in the Adiron- 
 dacks. Life there was unbearably dull. They were 
 worked out society women who took a sort of 
 rest cure in the Adirondacks, eating and sleeping 
 themselves into a condition of recuperating stu- 
 pidity. There were " no men," as the fishing 
 was not good, and too many other drawbacks to 
 mention. It was Mrs. Hammond who was com- 
 missioned with the final dissuasions. She walked 
 home with me, and as we were crossing the 
 pretty rustic bridge over the lake's outlet, she 
 put her hand in my arm, and said with a slight 
 blush : 
 
 " You must not mind what I am going to say 
 to you, dear Lady Helen, I take such an interest 
 in you. Who could help it ? you are so beau- 
 tiful and a stranger here. And of course I am 
 nearly ten years older than yourself and a married 
 woman. I don't want you to go to those people ; 
 they are all rather fast. Mrs. Van Worden has had 
 several stories in circulation about her that have 
 come very close to being scandals ." 
 
 "What!" I cried, "am I really to meet an 
 
 [ 157] 
 
J 
 
 THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 American^ woman who has committed adultery ? 
 How much at home I shall feel ! So many of my 
 t friends have, you know." 
 
 J j y 1 " Lady Helen ! " Never shall I forget that gasp- 
 
 ing shriek nor that poor scandalized little face. 
 I almost relented. 
 
 " If she will only admit it," I pursued gloomily, 
 Lf ry "but they scarcely ever will. I do know one 
 
 American woman who told me the second time I 
 met her that she had a lover, but she had lived in 
 England fifteen years and cut all her American 
 acquaintances. I cannot understand your reti- 
 cence." 
 
 " Lady Helen ! Do you mean to insinuate that 
 any of us " 
 
 " Oh, dear me, no. You are all shockingly virt- 
 uous here." 
 
 She stared at me for a moment longer, then 
 curiosity got the better of her horror. She did not 
 replace her hand within my arm, but she resumed 
 her walk to my camp, evidently determined to 
 understand me. 
 
 " Let us have this out, Lady Helen, I implore 
 
 [ 158 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 you?" she said. "Do I understand that you 
 countenance immorality ? " 
 
 " I accept the inevitable. It does not appeal to 
 me personally, but if it does to other women and 
 helps them to dissipate the ennui of life, that is 
 none of my affair." 
 
 " Ah, that is the result of having every good 
 thing in life flung at your feet, of living an idle 
 life of fashion that has no excitement left in it 
 but intrigue." 
 
 "Our lowest class is much worse than our 
 highest, and quite open and unembarrassed about 
 it" 
 
 " I cannot account for it ! " The poor little 
 woman's voice was tragic. 
 
 "Why try to account for everything? Facts 
 are facts, that is enough." 
 
 " I never have really believed one tenth of the 
 scandals o/ /ashionable life I have heard I 
 haVe trained^ myself to wait for divorce-court 
 proof " 
 
 " You have tried to dissuade me from visiting 
 Mrs. Van Worden because she is suspected of 
 
 [ 159] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 having loved more frequently than she has mar- 
 ried." 
 
 " Oh, but that does not mean that I believe it. 
 I simply do not want you to be identified with 
 a woman who has been talked about. She cer- 
 tainly cannot contaminate you if you hold such 
 extraordinary views. But do you, dear Lady 
 Helen ? " 
 
 "Yes," I said impatiently. "Don't you? Do 
 you pretend to ignore the fact that hundreds of 
 thousands of women have lovers." 
 
 " I will not admit it." 
 
 "But you know it if you know anything at 
 all. Like your literature you blink it, as you blink 
 every other fact connected with real life." 
 
 Again she stopped and stared at me. "You 
 look the incarnation of maiden purity," she ex- 
 claimed, " a tall white royal English lily, as Mr. 
 Rogers calls you. It seems incredible that you can 
 have such a perverted mind. You remind me of 
 that dreadful heroine of Mallock's " 
 
 "I have not a perverted mind," I exclaimed 
 angrily, for she really was too silly, "and I 
 [ 160] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 have nothing in common with that filthy crea- 
 ture " 
 
 " I beg your pardon," she interrupted hurriedly, 
 " no one on earth would ever accuse you of being 
 less stainless really than you look I mean 
 your mind your knowledge Oh," she con- 
 tinued desperately, " I can't make you out. I have 
 heard of the insolent frankness of the English aris- 
 tocracy that you hold yourself above all laws 
 the Duke is terrifyingly coarse at times and I 
 suppose if you had done anything wrong you 
 wouldn't pay me the compliment to deny it but 
 well I give it up." 
 
 " My mind is not perverted," I said, " because 
 I see life as it is. I have lived in the world now 
 for eight years, and all my friends happen to have 
 married long since. I should have been a fool had 
 I not seen and heard what life meant to many 
 people, even if I never had had any confidences 
 made me. But it has not stained my mind in the 
 least, because it is something I never think of 
 when by myself which is the result of accepting 
 life and human nature as they are not as they 
 [ -6. ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ought to be. I will not pretend to say, however, 
 that JL do not sympathize with women who are 
 carried away by passion. I do not see how a 
 woman who has any passion " 
 
 " Lady Helen ! I cannot let you go any further. 
 I am willing to admit that there is sin in the world, 
 but there are certain standards of refinement in this 
 country that I will not hear violated." 
 
 " What on earth are you talking about ? " 
 
 " I mean that well that I cannot listen to a 
 woman admit that she has passions exactly like a 
 man." 
 
 " Do you mean that you never heard that be- 
 fore ? " I asked curiously. 
 
 " Never ! There are certain obligations but 
 Oh, don't let us talk of it. There is one thing fur- 
 ther I feel I must say and I am hoping you will 
 pardon me, for we are all hoping and longing to 
 keep you among us you and dear Lady Agatha, 
 although of course we know that we must lose 
 the clever Duke when he is well enough to go 
 home " 
 
 She paused, and I gave her my most encourag- 
 
 [ '62] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ing smile. We were on the veranda now and she 
 sat opposite me, leaning forward alertly. 
 
 " It is this," she said with her anxious smile. 
 " We all do so want you to marry our dear brill- 
 iant accomplished Mr. Rogers, and not Mr. Nu- 
 gent. He is not really one of us, and, I am afraid 
 he is not too high-principled and has not led an 
 immaculate life like Mr. Rogers." 
 
 " How can you tell? " 
 
 " By their faces. Look at Mr. Rogers'. It is re- 
 finement itself, almost ascetic. Mr. Nugent looks 
 well of course he is a gentleman and irre- 
 proachable in society, but I know he has not led 
 a regular life." 
 
 " I am sure he has not, and it is really none of 
 our business." 
 
 " I believe that men should be as pure as wom- 
 en," she said setting her lips. 
 
 / " Perhaps they should, but they are not ; you 
 / see there are so many women who make a busi- 
 / ness of tempting them from the time they begin / 
 to take notice that it is quite unreasonable to ex-y 
 pect them to attain the feminine standard." 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " I am not talking of bad women." 
 " Oh, but they count so, you know. They count 
 because they are the positive force. Virtue is too 
 negative to influence anyone but those who are 
 virtuous by nature or circumstance. But as I said 
 before, dear Mrs. Hammond, facts are facts. Why 
 not accept them, and without so much mental 
 wear and tear ? Every man has the privilege 
 of leading his own life, so long as he keeps 
 within the law. And if he does not think he 
 is doing wrong, if he does not violate his con- 
 science, then he does himself no moral harm 
 so long as he sins like a gentleman. Of course 
 no one wants the coarse sensualist near one; 
 he is repulsive and should herd with his own 
 kind." 
 
 " And you mean to say you extenuate you 
 would marry a man who had who had made 
 love to many women ? I am interested in your 
 views, but I must reiterate that I think if social 
 exigencies compel us to meet such men we should 
 at least discourage their kind by refusing to marry 
 them." 
 
 [ 164] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 : 
 
 She looked pale and nervous but her eyes were 
 bright with curiosity. 
 
 " I will tell you my theory," I said, " and I can 
 assure you that I did not jump at it. As I told 
 you, I have seen a good deal of the world, the 
 best of it as well as some of its worst. This is my 
 idea But first : If God is incarnate in good men 
 and the devil in bad why are bad men invariably 
 more fascinating to women even to pure women 
 than good men ? I am talking of course of the 
 devil which dwells in masculine and able men, not 
 in the silly and ingenuous sensualist. Now the men 
 who are wholly irresistible are those who combine 
 both God and devil, who stimulate and intensify 
 the soul and the imagination as well as the pas- 
 sions. This confounds orthodoxy, but does not to 
 my mind deepen the mystery. Is not this combi- 
 nation, perhaps, the perfect man ? And as man is 
 we believe made in the divine image may 
 .not God and the devil be one rounded being ? 
 Why does the ' perfect ' man and woman invari- 
 ably irritate and antagonize, even have a bad in- 
 fluence, arousing the devil of perversity when 
 
 [ 165 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 the perfection is in the least self-conscious Tjls it not 
 because we instinctively feel their failure to achieve 
 the standard we have accepted as divine, and resent 
 the imposition ? And can such a one-sided being 
 give happiness *? Not any more than the lowest 
 brute. Therefore, I maintain that a man to reach 
 full stature must have room in his soul for God 
 and the devil to jog along peacefully side by side." 
 
 She rose, white and aghast. " I never, never 
 heard anything to approximate that for audacity 
 and and terrible profanity. But I am too 
 nervous to argue with you. I see Mrs. Laurence 
 coming. Please tell her she is so brilliant, so 
 gifted. I know she could refute " 
 
 " Please tell her that I have not had a walk to- 
 day ! that I shall have a violent headache if I miss 
 it ! Please be an angel and don't tell her I saw her 
 coming " and I almost ran to the back veranda 
 and plunged into the woods. I had screwed up 
 my courage to the highest pitch and I knew I 
 couldn't do it a second time. I felt nervous, al- 
 most excited, and I wanted a walk and the soli- 
 tude of the woods. 
 
 r > 66 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 I walked rapidly down the trail for ten or fif- 
 teen minutes, then felt a sudden desire to see that 
 precipitous magnificent avenue made by the road- 
 way. I entered it presently and walked down the 
 logs as rapidly as I could, for the exercise ; paus- 
 ing whenever I reached a ledge in these woods 
 you cannot walk and admire at the same time un- 
 less you care to run the risk of a broken ankle 
 to drink in that wild yet awesome perspective of 
 the forest. The trees are so high, and often their 
 branches leap across and clasp hands! and crowd- 
 ing upon the heels of the advance guard is the 
 green, fragrant, ancient army, a million strong. And 
 every now and again the distant mountain beyond 
 the high wild valley. 
 
 I suddenly became possessed with a desire to 
 get closer to that mountain, to get away from my 
 own for a little while. I knew that it could not 
 be more than four miles off, and I could easily 
 make the distance and return before dark. I al- 
 most felt as if I were running away, and hurried 
 on eagerly. 
 
 I passed Mi. Rolfs sitting cross-legged on a 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 damp boulder, communing presumably with 
 God. There was a note-book beside him. He 
 looked like an omniscient owl. As I passed he 
 bowed gravely but did not speak. I am positive 
 he cannot endure me. 
 
 I went down the mountain as rapidly as I could, 
 but that is saying little. What between picking 
 my way over logs that slipped and stones that 
 cut and feeling for dry land through the grass by 
 the roadside I was fully an hour reaching the 
 valley. It was just a few moments before making 
 the last precipitous descent, when I paused for a 
 moment on a ledge and fanned myself, that I be- 
 came aware how hot and sultry it was. Almost at 
 the same moment I heard the loud familiar rum- 
 ble of the approaching storm. 
 
 It would take me longer to reach home than it 
 had done to pick my way down that beastly road. 
 There was nothing to do but make for the valley 
 and the nearest house, and the sudden brief cop- 
 per of the sky made me hasten on with all speed. 
 1 do not experience any sinking physical fear dur- 
 ing a thunder-storm but I have a mental appreci- 
 
 [ '68 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ation of the danger and I prefer to be within four 
 walls with the doors and windows closed. The 
 storm was still far off, for the intervals between 
 the flash and the clap were quite long, and its 
 rain was deluging some other mountain miles 
 away. 
 
 At last I was free of the woods and stood in 
 the great valley with its irregular masses of moun- 
 tains on every side, its rivers, its wide peaceful 
 clearings, and alas ! its cows. There was no build- 
 ing within a mile except a dilapidated Catholic 
 church, the most mournful object I ever saw in a 
 landscape. Half of the roof was gone, a thousand 
 rains had washed its last coat of paint away, the 
 fence was but a few broken sticks, and the grass 
 and weeds grew high over three or four poor for- 
 gotten graves. There was a French colony about 
 here, long since. 
 
 It was not an attractive refuge, but the great 
 thunder-cloud was pushing its way across the 
 Eastern mountain, forked and torn with fire, and 
 roaring as if it were Hell moving up to Summer 
 quarters. 
 
 [ '69 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 I was therefore about to make for the ruin 
 when I heard the sound of a sob and of run- 
 ning feet behind me. I turned quickly and saw, 
 running toward me and wringing her hands, a 
 slight pretty girl, with a mass of fluffy hair sur- 
 mounted by an immense hat covered with blue 
 feathers. 
 
 " Oh, please, wait for me," she cried. " I'm so 
 skaret, and I've been runnin' roun' like I was 
 crazy. Its a mile to the nearest farm and I 
 dassent go in that spooky church by myself. 
 Oh, my Gawd, ain't it awful." 
 
 " Why, there are thunder-storms nearly every 
 day," I said soothingly. " There is really noth- 
 ing to be afraid of. Let us go into the church, 
 by all means." 
 
 I was glad of her company, to tell you the 
 truth, and led the way rapidly to the ruin. The 
 door was locked ! but we picked our way to the 
 back, past those desolate graves, and entered 
 where a wall had fallen in. It was not an easy 
 task to scramble over the mouldering remains of 
 roof and wall, but we accomplished it and en- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 sconced ourselves in a pew in that end of the 
 structure which was still whole enough to afford 
 shelter, although how much of safety was doubt- 
 ful. 
 
 We were none too soon. Almost immediate- 
 ly the rain came down with that furious energy 
 characteristic of storms in these mountains, the 
 thunder was really appalling, and the lightning 
 seemed to have got beyond control of itself the 
 forks cut its steady blaze. My companion had 
 possessed herself of my hand and cowered against 
 me. Her vernacular as exhibited in a discon- 
 nected monologue quite distracted my mind from 
 the storm. 
 
 " Oh, my Gawd," she would mutter ; then 
 with a violent start : " Gee whizz ! Wat for did I 
 ever come up to these mountains and I alwus so 
 afraid of lightnin' ? O-w-w ! Oh, Lordy I'll never 
 do it agin, I vow I won't. Oh, Joe why ain't you 
 here *? I'm skaret plum to death. I know I'll be 
 struck clean to kingdom come, and I ain't so 
 bad. I really ain't. Oh, Joe you ain't treaten' me 
 right to be safe down there in Noo York and me 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 goin' to be kilt for ever up on these wicked 
 mountins." 
 
 Fortunately, the electricity had other havoc to 
 accomplish before its force was spent, and passed 
 quickly, leaving only the rain behind it. She re- 
 covered herself almost as quickly and sat up and 
 smoothed her hair, then took off her hat and re- 
 garded the feathers. 
 
 "They ain't wet, thank heavings," she said, 
 then readjusted it carefully; after which she 
 turned and regarded me with suspicion. She was 
 a pretty dainty creature, not as common as you 
 would expect, for the national delicacy of feature 
 and sensitiveness of expression seem quite as 
 impartial as democracy could demand. 
 
 " Who are you ? " she asked. " I ain't seen you 
 before in these parts." 
 
 *' I am on the mountain, at Boulder Lake." 
 
 A light flashed into her damp eyes. " Aw, now, 
 you ain't that there Lady Helen somethin', a 
 dock's sister, what everybody is talkin' about ? " 
 
 I bowed in as graceful acknowledgment as I 
 could muster and she pursued delightedly : 
 
 [ 17*] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 "You look like it and I've seen a lord as 
 didn't, but you look just like you might be the 
 heroz>z<? of a story in the ' Family Herald '." 
 
 " I have not the pleasure of the * Family 
 Herald's ' acquaintance," I said, smiling genially, 
 for she interested me as another variety of the 
 genus American, "but tell me something of 
 yourself. You are not a mountain girl, I infer." 
 
 " Cheese it ! " she exclaimed scornfully. " Do I 
 look like these here lumps that is as broad as they 
 is long and wear their hair as slick as a rat's tail "? 
 Naw, I'm a Noo Yorker born and bred, and I'm 
 a sales-lady in * See? " 
 
 " You mean a shop girl ? " 
 
 " Naw. We don't use that there kind of lan- 
 guage in this country. This is the United States 
 of Ameriky and we're all free and equal." 
 
 "Ah," I exclaimed eagerly. "Do you really 
 hold to that"? How refreshing. Then you don't 
 look down on these mountain girls that usually 
 have to work as servants *? " 
 
 " Gee ! " she exclaimed indignantly, " I guess I 
 * Deletion by the publisher. 
 
 [ '73 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 do. Servants is one thing and sales-ladies is an- 
 other. And I ain't never goin' to the mountins 
 agin for vacations not while there's cheap hotels 
 at Asbury Park, and Ocean Grove. I ain't used to 
 settin at table with servants, or ' hired help ' as 
 they call themselves. But a lady frien' of mine's 
 got an aunt up here and she giv me no peace till I 
 come, I was that near dead with work and heat." 
 
 If I were of an hysterical turn I probably should 
 have succumbed. But I maintained a becoming 
 gravity and looked at her with that concentrated 
 interest which forces people to talk about them- 
 selves. 
 
 " But," I said diffidently, " as you have told 
 me you work you won't mind my alluding to it 
 suppose you had been less clever than you are or 
 had had less influence than you did have and 
 had been forced to go out as a servant " 
 
 " I'd 'a been a fluff first naw, I don't mean 
 that. But I just wasn't that's all. And I guess I 
 ain't goin' to associate with those beneath me 
 when I don't have to. Wouldn't I be a fool if I 
 did?" 
 
 [ 174] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " You certainly would not be a good Ameri- 
 can. But if you call yourself ' sales-lady ' why 
 should not the poor servant be permitted to ease 
 her self-respect by calling herself ' hired help ' *? " 
 
 " She kin, for all of me, but it don't make her 
 nothin' else. I hear somebody comin' " her voice 
 fell to a terrified whisper. " Oh, lordy, I hope it 
 ain't a tramp." 
 
 It was Mr. Rogers. His anxious face appeared 
 above the rubbish, and I spoke immediately. 
 
 "What a relief!" he exclaimed, as he picked 
 his way toward us. "I heard voices and hoped 
 you might be here." 
 
 " It is good to see you," I said. " How do you 
 happen to be down in the valley *? " 
 
 " It was just after the first rumble that I met 
 Rolfs coming out of the forest. He told me you 
 had passed him and I immediately got an um- 
 brella, told the Duke I was going in search of 
 you, and started off. I have been quite alarmed, 
 and am more relieved than I can say." 
 
 I smiled and gave him my hand, when my sales- 
 lady remarked drily : 
 
 [ 175] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " Well, as three's a crowd and it ain't rainin' any 
 more I guess I'll waltz. Pleased to meet you, Lady 
 Helen. I kin alwus see a real flesh and blood 
 Lady of the nobility now when I'm readin' the 
 
 4 Herald ' or 's * lovely novels. 
 
 Good-bye. Hope you'll git up the mountin O. K." 
 And she took herself and her feathers out of the 
 ruin. 
 
 " I think we had better start for home," said 
 Mr. Rogers. " Your brother and Lady Agatha 
 will be so anxious." 
 
 " But you must be tired " 
 
 " Not in the least. Do you think no one can 
 walk but the English ? " This with a smile and 
 intonation that took all abruptness out of it. 
 
 We left the church and in a few moments were 
 climbing the mountain, a doubly difficult task 
 now that the logs were slippery with rain. But the 
 forest was so green and dripping, the sun flecks 
 glittered in the rain-drops, the depths looked so 
 dark and wet, and full of sweet fragrant mystery ! 
 The odour of the balsam came down to us with a 
 * Deletion by the publisher. 
 
 [ 176] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 rush. Mr. Rogers is a pleasant companion at all 
 times, but I like him particularly in the forest. 
 He seems to need it so, to be so grateful for it. I 
 fear I have only a dim inkling of what this brief 
 dip into the wilderness means to the tired nervous 
 practical New Yorker. 
 
 " I hear you want to leave us," he said pres- 
 ently. 
 
 " Only for a few days. I am curious to see other 
 lakes and other parts of the forest." 
 
 " And other people ? I am afraid you do not 
 like my friends as well as I had hoped." 
 
 " Ah ! you are wrong," I exclaimed with the 
 warmth of insincerity. " They interest me tre- 
 mendously. They are too clever for me, that is 
 all. I don't feel up to them." 
 
 " You are far cleverer than any of them," he re- 
 plied, turning upon me that approving expression 
 of which I have written, and smiling a trifle of 
 warmth into his grave face. " Many of them are 
 beginning to admit it quite frankly. The Ameri- 
 can nature is very generous, I assure you." 
 
 " Mrs. Laurence and Mr. Rolfs never have ad- 
 
 [ 177] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 mitted anything of the sort, I'll wager," I cried 
 gaily. 
 
 " Well no ; but you see they are rather 
 spoiled." 
 
 " Nor Mr. William Lee Randolph," I said, al- 
 luding to an author who arrived two days ago. " I 
 dreamed all last night of cutting his conceit into 
 little bits and watching them fly together again 
 and cohere as snugly as if nothing had hap- 
 pened." 
 
 "You are a severe critic, dear Lady Helen 
 
 " It is horrid of me to criticise your friends. 
 And after your many-sided kindness! I feel a 
 rude little beast." 
 
 " If you were not frank with me about every- 
 thing I should be greatly disappointed. And I 
 am quite willing to admit it to you your frank- 
 ness is very refreshing to me. I get very tired of 
 all this posing and hero-worship and these ever- 
 lasting fads. But they are inevitable in all circles 
 where certain of its members have accomplished 
 great things and others feel that their role is to 
 
 r 178] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 admire extravagantly if they would keep their 
 heads above water and feel in the swim." 
 
 " Do you think Mr. Rolfs and Mrs. Laurence 
 and Mr. Randolph great ? " I asked pointedly. 
 " Now, you be just as frank as I am for once." 
 
 He hesitated a moment, then said : " I believe 
 there is no admission I would not make to you, 
 if you only gave me sufficient encouragement. 
 Be careful of that mud hole these stones are 
 better. I do wish you would wear rubbers. Frankly 
 then I do not think that any of my authors are 
 great, but I think it best to convince the world 
 that they are because they are unquestionably on 
 the right track and their success will encourage 
 the . younger talent to follow in their footsteps, 
 crowning the achievement of to-day with the 
 richer harvest of a more virile generation. I am 
 quite aware that we lack virility, but when a 
 more full-blooded generation does .arrive think of 
 the vast advantage it will have in this skeleton 
 example of flawless art and perfect taste." 
 
 " It seems to me more likely that there will be 
 a violent reaction," I said. " That they will smash 
 
 [ 179] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 your porcelain skeleton to smithereens and build 
 a big rude lusty giant in its place." 
 
 " Oh, I hope not," he said anxiously, " I hope 
 not. That would be a life-time thrown away." 
 
 It was the first time I had heard him sigh, and 
 the momentary unconscious appeal to my sympa- 
 thy touched me sharply. 
 
 " You have lived for something besides self! " 
 I exclaimed. " I believe you actually have given 
 your best energies, and all your time and much of 
 your fortune to building up an Art in your coun- 
 try that future generations may be benefited by and 
 proud of. I do hope for your sake that it will be 
 a success." 
 
 He turned to me with such a glow on his face 
 that I realized I had gone too far for once, and 
 had a wild desire to pick up my skirts and run 
 headlong into the forest. I must say he looked 
 handsome and most attractive. It seemed to me 
 that I felt something glow and leap beside me, 
 something that I never had admitted the exist- 
 ence of, but which gave him a distinct fascina- 
 tion. I could not run, and heaven knows what 
 [ 180] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 might have happened next. But at that moment 
 a turn of the road brought us face to face with 
 Mr. Nugent. 
 
 " Oh ! " he exclaimed, " Oh ! What a relief. I 
 knew of course that Rogers would find you but 
 what might have happened before Were you in 
 the woods during the storm *? " 
 
 " I was in the Catholic Church with a sales-lady 
 from New York who demanded so much solace 
 that I had no time to be frightened, myself." I 
 plunged at once into a description of the ad- 
 venture, out of kindness to Mr. Rogers as much 
 as to disembarrass the situation. I knew the vio- 
 lent reaction within him and I hoped he was 
 communing with his soul in good healthy swear 
 words. 
 
 When I did not talk, Mr. Nugent did, and 
 Mr. Rogers' silence was well covered. Not that 
 he did not recover himself almost immediately, 
 and occasionally put in an apt remark. 
 
 Finally Mr. Nugent dismissed the subject of 
 sales-ladies with his usual abruptness. 
 
 " I think I can say that I have persuaded your 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 brother and sister to let you go to-morrow," he 
 said. " I demonstrated the absurdity of such slav- 
 ish adherence to the conventions in this wilder- 
 ness. Your maid is chaperonage enough for a few 
 hours' trip, to say nothing of the fact that Hunter 
 and another man will carry your trunk behind us 
 down the mountain and that still another man 
 with a buckboard will meet us in the valley." 
 
 My eyes danced. " What a lark ! " I exclaimed. 
 " To really go on a trip without Bertie or Agatha. 
 But will they consent ? " 
 
 " I am sure they will. I told them that if they 
 insisted upon it my sister would come for you, 
 and although of course they would not hear of 
 such a thing I think that clinched them. So be 
 prepared to start to-morrow morning at eight." 
 
 And, Polly, I really believe I am going ! My 
 love to you. 
 
 HELEN. 
 
 P. S. I almost apologize to Mr. Rolfs. This 
 evening at the Club House when Mrs. Hammond 
 was sitting forward and monopolizing the conver- 
 
 [ '8* J 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 sation, as she always does when Mrs. Laurence does 
 not happen to be present, and delivering her entire- 
 ly commonplace opinions with a vigour of enuncia- 
 tion and a raptness of expression which convince 
 the unanalytical that she is quite the reverse of 
 the little goose she is, Mr. Rolfs suddenly turned 
 to me with such an expression of ferocious disgust 
 that involuntarily I moved closer to him. 
 
 " tfhat is what we have to write for ! " he ex- 
 claimed. " There are thousands, tens of thousands 
 of these damned fool women that we have to 
 write down to and pose to if we want to make 
 our bread and butter." 
 
 I almost gasped. " What on earth do you 
 mean *? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, I like you. You've got horse sense and 
 see through the whole blamed show. You think 
 I'm an ass, and I am. I have to be. I nearly 
 starved trying to be a man, so I became an emas- 
 culated backboneless poseur to please the pas- 
 sionless women and the timid publishers of the 
 United States. To please the sort of American 
 woman who makes the success of a novelist the 
 
 [ "83 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 faddist and the gusher you must tickle her with 
 the idea that she is a superior being because she 
 has no passion and that you are creating a litera- 
 ture which only she can appreciate she with a 
 refinement and a bleached and laundried set of 
 tastes which have made her a tyrannical middle- 
 class enthusiast for all that is unreal and petty in 
 art!" 
 
 "Oh!" I said, "Oh!" 
 
 " I wish I had been born an Englishman," he 
 pursued viciously. "To be great in English liter- 
 ature you've only to be dull ; but to be great in 
 American literature you've got to be a eunuch." 
 
 [ 184] 
 
Letter VII 
 
From the Lady HELEN POLE to the Countess of EDGE 
 and Ross. 
 
 Chipmunk Lake, 
 
 July 2yth 
 Dear Polly : 
 
 MR. NUGENT, the all conquering, ar- 
 ranged 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 an- 
 other dense forest which grows down into the 
 very water; but there the resemblance ends. Al- 
 though 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 moun- 
 tain 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 Nar- 
 rows that you see the lake's three other parts, one 
 
 [ is?] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 stair- 
 [ 188 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 case, 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 dis- 
 sipated the misgivings I had felt about descend- 
 ing 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 talk- 
 ing 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 
 
 [ 189 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 these women have to dress so much oftener during 
 other parts of the year that they are more dis- 
 posed 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. Nev- 
 ertheless the hands look extremely determined. 
 She is not pretty but has rather the beauty of 
 individuality. Her complexion is dead white, al- 
 most 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 humourous mouth, a frank eye and a fine 
 high-bred University air about him stood up as 
 
 [ 190 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 soon as we entered and was presented as Mr. Lati- 
 mer 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 al- 
 ternately. But they did not irritate me for a mo- 
 ment, 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 look- 
 ing at things. I felt grateful enough to hug my- 
 self. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 Mr. Latimer had recently been in the Philip- 
 pines and he told some of his humorous advent- 
 ures with a boyish abandon I am told he is 
 thirty but he seems much younger that made 
 me laugh heartily. Suddenly I caught Mr. Nu- 
 gent'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 some- 
 thing 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 substratum, from 
 which little sparks are sent up to irradiate, not 
 a constant conscientious blaze like an energetic 
 thunder storm. 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 criti- 
 cise. 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 
 
 [ 193] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 un- 
 ceasingly 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 unac- 
 countably. 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 Ger- 
 man, but the features are small and delicately cut, 
 and her complexion is as fine of grain as an in- 
 fant'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 ; 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 hus- 
 band, 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 re- 
 marked apologetically. " But I walked nearly all 
 the way yesterday and then sat up late." 
 
 " No wonder yor're tired," she said in her croon- 
 ing 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, how- 
 ever, life were all sunshine. 
 
 " But surely you walk sometimes in these beau- 
 tiful 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 
 
 [ 195 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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. Law- 
 rence 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 pos- 
 sibly 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 puz- 
 zles me when I have time to think about it. 
 
 July 3 1st 
 
 I have been here four days, Poll, and not heard 
 the words " aristocratic " or " refined " once. Oh, 
 
 [ 196] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 blessed relief! And yet they just lack unself- 
 consciousness. 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 men- 
 tal and personal as racial and as well, there is no 
 help for it aristocratic ? I think that is the ex- 
 planation, 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 Inde- 
 pendence is something like this : 7 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 peo- 
 ple 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 
 
 [ 197] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 peo- 
 ple 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 co- 
 quette. 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 
 
 [ 198 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 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 im- 
 personal 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 de- 
 voted 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 book I cer- 
 tainly shall put it in. 
 
 First Last evening at sundown several of us 
 
 [ 199 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 two in a boat went out on the lake in the hope 
 of seeing the deer come down to drink. The men 
 paddled, making so little noise and movement that 
 the boat seemed gliding by itself through the si- 
 lences of space. There was a yellow glow in the 
 West the aftermath of the most magnificent 
 amber sunset; mountains and lakes of molten 
 cloud but the stars were not out and there was 
 only that light from nowhere through which the 
 vision gropes surely but always with surprise. 
 
 Mr. Nugent paddled our boat he sat in the 
 stern, I in the bow, with my back to him 
 through the Narrows, then, after drifting about 
 for a few moments pointed toward the shore most 
 distant. I had been warned not to speak, and not 
 a word had been uttered when a low suppressed 
 voice from behind gave me a start. " Look, look ! " 
 it said, "do you see? straight ahead." I saw! A 
 reddish brown something was walking along the 
 bank and in a moment I saw it toss its horns. But 
 it was not of the deer I thought just then but of 
 the strange sense of intimacy that suppressed voice 
 on the darkening silent lake had aroused in me. In 
 [ 200 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 a moment it came again, lower still, for we were 
 nearing the shore. "There is another." And he 
 steered through the water lilies. 
 
 A mate had joined the buck and they cropped 
 and drank for a few moments, then walked along 
 the shore and into an arbour-like opening of the 
 forest, exactly like people making a stately exit 
 from the back of a stage. Almost immediately 
 two does came bounding out of the forest and 
 waded into the water until only their heads and 
 red backs were visible. We remained motion- 
 less, almost breathless, but in a few moments 
 they must have noticed us for they made hotly 
 for the shore. When they reached it they stood 
 for at least five minutes with their heads thrown 
 back staring at us. Then, although we were, ap- 
 parently, as lifeless as the lily pads, their reasoning 
 faculty must have satisfied them that we were 
 aliens and therefore to be feared, for they suddenly 
 turned their backs and made for the forest as hard 
 as they could go, leaping over one high bush after 
 another, until nothing could be seen but the white 
 lining of their tails. Then the exhibition being 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 over we talked all the way home, and that strange 
 sense of intimacy with a note of mystery in it was 
 dispelled. 
 
 It was to be renewed, however, for we had not 
 done with the deer. That night at eleven o'clock, 
 when Mr. Van \Vorden was sound asleep he 
 really is very dull Mrs. Van W. and I Mr. 
 Nugent and Mr. Latimer stole down to the boat 
 house by the light of a lantern. We were muffled 
 up in the darkest things we possessed and I felt 
 exactly as if we were conspirators, or smugglers, 
 or refugees from justice. 
 
 In the boat house the men lit a lamp they had 
 brought and placed it in a wooden case, open in 
 front, which was on the end of a pole about three 
 feet high. (This light is called a Jack.) The pole 
 was set into a hole on the bow of the boat Mr. N. 
 intended to paddle, and it was to serve as a sort 
 of search light, not only to see the deer by, but 
 to fascinate what moth-like instinct they pos- 
 sessed. 
 
 All prepared, we pushed silently out into the 
 lake. Can you imagine the scene? The moun- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 tains there are so many of them ! were black. 
 The sky seemed dropping with its weight of 
 stars. The clear glassy lake reflected the largest 
 of them and the black masses of the forest that 
 rose straight from its brink. And just ahead of 
 me shall I ever forget it? floated a white mist, 
 rising and falling, writhing into a different sem- 
 blance every moment, the light making it the 
 more ghostly and terrifying. I could not see a 
 living thing; the other boat was behind us and I 
 was in the bow as before, staring at that ghostly 
 mist, quite forgetting the deer. A line of Tenny- 
 son's haunted me : 
 
 " The dead steered by the dumb went upward with the flood," 
 
 and I longed to utter it aloud, but dared not. 
 Once I turned my head to see if Mr. N. were 
 really there. He looked black and graven, as if 
 indeed he were the dumb servitor. The others I 
 could not see at all. And again there was that 
 sense of gliding, unpropelled, through the silences 
 of the upper Universe, only a thousand times 
 intensified. And, surely, never were so many stars 
 [ 203 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 gathered together before. It seemed to me that 
 the big ones must drop into the lake, they looked 
 so heavy, and so close, and the little ones were 
 like a million grains of golden sand. I thought 
 of Grimm's Fairy Tales and the princess who car> 
 ried a robe of stars in a nut-shell. 
 
 But more often I watched that white mist, just 
 in front of the prow and me, and nowhere else. 
 Where did it come from ? I have no idea. They 
 tell me there was a mist everywhere, and that by 
 the aid of our light we saw it just ahead, but I 
 saw none of k elsewhere, and I saw the stars and 
 the trees in the lake. 
 
 We must have floated for a half hour, search- 
 ing almost every inch of the banks without a 
 glimpse of deer, when Mr. N.'s paddle stopped 
 suddenly. At the same moment I heard a slight 
 trampling in the brush close by, then a louder, as 
 if a great buck had been brought to bay and 
 were pawing up the earth. Then there was a ter- 
 rific snort I had no idea anything could snort so 
 loud then a long warning whistle, then another 
 snort, and another. By this time he had made up 
 [ 204 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 his mind to flee the danger, for the snorts were ac- 
 companied by a crashing through the brush in the 
 opposite direction. The faster he went the louder 
 he snorted, until distance tempered the sound. It 
 must have been five minutes before the last faint 
 note of his anger came back to us. 
 
 " I am afraid he has warned off all the others," 
 came that low hoarse whisper from behind me, 
 and it was the last touch needed to deepen the 
 mystery of that unreal midnight. 
 
 Mr. N. paddled for ten or fifteen minutes longer, 
 then giving it up, made for the boat house. We 
 glided in noiselessly and he helped me out at once 
 and extinguished the light. Then we stood on the 
 narrow pier between the boat and the other slip 
 of enclosed water waiting for Latimer and Mrs. 
 Van W. There was no sign of them on the dark 
 lake for several moments, and we were obliged to 
 stand very close on that strip of wood in the 
 darker boat house. I can assure you it was very 
 weird ; but with a man like Mr. N. beside one 
 it was impossible to feel frightened. In the boat 
 he seemed so far away. Of course I imagined that 
 
 [ 2 5 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 all sorts of things had happened to the others, but 
 presently they came gliding toward us and into 
 the boat house. We all stole home without a 
 word. It was long before I fell asleep. 
 
 HELEN. 
 
Letter VIII 
 
From the Lady HELEN POLE to the Countess of EDGE 
 and Ross. 
 
 Chipmunk Lake, 
 
 August 4th 
 Dear Polly ? 
 
 I HAVE solved the mystery of Mrs. Opp, and 
 it has been the cause of much thought and 
 speculation on my part. Her father was a Ger- 
 man noble, high in favour of his Kaiser some fifty 
 years ago. For some reason he fell from grace and 
 was expatriated, his estates confiscated. He came 
 to this country with a large family, drifted to one 
 of the Northern counties of New York State and 
 tried to make a living by farming. Of course he 
 was a failure, poor man, but he was highly re- 
 spected in the humble community, not only for his 
 worthy character, but because he could read and 
 write in seven languages. It was also known that he 
 corresponded with Bismarck. Some twelve years 
 after his arrival in the New World his youngest 
 child was born she who now is Mrs. Opp, wife 
 of the keeper of Chipmunk Lake. By that time he 
 was a common farmer and woodsman, working 
 fourteen hours a day with his sons for a bare liv- 
 [ 209 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ing, with neither the money nor the time to edu- 
 cate his superfluous children. The little girl grew 
 up in the woods, turning her hand to everything, 
 from milking to making syrup from the maple 
 trees. When her father died and the farm was 
 divided she " hired out," and supported herself 
 until she married, some ten years ago. 
 
 There you have the key to the mystery; the 
 unconscious pride of carriage, the gracious man- 
 ner, the well-kept teeth and nails, the more than 
 suggestion of breeding in her face. But all this 
 becomes strange only when you realize her ab- 
 solute unselfconsciousness. I have talked with the 
 woman over and over again and it is as plain as 
 her descent that she has not the slightest apprecia- 
 tion of what she is and has been deprived of, much 
 less cherishes any pride or vanity in it. It is all 
 unconscious, this persistence of inherited instincts 
 through the most unfavourable circumstances, 
 with not an impulse in the brain to guide it. And 
 how short it stops, this heredity ! It goes so far and 
 no farther; the brain, most important of all, is 
 choked with the weeds of a bitter fate. Still, she 
 
 C 2I ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 is happy why should I pity her? She has her 
 handsome woodsman, her placid mountain life, 
 that eternal youngness in her face. Courts could give 
 her nothing more; rather, would they give her 
 too much. 
 
 But how it sets one to thinking, Polly. I have 
 tried to imagine myself in similar circumstances: 
 Dad exiled with a large brood, myself born on a 
 
 mountain farm, " hired out " The respectable 
 
 amount of brain I had inherited from a long line 
 of brilliant and useful men would be as surely mine 
 as now but with nothing put into it, could it have 
 been wholly ignorant and unambitious and unsus- 
 pecting ? Could I have cooked without protest for 
 Mrs. Van Worden while her distinguished brother 
 addressed me merely to demand more potatoes or 
 the pepper *? Could 1 have been content with finger 
 nails and teeth, and a backbone with a pride the 
 brain had forgotten ? Oh, no ! I cannot imagine it. 
 I should have demanded schooling, read my fath- 
 er's correspondence with Bismarck, fed myself with 
 his nightly tales of past splendour, and married an 
 American of the haute noblesse in short, my hered- 
 [an ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ity would have worked itself out along the lines of 
 the conventional novel, that is always so pleasantly 
 prone to give you life as it should be, not as it is. 
 Here I am face to face with a fact I never have 
 met in fiction, and I am grateful for it even 
 while I feel sad as I speculate upon a fate I hap- 
 pily have escaped. The Fact is Mrs. Opp of noble 
 blood and low degree, jolly, hearty, happy, un- 
 warped by what she knows not of, ungrammatical 
 and ambitious for a hotel on the St. Lawrence river. 
 Surely, there is a motif for a novel of advanced 
 realism. 
 
 I have talked it over with Mr. Nugent. He 
 is so interesting and illuminating to talk anything 
 over with. We take long walks and rows every 
 day. He is my constant cavalier, for it would be 
 really unprincipled of me to attempt to cut any 
 of these women out, they have been so sweet to 
 me. A party of us always start off together, but 
 there are so many paths in the forest ! 
 
 I cannot analyze for you, Polly, the stage at 
 which I have arrived with Mr. Nugent. He has 
 not actually said anything, so far he is too 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 clever but he has a faculty of embracing me 
 with an invisible presentment of himself, which is 
 very disturbing. I don't know what to think 
 except that I think a great deal about him. It 
 is very sweet but if only I could be sure. He 
 is so different everything over here is so different 
 from anything I have ever known. (I don't ideal- 
 ize him. I wonder if that is fatal *?) 
 
 We do not play intellectual games here, thank 
 heaven, and there is no idol on a pedestal, nor 
 one person who is more the fashion than another. 
 We are frivolous usually, although I have oc- 
 casionally heard some solid and instructive con- 
 versation, and we all read a good deal. Every 
 house has several shelves of books, and the best 
 literature of all countries except the Great Re- 
 public is well represented. Although I no longer 
 take much interest in the subject and indeed 
 had observed long ago that the Americans of this 
 class cared little for their own bookmakers I 
 asked Mrs. Van Worden the other day the cause 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 of it She often answers in sentences so short 
 they sound like epigrams ; however, brevity is 
 the soul as well as the substance of most epi- 
 grams, as far as I am able to distinguish between 
 the short sentences of the witty novelists and the 
 paragraphs of those who think. For some reason 
 the staccato movement supplies a meaning of 
 which the words reck not. 
 
 Mrs. Van W. shrugged her flexible little 
 shoulders when I called her attention to the fact 
 that she had only three American novels in her 
 bookcase. 
 
 " Why should I waste my little time on the 
 obvious? I read what I do not know. I want 
 knowledge. Not of a new dialect and pin point 
 on a map, but of life, of the eternal mysteries. I 
 want the wisdom of those who are not afraid to 
 live and tell of what they have felt, thought, 
 done. I am not satiated, not blasee. I am still full 
 of hopes and dreams, and often I am quite 
 happy; but / have lived. Therefore I want to 
 read books by people who have lived more. How 
 could the surface painted in water-colours by a 
 
 [ 2.4] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 cautious hand interest me. And the love scenes ! 
 Rotten. Conducted through a telephone. I want 
 books written out of a brain and heart and soul 
 crowded and vital with Life, spelled with a big 
 L. I want poetry bursting with passion. I don't 
 care a hang for the ' verbal felicities. ' They'll do 
 for the fringe, but I want the garment to warm 
 me first. Good God ! how little true poetry there 
 is in our time ; and I often feel the want of it so 
 terribly. I know the old boys by heart. Oh, for 
 a new Voice ! What is the matter with the men, 
 anyway *? Women make asses of themselves when 
 they try to be passionate and rhyme at the same 
 time, but I can see no reason why a man should 
 become so offensively ladylike the moment he 
 becomes a poet" 
 
 "These are busy times," I suggested. "Per- 
 haps the virile brains have found something bet- 
 ter to do. A poet always has seemed to me a 
 pretty poor apology for a man. Byron was mas- 
 culine but he was the great exception. And his 
 genius of personality was far greater than his 
 poetical gift, great, creatively, as that was. I 
 
 ' 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 could stand a man being a poet incidentally, if he 
 had the power to make me forget he was a poet, 
 but not otherwise." 
 
 And then we all went out on the lake in the 
 dusk and Mr. Nugent quoted Byron to me for 
 an hour. Not to my back. He was rowing this 
 time. 
 
 6th 
 
 About two miles from here is a lake entirely 
 covered with water-lilies. It is seldom that a 
 boat cuts the surface or a fish line is cast, for the 
 water is too warm for trout, and our fishermen 
 disdain bull heads and sunfish. Consequently 
 the green lily pads have spread over every inch 
 of it, and scattered upon them are the waxen 
 cups with their golden treasure. It is a scene 
 of indescribable beauty and peace, and the low 
 hills above the shore, instead of the usual haughty 
 mountains, are almost as sweet and wildly still. 
 
 The keeper carried a boat there yesterday, and 
 Mr. N. rowed me about for an hour. I gathered 
 an armful of the lilies and hung them all over 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 my hat and gown, linking the long soft stems in 
 my belt until they trailed to my knees. I felt so 
 happy in catching at the beautiful things as the 
 boat grinded through their hidden part, and in 
 adorning myself, that I quite forgot Mr. N., who 
 had fallen silent. The silence of one of these 
 Americans, by the way, is quite different from 
 that of our men. They are at so much pains 
 usually to entertain and interest a woman that 
 their silences indicate either a pleasant intimacy, 
 or depression, never a lordly superiority to small 
 matters. Therefore, I suddenly paused with a 
 cluster of lilies half raised and directed my 
 glance to my companion. He looked neither 
 musing nor sad. His eyes were fastened upon 
 me with eager admiration, his whole face, that 
 lean powerful nervous face stamped by uncon- 
 querable emotions, was so concentrated, that I felt 
 myself blushing vividly, and I waved the clus- 
 ter of lilies at arm's-length. 
 
 " Did you ever see anything so beautiful ? " 
 I exclaimed gaily. "Is there any flower in the 
 world so artistic as the water-lily? from its 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 pure cold form to its aloofness from the leaves *? 
 and always alone, never a blossom and its buds, 
 never a group, gathered as if in fragrant gossip. 
 It is the nun among flowers, sexless, childless, 
 angelically pure and cold, asking nothing of this 
 life but to bloom white and unspotted in some 
 mountain convent like this, a convent of per- 
 petual silence, with its wall of hills, its roof of 
 blue, embroidered with gold at night and haunted 
 by day with fleecy clouds that look like wander- 
 ing angels Oh, dear! I forgot the thunder- 
 storms and the cries of angry deer, but doubtless 
 the lilies merely close up at such unholy sounds 
 and pray in unruffled serenity." 
 
 " Lady Helen, will you marry me ? " asked 
 Nugent. 
 
 Polly, I gave such a start that the boat rocked, 
 and I felt like a silly girl who never had been 
 proposed to before. Moreover, I blushed scarlet. 
 But, although I had, over and over, imagined 
 his proposal, none of my conceptions had been 
 anything like this. I had pictured him losing 
 his head suddenly when we were walking alone 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 in the woods, or keeping guard over the fire in 
 the living-room at night. I had well, there is 
 no use going into details of what did not happen. 
 Suffice it to say that the proposal was delivered 
 in tersest English under a four o'clock sun, 
 while he had an oar in each hand. And as I 
 could not run away, and as he gave me not the 
 slightest excuse to be angry there was nothing 
 to do but to give him some sort of reply. 
 
 "To be perfectly honest, I don't know," I 
 said. 
 
 " You mean that you are not sure that you 
 love me, but that I may hope," and his face 
 turned as crimson as mine no easy feat, for it 
 is about the colour and consistency of leather. 
 
 " It is the sort of thing you can put in a good 
 many different ways. And there is so much to 
 be considered. You have the double magnetism 
 of mind and sex, you always interest and never 
 bore me, and you are entirely different from any 
 one I have ever known. I am twenty-six, and 
 like all women, eager to be in love that I never 
 have been makes my longing for that particular 
 
 [ 2I 9 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 heritage the keener. Moreover, I am on the 
 rebound from two years of cruel anxiety, days 
 and nights of tears and waiting. For the first 
 time I feel that I belong to myself once more, 
 that the world and all its delights are mine and 
 you happen to be the only man. How it would 
 be if I had met you in England in every-day con- 
 ditions that is the problem I cannot solve. 
 These wild mountains, this life full of novelty, 
 the novelty of everything Oh, I don't know." 
 
 " Have you any prejudice against marrying an 
 American *? " 
 
 "No prejudice. That is not the word. It is 
 well, the very novelty that draws me to you is 
 what I am most afraid of. You see as I said 
 I never met any one in the least like you before. 
 The men I have known, whether Englishmen or 
 Europeans, are all men born of the same tradi- 
 tions as myself. Fundamentally they are the 
 same, no matter what their individualities. But 
 you you are just as different fundamentally as 
 every other way. How do I know but that your 
 great attraction for me is partly the spell of your 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 fascination, more still the novelty which appeals 
 to my somewhat various mind *? " 
 
 "You certainly have given the matter some 
 thought," he said, smiling with a sort of joyous 
 sarcasm, but in his usual harsh abrupt tones. " I'll 
 debate the matter if you like. Your uncertainty 
 of mind is due to the fact that you have gone 
 fancy free to the age of twenty-six. Unless a 
 woman early acquires the habit of falling in love, 
 it becomes more difficult every year the disas- 
 sociating of the mind from the emotions the 
 surrender of self you struck me when I first 
 saw you as being so implacably proud in your 
 absolute self-ownership it was delicious I knew 
 you never had kissed any man when will you 
 give me your answer *? " 
 
 "When? Oh! Well before " brightening 
 "when Bertie is quite well." 
 
 " Your brother is as good as well now. Soule 
 says there isn't a microbe in him. The Adiron- 
 dacks and common sense are all he wants. He 
 has acquired both. Can you assert that you know 
 it would be utterly impossible to love me *? " 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " Oh, no, I can't say that." 
 
 " Then take the plunge. I will answer for the 
 rest You won't love me before you marry me. 
 I feel sure of that. I am equally sure that you 
 will love me after. And all the differences from 
 your traditional man they will transpose them- 
 selves into commonplaces when they have be- 
 come the familiar details of daily life." 
 
 " But Englishwomen never marry American 
 men," I exclaimed, grasping wildly at a straw. 
 " It always is the other way." 
 
 " There lies your chance for fame," he said 
 more lightly than one would expect from his 
 face. " You are already the most delightfully 
 original of women. Don't do anything so com- 
 monplace as to go home, after having all your 
 blood made over by the Adirondack air, and 
 marry a great landlord with a rent-roll and six 
 titles. Fancy the stimulation of watching a de- 
 termined American throttling a fortune out of 
 his chaotic country, helping him in his ambitious 
 career, rising with him step by step until he is 
 head and shoulders above the seventy struggling 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 millions of the United States of America. Does 
 not the prospect please you ? You see I am practi- 
 cal. I hate self-control. I know very little about 
 it. But I dare not be lover-like, not the least bit, 
 till you give me permission." 
 
 " Oh, please don't ! Yes, the life ivould be inter- 
 esting. But I adore politics. Would you throw 
 over that Trust and go in heart and soul for re- 
 form, with the ultimate intention of being a dis- 
 tinguished statesman ? " 
 
 " Yes but it would mean a curtailed income." 
 
 "I have quantities of money it would be 
 rather an original international match, wouldn't 
 it?" 
 
 " It certainly would. And while you could ex- 
 pend your entire income on dress and jewels if 
 you chose, you would have to make up your 
 mind to live according to my income." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " I should be a failure if I settled down to live 
 on a woman's money at my age forty-one ; 
 moreover my divorce from the interests of capital- 
 ism would be deprived of its point. It would be 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 the sacrifice that would tell most in the begin- 
 ning. No native of the British Isles would be ac- 
 cused of the disinterestedness of marrying an un- 
 wealthy American when protected by a rent-roll. 
 Nobody would suspect your income.'* 
 
 " That is a nice polite thing to say to me ! 
 How would you like the idea of people saying I 
 married you to be supported with the inference 
 that no one in England would have me 1 ? " 
 
 *' I do not care a red cent what any one says or 
 thinks if I get you. That is the only thing in 
 life that interests me at present." 
 
 " Bertie might oppose it so violently that he 
 would have another hemorrhage." 
 
 " If he were convinced that you loved me and 
 if you wept a few judicious tears, common grati- 
 tude would force him to consent without a hemor- 
 rhage and if you postponed the announcement 
 a month he couldn't have another if he tried. Be- 
 sides, he loves you devotedly you know his 
 opposition would soon be exhausted. I have 
 seldom seen a brother and sister so united. He 
 would end by feeling with you and making 
 [ 224 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 vivid mental pictures of your great desire for 
 happiness if I could only create that desire in 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " I said. " You must give me time. 
 I can't say anything definite for days and days. 
 Please talk of something else." 
 
 " I have no intention of worrying you. Let us 
 land here. I have another lake to show you. If 
 this is a cloister, rapt and holy, that is a refuge 
 for lost souls, dank and sinister." 
 
 Much interested, and delighted at his ready 
 conformity to my wishes, I stepped ashore and 
 followed him along a "runway" (deer run), for 
 about a mile. It turned and twisted through the 
 wood and sometimes we had to climb over fallen 
 trees, not having the lightsome feet of the deer 
 who could leap a house, I should think. It was 
 not a dense wood, and the sunlight fairly tumbled 
 in, but so divided that it seemed palpable enough 
 to catch by the apronful. Some of the leaves 
 looked to be made of light, and a sea-gull they 
 nest in these forests seemed swimming and 
 drinking in an upper lake of sunshine. But, ab- 
 [ 225 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 ruptly, this charming impression was behind us. 
 The wood grew dark and I noticed that the 
 ground was very springy and soft as our moors 
 are in places. 
 
 " We are on a swamp made of the decay of 
 trees for a hundred years " he said " but you 
 are quite safe. It is at least five feet deep." 
 
 This was sufficiently creepy only five feet of 
 rotted bark and leaves between ourselves and the 
 lake although I reflected that if it could support 
 trees, our additional weight would not sink it 
 but in a moment we stood on the brink of the lake. 
 
 Polly, I never have seen so desolate a spot. 
 Even the mountains had deserted it. The forest 
 about it grew on land as flat as a plain, and the 
 trees hid the peaks which were only a few miles 
 distant. And so many of the trees were dead. 
 Lightning had blasted them and scarcely a 
 spruce had escaped the blight. All about the 
 shore the lake was choked with rotting trunks, 
 their naked branches projecting starkly above the 
 water which had no movement. Its tarnished sur- 
 face, as ripless as a marsh, did not even reflect that 
 
 c 126 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 deserted wood they held themselves aloof from 
 each other ; and yet they seemed dying together. 
 The lake has no inlet, Mr. N. had told me as we 
 came along ; it is fed by springs and the moisture 
 of the forest. I could imagine it dropping lower 
 and lower, as the trees about it died, until a 
 century hence ? a dry bed choked with rotting 
 trees would be visited as the tomb of one of Nat- 
 ure's failures. In England such a spot would be 
 the headquarters of a dozen dark and terrible 
 stories, and would have done threadbare duty in 
 fiction. But old as it is it is still too young for 
 that complicated thing called life to have centred 
 about it. It is on one of the New World's peaks, 
 and not in another generation will she have time 
 to discover it. It is like those unhappy mortals 
 who die and rot before they have guessed that 
 there is aught in the world to live for. Poor 
 stranded ugly duckling. I felt more pity for it 
 than terror and almost resented the calm inso- 
 lence of its beautiful fellows two thousand of 
 them, I am told. I wondered if its hidden springs 
 met and gossipped with other springs, who in 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 turn poured their cold freshness into other lakes, 
 and with it their tale of a comrade forgotten by 
 Nature and despised by man. Doubtless they 
 would deepen their amber-brown in scorn, those 
 spoilt beauties of the mountains, worshipped of 
 men and darlings of Nature ; not a ripple of pity 
 would agitate them, I would vow. 
 
 " Look," said Mr. N. 
 
 He pushed his feet hard against the swamp, 
 putting much spring into his body and for a 
 hundred yards the shore trembled, the trees 
 moved as if on a seesaw. My nerves are strong, 
 but that was too much. I grasped his arm. 
 
 " Come ! " I said, " Take me away please. 
 And do you go ahead. I want to look at a living 
 being till I get out of this wood." 
 
 And we went back to the lake of the water- 
 lilies, that looked pure, and sweet, and happy 
 enough to pray for their lost neighbour. 
 
 This morning I sat watching the sunlight play 
 on the wrinkles of the lake where a light breeze 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 blew. The glittering sun-flecks looked exactly 
 like a flock of tiny silver birds caught fast on the 
 surface of the lake and straining their wings even 
 to run away. Everyday I find something new 
 in this lake to interest me, and early this morn- 
 ing, being unable to sleep, I rose and looked out 
 of my front window and saw a great deer, with 
 his antlers against the rosy dawn, standing on 
 one of the points of The Narrows. For a few 
 moments he listened intently, then waded out 
 among the lily pads and had his morning repast. 
 Perhaps you can imagine why I slept so ill last 
 night. Polly, I wish I knew my own mind. I am 
 afraid of making a mistake and afraid of throwing 
 away what may be my one supreme opportunity 
 to love. If I were only an American or he an 
 Englishman. If only I had the intuitive knowledge 
 of him and all that he will mean. I am beginning 
 to suspect that I have something of the pioneer, 
 of the discoverer in me. After all, why should not 
 one make great experiments in life ? Obedience 
 to traditions, to habit, we see every day and how 
 much happiness ? 
 
 [ 229 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 But I think I'll be glad to get away from the 
 subject for a time. 
 
 I am rather keen for the autumn to come 
 " the fall of the year " when all these mountains 
 are a blaze of red and gold and the lakes reflect 
 their glory ; when the dew freezes on these forest 
 flames and turns them to jewels that outdazzle the 
 stars ; when the hunters with their red caps are in 
 them, not stalking the nimble deer, but sitting be- 
 side the runways hour after hour, patiently waiting 
 the passing of the only lords left in these forests, 
 when we have venison three times a day and won- 
 der why we pined for it. There ! that was as ma- 
 licious a drop as any of Heine's, and I am sorry. 
 
 I saw such a laughable sight two days ago. 
 Mr. N. took me to the cow-yard to see it. Know 
 first that the deer flies are a pest in the land and 
 the terror of beasts. The solitary cow the colony 
 boasts was taking her afternoon nap, down on her 
 folded legs. Close to her head and perched along 
 her back were a half dozen hens with their heads 
 alert, watching the circling flies. The moment one 
 lit, the nearest chicken pounced and the fly disap- 
 [ 230 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 peared, never to torment cow or deer again. I saw 
 ten disposed of in this way, while the cow slum- 
 bered peacefully, secure in her guard. 
 
 Have I told you that there is a deep ravine on 
 one side of the house ? The veranda overhangs 
 it and I often stand and stare down into that wild 
 tangle of fallen trees and rocks and ferns. The 
 sides are broken and steep and under the shade 
 of many trees, straggling up into complete dark- 
 ness. The torrent is almost dry, but in wintef 
 and spring it is broad and noisy and all the ferns 
 are covered and show green and lace-like under 
 the water. It is the outlet of the lake and it goes 
 far down into the valley where it tumbles over 
 a fall into another and wider stream. Up this 
 rocky steep mountain brook, over the cascade, the 
 trout climb in their thirst for the cold springs ot 
 the higher lakes. No other fish can make that 
 perilous journey, so Chipmunk is one of the stars 
 of the Adirondacks. The trout have no minnows 
 or other small fish to feed on, and rise to the fly 
 with little coaxing. I am become so learned in 
 mountain lore ! But I feel as if I had discovered 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 this wonderful country, and as happy as a poet in 
 the nervous languor of creation. 
 
 You remember I wrote you of Mrs. Coward 
 and, by the way she says she met you at Hom- 
 burg and in Scotland two years ago I have con- 
 cluded that I do not like her quite as well as the 
 others, not because she is insatiable in her desire 
 for admiration and has several times flattered Mr. 
 N. right out of the room and on to the lake 
 how can men be so weak ? when he is palpably 
 devoted to me and therefore in common decency 
 she should let him alone. Unless she mends her 
 ways I shall turn my batteries on Mr. Carlisle, a 
 dashing young millionaire who distinguished him- 
 self in the late war, is a master of hounds, drives 
 a Tally-ho, is a champion at golf, never misses 
 the two deer a season the government permits 
 him to shoot, and is altogether very jolly and 
 charming. I could cut her out if I chose and with- 
 out flattering the animal either. That is a trick of 
 the mind to cover up the defects of nature. 
 
 But what I started to say was that the real rea- 
 son I dislike her is that I have discovered more 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 of the snob in her than in most of these Ameri- 
 cans, aspiring as they are with the possible ex- 
 ception of Mrs. Laurence. Yesterday morning I 
 "dropped" into Mrs. Grant's lodge, and while the 
 servant went for Mrs. Coward Mrs. Grant had a 
 headache I picked up a framed photograph of a 
 very good-looking young man in the uniform of 
 the United States. I still held it when Mrs. Cow- 
 ard came stepping down the stairs like the duch- 
 ess in the play, a red poppy in her dark hair, a 
 soft cream-white morning gown clinging to her- 
 self and the floor the morning was chilly. She 
 had a bunch of poppies in her belt and altogether 
 looked rather well. 
 
 " Is this your brother ? " I asked. " I fancy I 
 see a resemblance." 
 
 " Yes," she replied, " it is my soldier-brother. 
 He made a brilliant charge at Santiago and I am 
 very proud of him. Sit there, dear Lady Helen, 
 where the light falls full on you. You are so 
 radiant, bathed in sunlight and you can stand 
 it. I always feel in the presence of poetry a blue 
 and gold edition of all the poets when I can sit 
 
 [ 233 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 and look at you like this. Poetry is really elevat- 
 ing, don't you think so? I always maintain 
 that, positively. It is like pure air and the rural 
 beauties of the country. But about my brave 
 brother : it is only fondness that makes me proud 
 of him, for there never has been a generation in 
 our family where we have not given at least one 
 soldier to the country. Of course you will appre- 
 ciate that. Very few American families can say 
 that for seven generations its men have distin- 
 guished themselves in the field and added to the 
 honour of the name." 
 
 Her low silken shallow voice paused that I 
 might comment, but I only stared at the portrait 
 now restored to the table trying in vain to 
 frame a phrase that would express my awe of 
 the seven generations. Finally, I said desperately : 
 
 " He looks really as if the entire Spanish 
 army could not terrify him." 
 
 This extravagance served the purpose of diver- 
 sion. " Nothing could terrify him," she exclaimed. 
 " He only needs another war to become really 
 famous. I am quite positive our unfortunate ac- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 quisitions will let us in for another war before 
 long the Chinese question don't you think so ? 
 I think it so delightful that American women are 
 now beginning to take as much interest in poli- 
 tics as English women do. You really have been 
 our superiors in that as in many other respects. 
 I heard you discussing the great questions of the 
 day with Mr. Nugent and Mr. Carlisle last night 
 and I quite envied you I am just beginning, and 
 you seem to have learned politics with your alpha- 
 bet. I am so glad you have such influence with 
 Mr. Nugent, because I am convinced that he has 
 the making of a statesman in him and that it is 
 his duty to go into high politics. I have always 
 maintained," she added weightily, " that it is a 
 man's duty to cultivate his gifts. If he feels an 
 irresistible impulse to write he should do so or 
 to paint or to model. Politics are of equal im- 
 portance to the development of civilisation the 
 right sort. Do not you agree with me, Lady 
 Helen?" 
 
 " I have always maintained that white is white, 
 and that the sun gives light when there are not 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 too many clouds," I said, firmly. " How wonder- 
 fully becoming those poppies are to you. I envy 
 any one who can wear red, it is a colour so full of 
 life, but it does not suit me at all." 
 
 For a second she had looked puzzled, but she 
 is too thorough a woman of the world to hang 
 out her emotions, and she replied with her usual 
 suavity : 
 
 "If I could wear pink and dead white, and 
 brilliant blues as you can I should resign red with- 
 out a struggle. I have never seen anything so 
 beautiful as you are with a pink rose in your hair 
 and another at your throat." 
 
 But I had had as much of this as I could stand 
 and I asked her abruptly if she had visited many 
 of the lakes. 
 
 " This is my first visit to the Adirondacks, I 
 am ashamed to say. I was taken abroad every 
 summer when I was a girl and I have gone almost 
 every year since from force of habit and because 
 I really have such a delicious time. It is one's duty 
 to see all the beauties of the old world, don't you 
 think so, Lady Helen ? " 
 
 036] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 But I did not want to talk about Europe. " I 
 hear that Spruce Lake is so beautiful," I said. 
 " Could not we a party of us walk over there 
 some day ? It is only seven miles, and Mr. Nu- 
 gent says the trail is very good." 
 
 " Seven miles ! Dear Lady Helen. Twice seven 
 are fourteen. Remember we alas! are not 
 English." 
 
 " They might put us up for the night " 
 
 " Oh, quite impossible. We do not know any 
 of them. They are business people from Buffalo 
 and Uttca and all those provincial towns." 
 
 *' In trade, do you mean ? " 
 
 " That is the way you would express it. It is 
 the same class people who keep stores or make 
 things." 
 
 " And they have the same tastes as yourself? " 
 I asked, puzzled at this new American facer. 
 " They are sportsmen ? They lead the same life 
 up here as you do ? " 
 
 " I really don't know anything about them. I 
 suppose there are certain national characteristics ; 
 several lakes in the Adirondacks are owned by 
 
 [ 237 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 people of that sort. I am told that there was an 
 encampment of commercial travellers just off the 
 borders of this property last year." 
 
 " But I don't understand. Your lines of caste 
 are very marked, it has seemed to me. Why should 
 the leisure class and the commercial traveller have 
 the same tastes. It is very odd." 
 
 But she refused to take the slightest interest in 
 the subject, and that afternoon as I was walking 
 to the lake of the water-lilies with Mr. N. I asked 
 him for enlightenment. 
 
 " Oh, Eastern men are keen sportsmen," he said. 
 ** That is to say, most wherever there are moun- 
 tains and woods and lakes. It is an instinct inher- 
 ited from the old hunters and trappers from the 
 days when the settlers shot game for food and 
 were as familiar with the wilderness as the farm. 
 These settlers were the ancestors of men who are 
 in all classes of life to-day. And you must remem- 
 ber that there is no ' Continent ' to run over to 
 for the yearly vacation. You can travel an im- 
 mense distance here and pay a good deal of money 
 only to hear a change of accent. But the forests of 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 New York and Maine mean rest, reinvigoration, 
 and the complete happiness of the sportsman. 
 These men up here go in the woods every year as 
 naturally as they keep their nose to the grindstone 
 for the remaining ten or eleven months. 
 
 " And they are first-class sportsmen." 
 
 " As good as any in England." 
 
 " Men that that sell hats ? " 
 
 " Carlisle is neither keener nor better." 
 
 " Certainly your country is wonderfully inter- 
 esting and sometimes I feel as if I were groping 
 about in the neighbourhood of the true democ- 
 racy. Do they also play golf? " 
 
 " They do, indeed." 
 
 " The tradesmen *? People who keep retail 
 shops." 
 
 " In the small interior towns many of them have 
 achieved sufficient prosperity and leisure, and 
 they are very keen about it. But in the large towns 
 it is usually the wealthier class that goes in for 
 it ; the families of business and professional men, 
 successful on a large scale." 
 
 And then I saw the lilies. 
 
 [ 239 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 I must tell you that Mrs. Van Worden often 
 goes into the kitchen and sits in a rocking chair 
 by the window and talks to Mrs. Opp, and that 
 sometimes, when the men are out, she invites her 
 into the living-room. It appears that unless these 
 people were treated with a certain amount of con- 
 sideration they would not remain. A city servant 
 is a servant, but in the country they appear to 
 have studied the Declaration of Independence, 
 and doubtless they all know that Abraham Lin- 
 coln's sister " lived out." Mrs. Opp is quite in- 
 sensible of her noble blood but she is as proud as 
 Lucifer all the same, and because her untainted 
 Americanism teaches her that she is " as good as 
 anybody." She is willing to work for hire and 
 envies no one, but the slightest display of " airs," 
 an unthinking snub, and she would pack her 
 bundle and march over the mountain with a 
 majesty the self-conscious American of high de- 
 gree never will achieve. It is truly delightful and I 
 love her. I often go out and sit in the rocker and 
 watch her great bulk move lightly about the ex- 
 quisite kitchen, and listen to her kindly drawl 
 [ 240 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 emphasised by little gracious bends of the head. 
 She tells me the gossip of the mountains, and al- 
 luded the other day to the cook at Boulder Lake 
 as " a lovely woman." I told her about Jemima, 
 and she said : 
 
 " Poor child. I guess she was right, but she 
 didn't know how to take it. Of course you folks 
 nat'rally wants ter eat with yourselves, and the 
 hired help as is used to farms and little country 
 towns don't just see how it is at first. Different 
 people has different ways and all we ask up here 
 is to be treated right, we don't expect the hull 
 earth. I've always knowed that, because I've lived 
 so much to hotels, but Jemima, I guess she's pretty 
 green yet." 
 
 When I told her about Jemima wanting to 
 see " a dook," she laughed heartily. 
 
 "Well, I guess I'd like to see one, myself," 
 she admitted, " not that I'd expect them to be so 
 different from other folks, but just because I've 
 read so much about 'em. That's it. That's it. I'm 
 glad he's gittin' on so nice. He had orter drink 
 plenty of milk." 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 Curiously enough, that evening I received a 
 letter from Bertie saying that another " eminent 
 doctor " had put him on a milk diet and promised 
 him complete health in one year if he would be 
 faithful to it and the Adirondacks for that period. 
 
 "Its beastly uninteresting diet, Nell, and re- 
 quired all the will I've got to make up my mind 
 to it," he wrote ; " but I want to get back to Eng- 
 land and be alive once more, so I've plunged in 
 literally enough. I've leased an Inn on one of 
 the big public lakes from October till June, so 
 we'll have a big old-fashioned house, they tell me, 
 and not a care, for the proprietor will " run it." 
 Rogers has promised to come up twice a month 
 and I have written to Nugent and asked him to 
 come often and bring all the friends he likes. I 
 fancy from your letters that I should like the men 
 and women over there better than these 
 Rogers excepted. I believe he is in love with 
 you, Nell, and so is Nugent; but you mustn't 
 marry an American. By the way Roddy Spencer 
 is coming over here wrote me to expect him 
 any day, and that he'd look me up at once. He 
 
 [ 242 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 has just succeeded old Landsburghe died last 
 month, and left Roddy all his personal property. 
 That must amount to three or four hundred 
 thousand and with the estates will set up Roddy 
 as well as he could wish and his debts must 
 have been a pretty penny." 
 
 I shall be rather glad to see Roddy. He was 
 always with Bertie when they were boys, but I 
 have not seen much of him of late years. Didn't 
 he go to South Africa in the hope that Rhodes 
 would put him in the way of making a fortune 
 after he had loaded himself too heavily with debts 
 to remain in London. I forget the details. The 
 legacy must have been a pleasant surprise, for 
 the old Marquis was very eccentric and had re- 
 fused to pay his debts. Well, I shall be glad to 
 see him and suppose he is as good looking as ever. 
 
 HELEN. 
 
Letter IX 
 
From the Lady HELEN POLE to the Countess of EDGE 
 and Ross. 
 
 Chipmunk 
 August llth 
 
 Dearest Polly: 
 
 I AM rather put out, and have been so irritable 
 for two days that I hardly know myself. Still, 
 thank heaven, nobody suspects it. I never 
 have been more amiable. 
 
 The other night a half dozen of the party were 
 playing Bridge in a corner of Mrs. Van Worden's 
 living-room. I detest gambling and was trying 
 to interest myself in a book when I happened to 
 glance out of the window and saw Mrs. Coward 
 and Mr. N. on their way down to the lake. Now, 
 I don't pretend to be in love with the man, Polly, 
 but I do feel that while he is pretending devotion 
 to me it is little short of an insult for him to sneak 
 off with another woman and an arrant coquette 
 for a row at nine o'clock at night it is scandal- 
 ous and I never have heard any one utter so many 
 virtuous platitudes as Mrs. C. If I thought he was 
 trying to make me jealous I should merely dis- 
 miss him from my mind with the contempt he 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 would deserve, but he really is incapable of such 
 pettiness, and I happen to know he was only too 
 frightened I'd find it out. 
 
 Polly, I cannot pretend to describe to you my 
 sensations when I saw those dark shapes steal 
 through the spruce grove before the house the 
 branches are cut so high that it is really a grove 
 of slender trunks and you see the lake plainly. 
 For the moment I felt as if my heart were sink- 
 ing and I involuntarily pushed my hand under- 
 neath it, while my breath shortened and my face 
 burned and then went cold. I had an impulse to 
 rush out and see if it really were true and to pre- 
 vent it. And then I fell into a rage. How I wished 
 Roddy Spencer were here. He is such a splendid 
 looking creature that he could be made to set 
 another man wild with jealousy. Suddenly I be- 
 thought myself of Carlisle. He was playing, but 
 the game was nearly over. I made up my mind 
 in an instant; I got up and moved about the 
 room as if I were getting bored and impatient, 
 and in a few moments I caught his eye. I sent 
 him a glance of coquettish appeal, and it had the 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 desired effect. The moment the game was over 
 he was at my side and we ensconced ourselves on 
 the three-cornered divan under the swinging rose- 
 coloured lamp and never moved till twelve o'clock. 
 N. and Mrs. C. returned, looking half-frozen and 
 too silly, for they were obliged to get almost inside 
 the chimney. We never noticed them. I coquetted, 
 Polly, as I never coquetted before, and Mr. Car- 
 lisle is a flirt whose accomplished depths it is in- 
 teresting to explore. For fear he should think I 
 was animated by pique although he knew noth- 
 ing of the row I contrived to intimate that I 
 was rather bored and on the verge of making an 
 excuse to return to Boulder Lake. At the same 
 time I made him feel what a triumph he would 
 achieve if he renewed the fascinations of Chip- 
 munk Lake for me. Nothing would induce me 
 to leave. I shall stay and prove to this self-satis- 
 fied American flirt that I can make myself twice 
 as interesting as herself. I'll employ her own weap- 
 on, flattery, and make her platitudes apparent. 
 When I have sufficiently punished N. I'll take 
 him back and keep Carlisle besides. I am sure 
 
 [ 249 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 she wants to marry N. She has too large a fortune 
 of her own to be tempted by Carlisle's, and N.'s 
 possibilities appeal to her inordinate ambition 
 and vanity. 
 
 This morning, of course, N. tried to be as de- 
 voted as usual. But I dismissed him with an ab- 
 sent smile, which became brilliantly personal the 
 moment C. appeared. \Ve went off for a walk in 
 the forest and I never shall forget the expression 
 of N.'s face. I almost relented. But he deserves 
 punishment. I will have all or nothing. In the af- 
 ternoon Mrs. Coward drifted about majestically for 
 a half hour or so her face expressing nothing 
 while Carlisle and I read a novel together on the 
 divan in the corner. She tried to get N. into her 
 pocket but he merely glowered into the fire and 
 took no notice of her. Presently she drifted away, 
 and in the afternoon I saw her fishing with Mr. 
 Van Warden I If I were in such desperate straits I 
 would give out that I was writing a book, and keep 
 to my room. I fancy she wove a net of flattery for 
 Mr. Latimer, but he is a faithful soul. Mrs. Van 
 W. often looks sad, by the way, brilliant as her 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 normal spirits are. It must be an unsatisfactory 
 roundabout way of trying to be happy. I am more 
 than ever determined to make no mistake when I 
 do marry, and to consider one thing only. I am 
 convinced there is no other happiness. 
 
 I have restored N. to favour but now give him 
 only half my time, that he never may be quite 
 sure of me again. Mr. C. apparently is quite as 
 high in my good graces, and while he is merely 
 stimulated and on the verge of becoming serious, 
 N. shows a curious mixture of alarm, anger and 
 energetic determination and has taken no more 
 rows or walks with Mrs. C. I have managed to 
 convey to him that I will accept no divided hom- 
 age, and he is now only too eager to give me the 
 whole of it, and keeps out of Mrs. C.'s way. I 
 must say she is a thoroughbred. She has never be- 
 trayed jealousy or pique by the flutter of an eye- 
 lash. Perhaps I'll restore Mr. Carlisle to her pres- 
 ently, for I am rather tired of him. There is none 
 of the quality of the unexpected about him. He 
 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 is a well-proportioned mass of good points and 
 good fortune all trained outward ; he never has 
 had the necessity I believe his family has had 
 wealth and position for four generations nor the 
 inclination to look very far into himself, conse- 
 quently the crust has deepened and the personality 
 diminished. Mr. N., on the other hand, while as 
 well-born, has had all his faculties sharpened by 
 a struggle with the impinging forces that array 
 themselves against the young man seeking to con- 
 quer them without money. But first of all he re- 
 ceived a college education and distinguished him- 
 self by his talents and hard study. Given the 
 illuminating education first and the struggle of 
 the wits for mastery afterward, and adding to both 
 the advantages and the principles of a gentleman 
 and the inner life, the soul, of such a clever 
 man could not fail to be developed, complex and 
 interesting. I have had only glimpses of it, but it 
 has excited my curiosity so that I naturally could 
 not watch another woman carry him off with 
 equanimity. But I don't think there is any dan- 
 ger of another lapse. He has renewed his efforts 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 to interest me, and it certainly is clever of him 
 has not so much as addressed me with his 
 eyes again. That is to say there is no appeal 
 in them. But there are other things, Polly, and 
 there is something about the man that fearfully 
 suggests the impossibility of failure. But the 
 weather is so heavenly just now that I wish every- 
 body in the world could have everything he 
 wanted. It is like living in a crystal dome and be- 
 ing bathed by invisible waves of soft stimulating 
 perfumed air ; with splendid masses of rich and 
 tender greens, of amber-browns and turquoise blue, 
 and the golden glory of sunsets for the eye, and a 
 vast uplifting silence. It is a sort of voluptuous 
 heaven, virtuously seductive. 
 
 The other day several of us walked down the 
 mountain to one of the farms to see the haying. 
 It was a grand valley among the mountain tops. 
 From the farm we visited we looked over rolling 
 wooded hills, dotted with houses, cattle, and a 
 solitary white church spire, to a great irregular 
 chain of green mountains, encircling the horizon ; 
 other peaks, faint and blue and distant, showing 
 
 [ '53 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 beyond their depressions ; and the forest, the forest, 
 everywhere beyond the clearings of the farmers. 
 
 The hay had been cut and the mechanical rake 
 was gathering it into heaps when we arrived, 
 while men pitched it into a wagon where another 
 man stood with a pitchfork pressing it down. The 
 sweetness of that air! I never shall forget it; I was 
 doubly glad I never had used perfumes. It was 
 drenched with the sweetness of newly mown hay 
 and it almost intoxicated me. I fancy that if Mr. 
 N. had seized the occasion to press his suit 
 however, I do not know. He did not, and as there 
 were some ten people in the field it would not 
 have been so romantic, in spite of the fragrance. 
 They gave me a hand-rake and I raked quite a 
 good deal of the pretty green stuff that it seems 
 shocking the farm-yard cattle should eat. 
 
 I was very much disappointed in the appear- 
 ance of these mountain farmers. How few things 
 in life resemble the traditions of them we have 
 been so victimized by poets and romanticists. I 
 expected great brawny muscular fellows, with 
 enormous legs, brown skins, and deep chests. But 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 they are pale and thin and stooping, not one 
 looks as if he would see sixty or as if he got the 
 least pleasure out of life. Mr. N. explained that 
 hard work while they were young and no cessa- 
 tion of it thereafter had broken their constitutions. 
 In winter they work on the roads which they are 
 under contract to keep open, and of course it 
 snows and freezes heavily and frequently. Dur- 
 ing these same severe months they also go in the 
 woods and help to " draw " the logs the lumber- 
 men have cut during the summer for the pulp 
 mills. These logs have to be piled on sleds and 
 drawn to the creek, to be floated down to the 
 valley after the spring rains. The men rise at three 
 in the morning, working by torches till sunrise, 
 and seldom get to bed before eleven at night ! 
 No wonder they are old men at forty. And I 
 don't pretend to say how many cords of wood 
 they cut a year, or how many stone fences they 
 have built, or how many thousand stones they 
 dug from the ground before they could farm. 
 
 When all the hay had been removed the field 
 looked like a great green lawn brilliantly green 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 under the five o'clock sun. Beyond was a dip, 
 then the thick masses of the dark green woods, 
 touched into richer green by that blaze of sun- 
 shine, then the mountains, sombre and faintly 
 blue. It is a beautiful land, Polly, but it depresses 
 me to think that while it means new blood and 
 new life and all cure for the outsider of leisure, it 
 sucks jealously back into its own store of vitality 
 the little store of its struggling children. It is 
 an unnatural and snobbish mother, after all. 
 
 Mr. N. calls me " Maud Muller," since I raked 
 the hay. Did you ever come across that Quaker 
 poet, Whittier? He lived here in America, but 
 I am told he is the poet of the English quakers 
 as well. Mr. N. recited " Maud Muller " to me, 
 as we stood apart in the field after I had tired 
 of raking. It really is a beautiful and musical 
 poem, but I could not see anything quakerish 
 about it. 
 
 When I write " I am told," Polly, you may 
 assume that my authority is Mr. N. As far as my 
 limited comprehension can perceive he knows 
 everything. 
 
 [256] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 i6th 
 
 Mr. Carlisle was called suddenly to Newport 
 last night by the illness of his mother. A man 
 rode thirty miles with the telegram, left his horse 
 at a farm house and walked the trail which is so 
 full of rocks logs and mud-holes that no strange 
 horse could cover it without breaking a leg, and, 
 likely as not, his neck. It was just after dinner 
 and we were all grouped in the little spruce grove 
 before the camps watching the sunset, when the 
 man, looking so hot and tired, came hurrying out 
 of the woods. I am sure every one of us had a 
 fright when we saw the yellow envelope, a tele- 
 gram is such a rare interloper in the peace of 
 these mountain camps ; and when the man said 
 " Mr. Carlisle," I am equally sure that every one 
 of us wanted to hold Mr. C.'s hand. He went 
 rather pale, but said it was doubtless a false alarm 
 as his mother had been very nervous ever since 
 the war during which her nerves had been on 
 the rack between apprehension of Cervera's fleet 
 and his own demise and hastened away to get 
 his things together. The keeper was sent out to 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 bring a buckboard in and Mr. C. left at three this 
 morning. 
 
 I am sorry to say, Polly, that before he left I 
 had rather a painful interview with him. I tried 
 to avoid it, but these American men are very 
 determined, my dear, and he managed to detain 
 me on the veranda after the others had gone in. 
 How I hate men to be serious ! It hurts my con- 
 science so that I don't get over it for weeks. I 
 had not the slightest intention of making him love 
 me, I only wanted to punish that woman for her 
 contemptible conduct in regard to Mr. N. Now 
 I feel quite as bad myself and wish that I had 
 simply contented myself with showing her that I 
 had a string tied to Mr. N. Mr. C. is really a fine 
 manly fellow and I felt like petting him as I 
 would Bertie and telling him not to mind, but of 
 course I couldn't. He vows he'll come back the 
 moment he is free, and gently insinuated con- 
 tempt for a suitor who was ten years too old to 
 win me. How funny these men are ! What I am 
 to do with them all I am sure I cannot imagine, 
 but I would rather he went away hoping, and ac- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 cepted his fate by degrees ; for heaven knows I do 
 not wish to add too heavily to his troubles. Not 
 that I gave him any encouragement. Heaven for- 
 bid. But they are so determined, these Americans. 
 
 The buckboard awoke me at three o'clock, 
 and I got up and peered out of my high window. 
 The woods looked so grey and ghostly, filled 
 with mist that was like a wet cobweb. The keeper 
 was driving and Mr. C. sat on the back seat 
 muffled in a winter great coat. Mr. Latimer went 
 out with him to the end of the trail ; and pres- 
 ently they disappeared into the forest and the 
 mist ; and the silence was as if the world were dead. 
 
 But I have not told you of the new arrival. 
 She has come to spend the last of our camping 
 days here with Mrs. Wilbur Garrison, and she 
 is quite the most imposing, nay, overwhelming 
 person I have met in this extraordinary jumble of 
 democracy and caste, known infelicitously, I 
 gather as the United States. She is Mrs. Earle 
 
 wife of ,* and of course, a 
 
 personage of vast importance in Washington. But 
 * Deletion by the publisher. 
 
 [ 2 59 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 she is no mushroom ; she has belonged for heaven 
 knows how many generations eight, perhaps 
 to the haute noblesse of the country and was bom 
 into an equally imposing number of dollars. But, 
 Oh, Polly ! she is so cold, so haughty, so frozen ! 
 Her handsome little head is set so far back on 
 her mountainous body, her back bone is so rigid 
 and her upper lip so proudly curled, there is such 
 a touch of icy peremptoriness in her manner, as 
 if it were her daily task to dismiss pushing as- 
 pirants for social recognition that I feel I have 
 looked upon the walking embodiment of the 
 aristocratic idea as it is interpreted by Americans. 
 Heaven knows she has been sweet to me, she has 
 even invited me to spend a month with her in 
 Washington next winter ; but I know that after a 
 consecutive month of that chill presence I should 
 return to Bertie a sort of hysterical iceberg, my 
 marrow frozen and my humour on the verge of 
 insanity. And, although not in the least clever, 
 she would be quite an agreeable woman were it 
 not for her tragic self-consciousness, for she must 
 know the world of Washington like a book ; and 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 it is a book I should like to read. But she will 
 not talk. All she has said of Washington is to in- 
 timate her scorn of all " new-comers," her bound- 
 less ennui of the duties of her official position, 
 her sacrifice of her own inherited desire for se- 
 gregation from the common herd to the interests 
 of her distinguished husband. And yet she is not 
 ill-natured. She is as placid as Chipmunk Lake, 
 and, I am told, an exemplary wife and mother, 
 if not a radiant and fascinating hostess. Her only 
 fault is well her aristocracy ! I tried to interest 
 her in the vivid people of Boulder Lake, in the 
 farmers of the valley, in Jemima, in the various 
 strange beings I have met in this strange country. 
 All by way of experiment, and in vain. Her mind 
 could not respond to the fact of their existence, 
 They had not been born in her original circle nor 
 thrust upon her by the exigencies of public life. 
 She betrayed a flicker of interest in Mrs. Opp and 
 remarked vaguely that she should have imagined 
 blood would count for more than that, then curled 
 her lip and relapsed into silence. Polly, what are 
 we? I am oppressed sometimes with the suspicion 
 
 [26, ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 that those countries which are not the United 
 States are like diseases in the creed of the Chris- 
 tian Scientists they do not exist. We merely im- 
 agine we are, they know we are not, but tolerate 
 our whim. We have lost caste because we have 
 lost our consciousness of birth, and are therefore de- 
 generate. Upon my word, Polly, I begin to think 
 that the snobs who run after us in England are 
 the truest Republicans, after all. However, I have 
 nothing to say against my other friends of Chip- 
 munk Lake always excepting Mrs. Coward for 
 they are wholly charming, and unaffected, and not 
 afraid to let you see they know the world. Miss 
 Page does not, and thinks well of all the world 
 happy, happy girl. 
 
 There is another point on which these people 
 greatly differ from those of Boulder Lake that 
 is a certain homogeneity. Men and women, they 
 are like one large family and evidently have been 
 brought up together; and Mrs. Van Worden 
 says that with most of her set it is quite the 
 same. They all call each other by their first 
 names, and there is that same utter absence of 
 
 [ 262] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 formality as with us when we are quite among 
 ourselves. In the set at Boulder Lake there is a 
 formality that never relaxes, they all seem to have 
 an abnormal respect for each other, and I vow I 
 never heard the first name of one of them. They 
 have accumulated each and all with care, but 
 their set is stamped with the heterogeneity of a 
 new incident in civilisation. And they have a 
 bourgeois timidity about expressing their real 
 opinion if they have any against the ruling 
 opinion or fad. Each thinks as the other thinks 
 how often I have disconcerted them ! 
 
 Mrs. Coward, by the way, preserves her unruf- 
 fled demeanour and has never so much as put 
 out a little claw and scratched me. A woman oi 
 twenty-seven with that amount of self-control 
 should be capable of great things. She never has 
 overdone it, never for a moment. (I wonder if 
 she has anything up her sleeve.) 
 
 I did not tell you, she informed me the other day 
 that she is a " Colonial Dame," and has her family tree 
 with two Presidents and ten statesmen on collat- 
 eral twigs framed and hung in her library at New- 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 fort. Polly, what do you make of that. I ventured to 
 speak to Mrs. Van Worden about.it, and she said : 
 
 " Rot. Fads. We all think that the Almighty 
 made Heaven first and the United States just 
 after pickling it till Europe and Asia were old 
 enough to appreciate but some of us have the 
 decency to do less talking than thinking. Nettie 
 Coward is fairly mum as a rule, but she can't help 
 showing off to you wants to impress you with 
 the fact that you've not got a monopoly on all the 
 blood there is. She's a clever woman, but every- 
 body makes an ass of himself one way or another. 
 When we've got twenty generations to the good 
 we'll be just as unconscious about it as you are. 
 But aristocracy will be a sort of itch with us till 
 then. Quantities of idiots have their family trees 
 framed." 
 
 I find her very refreshing, Polly. 
 
 I have not written much about Mr. N. lately. 
 But I've talked with him ! hours and hours and 
 hours. It is no use trying to avoid him and he 
 certainly is interesting. Well heaven knows. 
 
 HELEN. 
 
 [ 264] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 9. p. M. Your letter has just come. It seems 
 years since I last heard from you. I know how you 
 feel but I can't help being glad that he has gone. 
 Nothing will happen to him. Don't be foolish. He 
 is your manifest destiny and you will be married 
 to him this time next year. If Freddy really has 
 hurt himself and is suffering I can't help feeling 
 sorry for the wicked little beast I have grown so 
 soft about such things in the last two years. But 
 the circumstances were disgraceful and you were 
 wise to treat his summons to his bedside as a trick 
 to compromise you and hamper the proceedings. 
 What an enigma even a miserable little degen- 
 erate can be. Who can say whether he really is 
 fascinated by you still he is incapable of love 
 and honestly desires a reconciliation, or whether 
 he wants to prevent your marriage with V. R. 
 or, who knows ? perhaps he is afraid that woman 
 will want to marry him. Well, I do wish that the 
 evidence could have been gathered more quickly 
 and that it were over. 
 
Letter X 
 
vz* 
 
 usy ^ Y" 
 
 -*C__ ~* X 1 *..., 
 
 v-n-. 
 
 eZL^ 
 
 
 .-' 
 
From the Lady HELEN POLE to the Countess of EDGE 
 and Ross. 
 
 Chipmunk 
 
 August 
 Dearest Polly : 
 
 IT is eleven o'clock P.M., and I have been in 
 bed and asleep since half after seven. I foresee 
 myself wide awake for two hours and giving 
 you an account of the last two days. How flat that 
 sounds but wait ! And otherwise you might 
 never hear of them, for I return to Boulder Lake 
 to-morrow, and in this country events are so quick- 
 ly crowded into the past. 
 
 I wrote you did I not *? that the subject of 
 a camping expedition had been mooted more than 
 once, but put off from time to time on account 
 of threatening weather and various other causes. I 
 longed to go ; " camping out " in the " Adiron- 
 dack wilderness " being pitched upon a most ad- 
 venturous and romantic note ; and finally I begged 
 Mr. Nugent to arrange it. He went " straight at 
 it " in the energetic American way, and in two 
 hours it was all arranged : Opp drove out in the 
 buckboard for another guide, and Mrs. Opp was 
 
 [269] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 making so many good things at once that all the 
 other cooks had to come over to help her. Then 
 Mr. Nugent and Mr. Van Worden packed the 
 big pack-baskets, and everybody was ready to 
 start at nine o'clock the day before yesterday. 
 
 The original plan was that all of us should go, 
 but the actual party were Mr. and Mrs. Meredith 
 Jones, Miss Page, Myself, Mr. Nugent, Mr. Lati- 
 mer, and Mr. Van Worden. The others " backed 
 out " on one excuse or another, and happy it was 
 for them and us that they did. 
 
 This colony is only two years old, and, as it 
 happened, none of the men ever had camped out 
 in this part of the Adirondacks before, and as they 
 found their lake and surroundings quite sufficient 
 there was not a tent on the place. However and 
 the expedition was avowedly got up for my bene- 
 fit I insisted that I wanted a genuine rough 
 camping experience, and we all took Opp's word 
 for it that he knew the very spot where there 
 was fishing, a clearing, and an "open camp," 
 erected by other wood-loving spirits. It is true 
 he grinned as he assured me that I would get 
 [ 270 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 a good taste of the " genuine article," but I sus- 
 pected nothing. What imagination, indeed, would 
 be equal to it ! 
 
 Mrs. Coward kissed me good-bye quite affec- 
 tionately, for she expected to " go out " before I 
 returned, and even Mrs. Earle stood on the 
 shore in the little spruce grove and waved her 
 handkerchief with the others as we rowed down 
 the lake. 
 
 It was one of those crystal mornings when life 
 seems the divine thing of those imaginings of 
 ours when we have lost for a little the links that 
 hold them to facts. I never felt happier, I was 
 almost excited. It seemed such a delightful thing 
 to float off into the unknown like that, to go in 
 search of adventures, with the certainty that six 
 strong men, one of them your devoted slave, 
 would take the best of care of you. It was all so 
 undiscovered that rough mountain world be- 
 yond the lake so unimaginable well, I know 
 all about it now. 
 
 We were a very picturesque party, my dear. 
 The men wore white sweaters, corduroy breeches, 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 and top boots. I wore hunter's green, a short 
 skirt of covert cloth just above my boot tops, a 
 linen blouse the same shade and a little bolero 
 to protect my back and arms from the mosquitos. 
 Miss Page, who is very dark, wore a bright red 
 skirt and cap and a red and white striped " shirt 
 waist " with a red tie. Mr. Nugent said she looked 
 exactly like a " stick of peppermint candy," and 
 I am sure I shall recognise that indigestible the 
 first time I enter a " candy store." Mrs. Meredith 
 Jones, who has golden hair and blue eyes, wore a 
 dark blue skirt and cap and the inevitable " shirt 
 waist " ; but hers was striped with blue ; and the 
 jauntiest little cape hung from her shoulders. Of 
 course we all wore canvas leggins as a further 
 protection from the mosquitoes, which are the 
 least of Adirondack charms. 
 
 Well, the moment we stepped on shore our 
 troubles began. We were landed on to a big slip- 
 pery stone, then handed across several others and 
 a few rotten logs into a swamp. Before us was an 
 impenetrable thicket as high as our heads and wet 
 with dew. We stood staring at it until the guides 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 had shouldered their packs and picked their way 
 over rocks and logs to take the lead. 
 
 " That's all right," said Opp, " there aint bin 
 anyone in here for two years and the road's growed 
 over, but it'll be all right in about a mile. Good 
 trail then. We'll go first and break the road. 
 Wimmin folks'd better bring up in the rear." 
 
 So we started ; crashing through the wet bushes 
 over the wetter ground until we came to a narrow 
 rocky trail sidling along the inlet. This is a gentle 
 stream in a wild setting. Its rocks are so many and 
 so big that the wonder is the water can crawl over 
 them, and the mountain beside the path is as pre- 
 cipitous as a cliff. None of us paid much attention 
 to the beauties of Nature ; we did not dare take 
 our eyes off the path, which had given way in 
 places and was swampy in others. Where it was 
 safe it was rocky. Nor could the men help us 
 much ; the trail was too narrow. Single file was a 
 necessity, but Mr. Nugent was just behind me and 
 gave me occasional directions, besides surrounding 
 me, as usual, with an atmosphere of protection. So, 
 slipping, and bending and clutching at trees, we 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 picked our way along until at last the trail turned 
 up hill, and if no less rough was free of the worst 
 element of danger. In another half hour we had 
 passed a lumber camp and were on a level trail 
 along the crest of the mountain. The forest was 
 more open here, so much " lumbering " had been 
 done, but only the spruce were gone not all of 
 those and high on one side and down in a val- 
 ley on the other was the beautiful leafy forest, 
 full of the resinous odor of spruce gum, the 
 spaces rather a welcome change after the forest 
 densities of the last two months. And our proces- 
 sion was very picturesque. The guides with their 
 big pack-baskets strapped to their shoulders were 
 in the lead, almost trotting, that they might out- 
 distance us and have an occasional rest. All our 
 men carried small packs and strode along looking 
 very supple and free, with the exception of poor 
 Mr. Van Worden who is rather stout and must 
 have felt the irksomeness of his pack. But he was 
 enjoying himself, no doubt of that ; and indeed, 
 so were we all. Mr. Latimer, who had looked a 
 little conscience-stricken as he said good-bye to 
 
 [ 2 74 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 Mrs. Van Worden, whistled as gaily as a school- 
 boy on a runaway lark. And it was so cool and 
 fresh in the woods, who wouldn't be happy? Not 
 that there was one minute of easy walking nor 
 an opportunity for sentiment. W^hen we followed 
 the narrow trail through the brush we had to stoop 
 and overlook every inch before we put a foot 
 down. When we were on the long stretches of 
 corduroy, built by the lumbermen to haul their 
 logs over, Mr. Nugent held my hand, but he 
 might have been his ghost for all the impression 
 he made on me, so many were the holes and so 
 rotten some of the logs. Conversation was impos- 
 sible. We exchanged an occasional remark, but 
 we were all too intent on avoiding sprained an- 
 kles and broken tendons you can not imagine 
 the painfulness of walking too long on log roads 
 to be interested in any one but ourselves. 
 
 There were four hours of this, and good a walk- 
 er as I am I was beginning to feel tired, when 
 Opp, who had gone far ahead, came in sight 
 again, looking sheepish, rather. 
 
 " Be gosh ! " he remarked to Mr. Van Worden 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 as we met, " here's a fine lay out. One of the camps 
 is burned. Them last campers done it, I reckon. 
 I seen 'em go round by way of Spruce Lake." 
 
 I heard Mr. Van Worden swear softly under 
 his breath, and saw an expression of blank dis- 
 may on Mr. Nugent's face. Mr. Latimer burst 
 into a peal of boyish laughter. But Mr. Meredith 
 Jones said sharply, 
 
 " Well let's go on and cook dinner. That is 
 all that concerns us now. We can decide what to 
 do later." 
 
 "Are we there*?" I asked, hopefully, for I 
 longed to give my poor bruised feet a rest. 
 " Yes'm," said Opp, " we're there, all right." 
 And in a moment, Polly, we " were there." 
 Have you wasted any time, my dear, imagin- 
 ing what an " open camp " is like *? I hope not, 
 for it were a waste of good mental energy. The 
 briefest description will fit it. Three sides and a 
 sloping roof, all of bark. The front " open " in 
 the exactest interpretation of the word. Inside 
 nothing. Twelve feet long and not quite the 
 depth of Mr. Meredith Jones, who is six feet two. 
 
 [ 276] 
 
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 This mansion stood on the edge of a clearing, 
 across which lay a big felled tree. Against this we 
 immediately all sat down in a row. Beyond was a 
 charred ruin and near the log a rude table. Does 
 that sound romantic ? I wish you could have seen 
 it. But we all laughed and were happy, and we 
 women, even then, did not realise the true in- 
 wardness of the situation. The forest, the beauti- 
 ful forest, rose on three sides of us ; beyond a 
 stream, concealed by alders, was a high sharp 
 ridge of mountains ; and we were hungry. 
 
 The guides immediately set about making a 
 fire. There seemed to be plenty of logs and they 
 soon had a roaring blaze. Opp found a limb with 
 a forked top, which he drove into the ground just 
 beyond the fire and in the fork transfixed a long 
 curving branch which held a pail of water above 
 the flames. Mr. Nugent and Mr. Van Worden 
 unpacked the baskets, Mr. Meredith Jones set 
 the table, and Mr. Latimer fought off the hornets 
 which swarmed at the first breath of jam and 
 ginger-nuts. When we finally sat about that 
 board, on logs or " any old thing," we eat that 
 
 [277] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 excellent luncheon of fried ham and hard boiled 
 eggs, mutton cutlets and fried potatoes, hot choco- 
 late and cake, with a grateful appetite, I can as- 
 sure you. Mr. Van \Vorden fried the ham and 
 potatoes and made the chocolate, and we all cod- 
 dled his culinary pride. All my fatigue vanished, 
 and Mrs. Meredith Jones looked equally fresh 
 and seemed prepared to take whatever might 
 come, with the philosophy of the other sex. But 
 poor Miss Page looked rather knocked up. She 
 has never gone in for walking and her very cap 
 had a dejected air; her fine colour was almost 
 gone, but she looked very pretty and pathetic 
 and all the men attempted to console her. 
 
 " I wouldn't mind it," she said with a sigh, " if 
 we didn't have to go back." Then, as if fearing to 
 dampen our spirits with the prospect of carrying 
 her out, she added hopefully, " But it '11 be two 
 days hence. I reckon I'll be all right by that time. 
 I'll just lie about and rest." 
 
 When luncheon was over Mr. Latimer made 
 her a comfortable couch of shawls, with a small 
 pack-basket for pillow, and she soon fell asleep. 
 
 [ '78 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 The guides washed the dishes, then immediately 
 felled two young spruce-trees, and, with the help 
 of Latimer and Mr. Meredith Jones, shaved off 
 the branches and covered the floor of the cabin. 
 This was our bed, my dear, and it was about a 
 foot deep. When it was finished they covered it 
 with carriage robes, and all preparations for night- 
 ly comforts were complete. By this time it had 
 dawned on Mrs. Meredith Jones and myself that 
 we were all going to sleep under that roof. Opp 
 had examined the sky and predicted rain before 
 morning, and Miss Page was not equal to a re- 
 turn journey " doubling the road," as they say 
 here even if any of us had contemplated such a 
 thing. 
 
 "Tom and I will sleep in the middle," said 
 Mrs. Meredith Jones reassuringly to me, after 
 an earnest conversation apart with her husband, 
 but I was immensely amused at the whole situa- 
 tion. We were as helpless against certain cir- 
 cumstances as if we did not possess sixpence 
 between us; for it would have taken nearly a 
 day to build another camp and the guides were 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 too tired to think of such a thing. We were all 
 stranded out in space, and there was nothing to 
 do but make the best of it. 
 
 About two hours after luncheon I felt as if I 
 had had no exercise that day and Opp suggested 
 that I go up the mountain to see a gorge locally 
 famous. So, accompanied by Mr. N. and Latimer, 
 I followed him up the steepest and roughest 
 mountain of my experience. There was no trail. 
 He trampled ahead through the brush and we fol- 
 lowed. Mr. Nugent preceded and literally pulled 
 me up more than one perpendicular place, but 
 Opp insisted upon taking charge of me through 
 the slippery intricacies of a rocky stream. But we 
 were rewarded by the most beautiful spot I have 
 yet seen. Imagine a forest glade with five or six 
 islands of rock boulders so huge that no other 
 word will describe them. These islands were 
 covered on all sides with the richest moss and the 
 most delicate ferns, and on the top of each grew 
 great trees, their long roots gripping the sides of 
 the rock like petrified pythons. Then a water- 
 course choked with smaller boulders, and rising 
 
 1 280] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 out of it, straight up for five hundred feet, a solid 
 wall of rock crowned with a pine forest. The wall 
 was a half-mile long and so smooth that one could 
 well imagine some terrible convulsion of these 
 Adirondacks during which a mountain had been 
 split in twain, one side grinding itself into these 
 boulder-islands of the forest. On high the tree- 
 tops were so matted that the glade was filled with 
 a twilight almost green. One had the impression 
 of walking under the sea. Each of us selected a 
 dry rock, and we sat there for an hour telling 
 mountain experiences. I had had one or two in 
 the Alps, extremely modest ones, but all the men 
 looked at me with intense admiration as I related 
 them. American men seem to have an almost 
 passionate admiration for women of great physical 
 endurance and courage. Our men take it as a 
 matter of course. Mr. Nugent thought it the most 
 charming thing in the world that I should want 
 " more exercise " after the heavy tramp of the 
 morning. He said one rather clever thing, by the 
 way. The others, after a time, wandered down to 
 the foot of the palisade in search of the ice caves, 
 
 [28, ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 and as I rather feared that Mr. N., under the in- 
 fluence of the wild beauty about us, might lose a 
 self-control which is plainly manufactured and 
 maintained through a fear of losing everything, 
 (I dread and almost long for the time when it will 
 give way altogether) I turned the conversation to 
 politics and asked him if he looked forward to the 
 possible Bryan administration with the great ap- 
 prehension that other Republicans seemed to feel. 
 " No ; I can't say I do," he said. " Toothing is 
 ever as bad in politics as the anticipations ; antici- 
 pations are the exaggerations of niuch talk. Be- 
 sides it is quite on the cards that Bryan will be 
 an arrant snob before he has been a month in the 
 White House. Likefy x as not, his first taste of 
 Society will induce conservatism. \Vhen he has 
 sat at table a few times with titled Ambassadors 
 he will hasten to forget the ridiculous little farm 
 he bought to have his pictures taken ihy Then, the 
 only thing left for us to do is to marry his -Daugh- 
 ter to a gentleman and persuade him to sencHiis 
 son, to Harvard. His reform will be accomplished^ 
 in less than a year. There is no snob so complete 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 a a democrat reformed by the right sort of visit- 
 ing cards. Of course a small nucleus, the old set of 
 Washington, will not go near the White House, 
 and as soon as the Bryans discover that diplomats, 
 senators, cabinet" officers and army people are 
 not all the cream of high society they will be- 
 come downright aristocrats ; and when the shirt- 
 sleeved voter from Lincoln, Nebraska, calls, will 
 conceal their ennui and irritation indifferently 
 well. Thatxfneans alienation of the softs of the 
 soil, and' no second term for Bryan. If Washing- 
 ton is wise it will do its best to make a fool of 
 him." 
 
 " You haven't much faith in Mr. Bryan's much 
 vaunted sincerity," I said with a laugh. 
 
 " I haven't a particle," he said contemptuously. 
 " He hasjiis jpicture taken too often." 
 
 The others returned at this juncture and we set 
 out upon the difficulties of our homeward journey. 
 But never mind, it was all very delightful and I 
 never shall forget the beauty of that rocky glade. 
 
 When we returned to the camp, we found Mrs. 
 Meredith Jones asleep and Miss Page keeping 
 
 [ 283 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 watch. The men had all gone fishing and Mr. 
 Nugent and Mr. Latimer hastened to join them. 
 Miss Page looked refreshed but turned to me a 
 perturbed face. 
 
 " I cannot believe it is possible that we are all 
 going to sleep in there," she said. " Why, it is 
 shocking ! I begged Mr. Van Worden to put up 
 a partition, but he says it is quite impossible, that 
 there won't be room to turn over, as it is. I wish I 
 hadn't come. Suppose it should get out ? Why, 
 people would be horrified." 
 
 " Really," I said, " I think you take an exag- 
 gerated view. We are all going to bed with our 
 clothes on, the camp is open, there are nine of us, 
 and our chaperons will sleep in the middle. We 
 may not be comfortable but I think the proprieties 
 will take care of themselves." 
 
 " I think it is shocking," she said, " perfectly 
 shocking. It seems so coarse and horrid. I'll re- 
 member it as long as I live." 
 
 I felt like shaking her, but she looked so dis- 
 tressed that I said soothingly: "Please don't 
 worry. I will sleep next to Mrs. Meredith Jones 
 
 [ 284] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 and you can tuck away in the corner where no 
 one can see you and you will be quite forgotten." 
 
 " Yes," she replied quickly, " I insist upon hav- 
 ing the corner particularly as you don't mind," 
 she added apologetically. " You are quite differ- 
 ent from my idea of English girls. I should have 
 thought that you would be simply horrified." 
 
 " Perhaps we are more matter-of-fact than you 
 are," I said drily. " Where a thing can't be helped 
 it can't, and we are sensible about it. Now, I am 
 surprised at you. I had always supposed that 
 American girls " 
 
 " Oh, don't ! " she exclaimed. " You are going 
 to judge us all by those horrid things you meet 
 in Europe and in novels. I can assure you that 
 Southern girls gentlewomen are as particular 
 as English girls more so, I reckon. Do you real- 
 ise that we are going to sleep in the same room 
 with six men ? " 
 
 " I don't look at it in that way at all," I said 
 tartly. " And for heaven's sake make up your 
 mind to the inevitable and think no more about it." 
 
 The men returned soon after with a basket full 
 
 [285] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 of trout and Mr. Van Worden fried them for sup- 
 per. I don't think I ever eat anything quite so 
 good as those trout. 
 
 "He beats the cars, cookin,' " observed our 
 chief guide, and Mr. Van Worden looked as 
 pleased as if he had made a million in Wall 
 Street. 
 
 After supper the guides built a high fire of 
 great logs, and we all sat about and the men 
 " spun yarns " of the days when the panther and 
 the bear roamed the woods, and finished with 
 stories of the beautiful red deer that alone claims 
 the forest to-day. Of course the men smoked, and 
 we were all very happy and comfortable until we 
 went to bed. Mr. N. sat as close to me as he de- 
 cently could, and I will confess to you, Polly 
 under the encouragement of the shadows which 
 covered a part of me and all of him he held my 
 hand. I could not struggle well 
 
 About ten the men all marched up the hill in 
 single file, singing, and we had the camp to our- 
 selves for a half hour. We took off our boots, 
 corsets and blouses, put on dressing sacks, tied 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 our heads up in silk handkerchiefs, and our night 
 toilet was complete. Miss Page had evidently 
 made up her mind to accept the situation, but she 
 was so manifestly uncomfortable that I tied nearly 
 all of her face up in her handkerchief and tucked 
 her away in the corner with the blanket up to her 
 nose. She turned her back upon us and regarded 
 the chinks of the bark wall in silent misery. Mr. 
 Van Worden had brought three extra pairs of 
 socks and these he had directed us to pull over 
 our stockings as the night would grow very 
 cold. 
 
 We had been in bed nearly twenty minutes 
 and had already learned something of its hardness 
 when the men returned. 
 
 " Now," said Opp, " you must all lie on the 
 same side and when one of you wants to turn 
 over be sure to sing out and then we'll all turn 
 over together." 
 
 His was the only remark. The other men pulled 
 off their boots and crawled into bed without a 
 word, looking rather sheepish, and ostentatiously 
 refraining from glancing in our direction. Men are 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 certainly more modest than women in certain con- 
 ditions, and Mrs. Meredith Jones and I almost 
 laughed out loud, especially as the other guide 
 went to bed with his hat on ! 
 
 For about a half hour we were as quiet as the 
 sardines we must have looked. Then my side 
 the one I was lying on began to ache from my 
 neck to my heel, and from the numerous sighs 
 and restless jerks I inferred that we all were af- 
 fected in the same way. At all events Opp " sang 
 out," " Heave over, hey ? " and we all turned like 
 a well-regulated machine. I whispered to Miss 
 Page but she would not answer me. 
 
 It was just after that we became conscious that 
 the temperature was about ninety. The fire was 
 not three feet in front of us and blazing more 
 violently every moment. I had been endeavour- 
 ing to forget my discomfort in watching the black 
 masses of the tree-tops thrown by the blaze into 
 extraordinary relief against the dulled sky and 
 tarnished stars, when I heard Mr. Van Worden 
 whisper fiercely, 
 
 " What in heaven's name did you build that 
 [ 288 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 red hot fire for *? It's hot enough for three camps 
 and we won't sleep a wink." 
 
 Opp replied apologetically : " I thought it was 
 goin' to rain and it was best to have things well 
 het up, but I guess it haint. It's hot and no mis- 
 take." 
 
 I saw Mr. Latimer fighting to get out of an ex- 
 tra sweater without attracting attention, and I, by 
 the same herculean efforts, managed to reach 
 clown and get off my stockings and those socks. 
 But still the heat was insupportable and the bed 
 grew harder every moment. Our pillows, too, 
 were logs under the spruce, and I am used to a 
 baby pillow that I double under my neck and 
 face. How I longed for it ! 
 
 Finally Latimer slipped out of bed and went 
 over to the edge of the clearing and lit his pipe. 
 The guides followed immediately, then Mr. Mer- 
 edith Jones, and they sat along the log in dejected 
 silence. Mrs. Meredith Jones heaved a deep sigh. 
 " I really can't stand it, girls," she whispered ; and 
 followed her husband. Of course we went too, and 
 Mr. Van Worden was left alone. 
 [ 289 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 For a half hour we sat about in an almost com- 
 plete silence, waiting for that wretched fire to 
 burn down. Opp separated the logs, and finally, 
 as we were all too sleepy to hold our heads up, we 
 crawled back to bed, one by one, all except Mr. 
 Latimer, who stretched out on the table, and Mr. 
 Nugent who made a bed for himself on the 
 ground. That gave us a trifle more room in 
 the camp, and we could turn without "singing 
 out." In a few minutes, hot as it still was, I fell 
 asleep. 
 
 I suppose it was two hours later that I awoke. 
 The fire had taken a fresh start and was blazing 
 more merrily than ever. I felt as if I were in a 
 Turkish bath, and as Miss Page was no longer 
 in front of me I inferred that she had been driven 
 forth again. Then it occurred to me that she 
 would not have budged without Mrs. Meredith 
 Jones, and I turned about quite suddenly. Mrs. 
 M. J. was not there! Nor Mr. M. J. Nor the 
 guides. Oh, Agatha ! Agatha ! I was alone in bed 
 with Mr. Van Worden. 
 
 The situation was humorous, but somewhat 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 embarrassing. I hardly knew whether to pretend 
 sleep or not, for I did not feel like going out and 
 sitting on that log again. I could see the dark fig- 
 ures in various dejected attitudes. Mrs. M. J. and 
 Miss Page were sitting back to back with their 
 heads hanging, while Mr. M. J. stood with his 
 hands in his pockets glowering at the fire. Latimer 
 was sitting on the table smoking his pipe, and 
 Mr. N. was digging his heels viciously into the 
 earth. As for the guides they lay flat in the dis- 
 tance, tired out, poor things. Only Mr. Van 
 Worden looked serene. He, too, lay on his back, 
 his hands clasped over the greater part of him. 
 I supposed he was asleep, but he remarked ge- 
 nially : 
 
 " Hot, isn't it, Lady Helen *? I'm afraid one 
 camping experience will do you for the rest of 
 your natural life." 
 
 I assured him that I never had been so much 
 entertained, and we conversed as naturally as if it 
 had been noon-day until I was reminded of the 
 irregularities of the situation by a gasp from Miss 
 Page. She nudged Mrs. M. J., whispered hurriedly, 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 and in another moment I was chaperoned on either 
 side. 
 
 It was at least another hour before the fire 
 burned down and the temperature cooled. Then 
 the men crawled back to bed, one by one, and in 
 a few moments they were all sleeping and as 
 quietly as kittens. It really was quite remarkable. 
 
 But one could not sleep long at a time on that 
 bed, and once I was glad to be awake. High up 
 on the highest tree of the mountain a hoot owl 
 broke the petrified stillness of that lonely forest. 
 
 " Too wit, too wit, too wooo ! " he called loudly, 
 and then he added with impatient emphasis, " Too 
 wit, too wit, too woo" as if to say, " Do you under- 
 stand that ? " He was a bit of a scold, but he had 
 all the grey dome and all the forest depths to talk 
 into. No comrade answered him, and nothing ever 
 gave me such an impression of the solitude of a 
 mountain forest, 
 
 By six o'clock we had endured all that the hu- 
 man frame is capable of in the way of sleeping 
 on hard and prickly spruce, and the men rose as 
 by one impulse and went down to the spring to 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 wash. We dressed as hurriedly as possible, and, 
 I must say, looked surprisingly fresh. And the 
 morning was so deliciously cool, and Mr. Van 
 Worden's coffee so fragrant and bracing, his trout 
 so crisp and Mrs. Opp's "Johnnie cake," so excel- 
 lent that we sat about Mr. Larimer's bed in the 
 highest spirits and congratulated each other that 
 we were "camping out." Even Miss Page, having 
 weathered the worst of it, announced herself ready 
 to stay another night, and talked continually in her 
 pretty Southern brogue. She was looking like a 
 beautiful gypsy, too, and I think our one small 
 mirror had consoled her for many things. She 
 flashed her eyes about with the impartiality of the 
 kind-hearted coquette, and was quite the life of 
 the uncomfortable group about the table. 
 
 After breakfast Mrs. M. J., Latimer, Mr. Nugent 
 and myself, led by Opp, with an axe over his 
 shoulder, started off to see some famous falls. The 
 rest went fishing. As the trail along the " still- 
 water " had been choked by lumbermen, Opp had 
 to rely on his general knowledge of the land, and 
 every few minutes he " blazed " a tree, z>., hacked 
 
 [ 293 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 off a piece of the bark with his axe, that there 
 should be no danger of going astray when we re- 
 turned. The ground was less broken up than usual 
 and we strode along in single file looking for all 
 the world like a party of pioneers penetrating the 
 wilderness. It was a jolly experience and I would 
 not have missed it for anything. 
 
 The falls were about two miles from the camp 
 and we were an hour reaching them, for Opp got 
 off the track several times. I can imagine that they 
 look very fine indeed when there is anything fall- 
 ing. But all we saw was a sloping wall of solid 
 rock, about four hundred and fifty feet high and 
 a fifth of a mile wide, crowned with spruce. There 
 is a deep wide pool below, and a mass of rocks on 
 which we sat and tried to picture the mighty cas- 
 cade of other seasons. On one end the perpen- 
 dicular end of the wall there were soil and trees, 
 and Opp asked me if I would like to " climb the 
 falls and see the sights." I was half way across the 
 rocks in a moment with Mr. N. and Latimer after 
 me, while Opp remained with Mrs. M. J. 
 
 It was a straight climb, my dear, of four 
 
 [ 2 94 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 hundred and fifty feet. It hardly sloped once and 
 there was just one ledge of about six steps. We 
 had to pull ourselves up by trees and bushes, and 
 more that once Mr. N. dragged me up, while Mr. 
 L. pushed me. But altogether I did rather well, 
 and was quite rewarded by their enthusiastic ap- 
 proval. But there was a better reward than that. 
 From an elevation above the falls we saw five 
 mountain ranges. They seemed to fill all space, 
 and the blue dome to press down its rim about 
 them, holding such a flood of crystal and gold ! 
 There were many beautiful pines about us, sage 
 green with a delicate fairy-like quality in spite of 
 their greatness, and once more the undesecrated 
 forest, so dense that Mr. N. had noted every inch 
 of ground we traversed. 
 
 Of course it was worse going down than as- 
 cending and I was glad to have two men to take 
 care of me. 
 
 Well, we spent all of that day very pleasantly, 
 and the night promised to be rather more com- 
 fortable, for Mr. Nugent, Mr. Latimer, and the 
 guides all made beds for themselves under the 
 
 [ 2 95 1 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 stars and the fire was left to go out after supper. 
 But, alas ! about midnight it began to rain, they 
 all came crawling under shelter, and there was 
 little more sleep that night. 
 
 The rain stopped long enough for us to break- 
 fast comfortably, and then we held a consultation. 
 The plan had been to " stay out " three nights, 
 but we were all a little tired of it, and the skies 
 looked very forbidding. 
 
 " If you want my opinion," remarked Opp, " I 
 say go, and be quick about it. It's set in for all 
 day, and if we git back to the Lake without a 
 soakin' we'll be luckier 'n I think we will." 
 
 That settled it. We had no desire to sit on our 
 bed all day and then sleep on it another night. 
 The guides began to pack at once, and within an 
 hour we were on our way. 
 
 We had hardly started when it began to pour, 
 and it has not stopped yet. What a walk it was ! 
 However we reached home without pneumonia 
 and broken ankles heaven only knows, but not 
 one of us has a cold ; and although my feet feel 
 as if they had been pounded with a hammer they 
 [ 296 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 are quite whole. When we were not picking our 
 way over the narrow trail through the brush 
 dripping and as high as our heads we were on 
 those horrible corduroy roads, made so slippery 
 by the rain that every step was a danger. Once 
 I fell, and I twisted my foot three times and 
 wrenched myself up to my waist. My feet were 
 swimming in my boots and it was an effort to lift 
 them. I felt sorry for Miss Page, who is a pam- 
 pered creature, but she never uttered a complaint, 
 although she told me afterward that every time 
 we came to one of those interminable stretches of 
 corduroy she wanted to sit down and cry. She 
 certainly is a fine creature, with all her little 
 foibles. 
 
 When we got to the lumber camp we all sat 
 down in the rain and rested before climbing the 
 corduroy hill beyond. Mr. N. explained to me 
 the use of the curious objects piled under a 
 shed. They were huge boxes on runners with four 
 round holes in each end. When the snow is on the 
 ground, covering corduroy and rocks, these boxes 
 are filled with water and dragged by horses over 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 the road to be used for drawing the lumber to the 
 streams. From the front holes the water spouts 
 continuously, and as it strikes the ground it 
 freezes, making a solid smooth surface over 
 which the log sledges can travel with ease. But 
 what a life ! No wonder these mountaineers look 
 old ; but Mr. N. told me that lumbermen become 
 so fascinated with the life that they cannot be 
 tempted into the valleys. 
 
 You can imagine the difficulties of that narrow 
 sidling swampy trail by the inlet. It was just twice 
 as bad as in dry weather, and I almost was dis- 
 couraged once or twice. Perhaps I should have 
 been, had it not been for a very reassuring and 
 helpful presence ; but it was bad enough. 
 
 Latimer had hastened on to the lake to fire his 
 revolver, the signal that we were coming. When 
 the rest of us arrived the boats were almost there, 
 but as we were all hot and wet, and a cold wind 
 played upon us as we stood on the stones again, 
 it is a wonder we are not all wrecks. As soon as I 
 reached home Mrs. Van Worden made me drink 
 hot whiskey, while Mrs. Opp and Henriette un- 
 
 [ 298 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 dressed and rubbed me down. I am none the worse 
 for wear, but felt quite done up by half-after seven 
 and went to bed. Hence this great letter. Good 
 night. I return to Boulder Lake to-morrow. j 
 
 HELEN 
 
 Boulder Lake 
 
 August 20th 
 
 10 P.M. 
 
 I forgot to give this letter to the postman to- 
 night so I will tell you of two or three surprises 
 which have made me wide-awake, rather. 
 
 Of course Mr. Nugent returned with me, (and 
 as there is always a room at the Club House at 
 his disposal I suppose he will remain through the 
 deer and grouse seasons unless but I vow I 
 don't know ! ) I was glad to see that beautiful 
 avenue dividing the dark forest, once more, and 
 we walked slowly, the buckboard following. I 
 can't say the familiar corduroy filled me with 
 sentimental emotions and my insteps ached at 
 the first glimpse of it ; but I have that buoyancy 
 within that carries my feet over many a weary 
 
 [ 2 99 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 mile, and my companion, as ever, was very inter- 
 esting. I forget just what we talked about. 
 
 We were half way up the last hard bit of cor- 
 duroy and my eyes as usual were intent upon the 
 logs when Mr. N. said abruptly : 
 
 " Look ! " 
 
 I stopped at once and followed the direction of 
 his glance. Before I had time to wonder if he had 
 seen a bear I saw, standing on the ledge above, 
 Mr. Rogers and Bertie ! The light was full upon 
 them and I saw in a flash that Bertie was stouter 
 and had lost his terrible pallor. He was not ruddy, 
 but he was brown, and there was colour in his 
 cheeks. 
 
 Polly, did you ever have a wild whirl of emo- 
 tions inside of you while you forced your exterior 
 to be as impassive as a shell ? I wanted to give 
 one of the war-whoops with which they call to 
 one another up here, and I felt so much like 
 bursting into a storm of tears that I dared not 
 even speak. 
 
 When Bertie and I met we merely shook hands, 
 and he remarked that he was glad to see me back, 
 
 [3] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 but I knew he wanted to hug me. Then I gave 
 my hand to Mr. Rogers and was just in time to 
 see the look with which my two knights were 
 measuring each other. 
 
 I walked ahead with Bertie and he said that 
 between the air and the milk he certainly was 
 getting well, and I found my voice and told him 
 that I never had felt so happy in my life. But my 
 absorption in Bertie was divided for the moment 
 by a new surprise. 
 
 We had left the level stretch and were walking 
 down the incline to the boat landing (I had been 
 too interested to notice that we had not turned 
 off into the path leading to our camp), when I 
 stopped short with half a sentence forgotten. 
 Waiting at the pier was a gondola a gondola 
 with silken curtains and cushions and an Italian 
 gondolier. 
 
 Bertie laughed gaily at my startled face, for in 
 truth I was afraid for the moment that something 
 in my brain had gone wrong. 
 
 " Rogers sent for it to Chicago, of all places ! " 
 he said. " It is a remnant of the World's Fair." 
 
 [30. ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 And then I remembered I once had said to Mr. 
 Rogers that I could not understand why they did 
 not have gondolas on these beautiful lakes instead 
 of commonplace boats. 
 
 All my coquetry was enchanted and I turned 
 to Mr. Rogers with such a radiant face that he 
 must have felt a bit rewarded. While I was 
 thanking him glad of that much outlet for my 
 excitement and he was making one of his charm- 
 ing speeches and looking so dignified and not the 
 least bit of an ass, I stole" a glance at Mr. N. His 
 face wore a cynical grin that was almost sardonic. 
 
 Well, I gondolaed home and fell into Agatha's 
 arms, then discovered Bertie's welcome. He had 
 himself, mind you tacked that most beautiful 
 of shrubs, the ground pine, all over the walls of 
 the living room. They looked a mass of soft green 
 and gold and the antlered heads of the deer 
 seemed to be set in their native woods. On the 
 table was a great bunch of crimson sweet peas 
 incomparably more fragrant than ours sent by 
 Jemima, and a bowl of water lilies from Mrs. 
 Laurence. 
 
 [302] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 After I had answered all of Agatha's questions 
 and assured her that I was as well as ever she 
 thinks I am thin, but how I have tramped! 
 Bertie and I went out and gondolaed round the 
 lake. It was just five o'clock. The men were 
 going home from the tennis court, and waved 
 their hats at me and gave the unearthly wood 
 call. 
 
 Then, suddenly, all the doors opened, and the 
 women in their bright muslin gowns flitted out 
 and waved their handkerchiefs to me. It was a 
 pretty sight and a graceful act. Of course, I landed 
 and they said a great many of their charming 
 things. 
 
 When I went home another surprise awaited 
 me in my room. On the table was a box of splen- 
 did roses and an elaborate basket of chocolates 
 tied with yards of my favourite bright blue ribbon. 
 Mr. Nugent's card was attached. Of course he had 
 sent to New York for them. 
 
 I don't think I ever went to bed feeling so 
 happy. 
 
 HELEN 
 
 [ 303 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 21St 
 
 I suppose we have all taken note of that malig- 
 nant influence in the unseen world which makes 
 us unreasoningly and unguardedly happy just be- 
 fore our stiffest blows. One would think these 
 bitter contrasts were purposely arranged to destroy 
 our power of philosophy. 
 
 It was at breakfast that I was confounded, more 
 nearly knocked over than I ever was in my life. 
 
 " By the way, Nell," Bertie remarked casually, 
 " what a ripping fine woman Mrs. Coward is *? " 
 
 " Mrs. Coward *? " I gasped. 
 
 " Yes. Don't mean to say you didn't know she 
 was here *? " 
 
 " I did not ! " I could barely articulate. And a 
 perturbed glance from Agatha increased my con- 
 sternation. " When did she come *? " 
 
 " Three or four days ago Oh, yes, she said you 
 had left the same morning for your camping 
 tramp." 
 
 "Whom is she visiting? I had no idea the 
 aristocracies would mix." 
 
 " Mrs. Laurence. Don't you like Mrs. Coward *? " 
 
 [ 304 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 " I am glad she is visiting Mrs. Laurence. I 
 should say they would scratch each other's eyes 
 out immediately." 
 
 " I'm disappointed you don't like her. I hoped 
 you'd have her in the house a lot. She's a long 
 sight the most fascinating American I ever met 
 a regular ripper, by gad ! " 
 
 I don't know how I controlled myself, but I 
 knew that if I said too much and suggested op- 
 position Bertie would be on his hind legs at once. 
 
 This was what she had up her sleeve, Polly. 
 What deceit, what treachery, what sneakingness. 
 Only a widow would be capable of such a thing. 
 But I must say I respect her. She fooled me com- 
 pletely. I could not have been capable of so clever 
 a revenge, and I detest her for it, because she has 
 not the true sporting instinct, but she is to be 
 reckoned with all the same. In spite of her plati- 
 tudes and her ingenuous pride in the seven gen- 
 erations, she is both clever and deep when her 
 pride is in arms, and revenge and ambition both 
 spur her on to capture a duke. 
 
 But will she marry him *? Oh ! Many moths have 
 
 [ 305 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 fluttered about that flame. But she is so subtle. 
 And in addition to her indisputable magnetism 
 she has developed fascination into a fine art. Of 
 course she has scented out all Bertie's weak points 
 and flattered them. I can hear her discoursing 
 about the solemn responsibilities of the hereditary 
 legislator, and that is what is haunting Bertie most 
 at present. Of course she knows all about Dad, 
 and her dulcet enthusiasms on that convenient 
 weakness Oh, dear ! Agatha says they have been 
 almost inseparable since the afternoon she arrived. 
 She did not lose a minute ! 
 
 He actually asked me if he could take her out in 
 my gondola. I felt like telling him to take her out 
 and drown her, but I gave my consent as gra- 
 ciously as I could, and came into the house to 
 think. I dare not go to the forest, for I know that 
 Mr. N. is lying in wait for me and I feel certain 
 that after this gondola declaration he will press 
 his suit ; and when he does plant himself on both 
 feet in the middle of the trail and I on the wrong 
 side Oh, heaven ! 
 
 I induced Agatha to go over to the tennis court 
 
 [306 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 so that I could not receive Mr. Rogers if he called. 
 But for some time I could not even write to you, 
 I could only storm up and down the living-room 
 and try to think of some way to foil that woman 
 and deliver Bertie. Fancy having her for a sister- 
 in-law ! And she would radiate a subtle triumph 
 till the day of her death. But the real under- 
 lying point is that she is not the wife for Bertie. 
 He must marry an intelligent woman who will give 
 herself to him and his career, and this one would 
 be entirely wrapped in her own petty ambitions. 
 
 It suddenly occurred to me that Miss Page had 
 promised to spend the first two weeks of Septem- 
 ber with me. She is still at Chipmunk Lake, for 
 the other women do not leave for two days yet. 
 The buckboard had not gone. I wrote her a note, 
 imploring her to come at once as I was bored and 
 lonely. Then I bribed the driver to take it to her 
 to-day, and he said he would wait and bring her 
 back. She is far more beautiful than Mrs. C., and 
 younger. She may not be so subtle but she has all 
 the fascination of a buoyant and unaffected co- 
 quette. And she is worth six of Mrs. C. as regards 
 
 [307 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 character and sincerity. Not, alas ! that that adds 
 to one's power over man. But I am hoping that 
 Bertie will contrast her real brightness with Mrs. 
 C.'s platitudes, and discover that the widow is bor- 
 ing, that he will succumb to Miss Page's superior 
 beauty, and that propinquity will do its work. If 
 only it doesn't all happen before she gets here ! Mrs. 
 C. has had him in her pocket for three hours in 
 my gondola. She has on a white frock and a scarlet 
 shawl and a red poppy in her hair. There is no 
 denying that she is hideously attractive. Oh, Polly, 
 how I wish you were here ! 
 
 To add to my burdens Bertie gave me, this 
 morning he mercifully forgot it last night an 
 impassioned epistle from Mr. Carlisle. His mother 
 is better and he is returning to Chipmunk Lake 
 for the hunting season. He says he shall devote 
 three days a week to deer and the rest to me 
 that if they won't invite him to the Club House 
 he'll camp on the next lake, which is only a mile 
 away and on State lands. But of course they'll in- 
 vite him to the Club House. Oh, Polly ! Do you 
 think any woman ever was in such a tangle before ! 
 
 [ 308 ] 
 
THE ARISTOCRATS 
 
 On the whole I think I'll go out into the forest 
 and talk to Mr. N. about it. I must talk to some- 
 body or I'll have brain fever. And I'm used to 
 diverting his mind " standing him off," as they 
 say here. And I want sympathy. 
 
 This is really good-bye. I won't write another 
 line till I am in a more cheerful state of mind 
 induced by Miss Page's triumph over the widow 
 for I do not want to add to your worries. 
 
 HELEN 
 
 P.S. Roddy Spencer will arrive on one of the 
 Saturday steamers. 
 
 NOTE. T'he correspondence ends abruptly with the 
 above letter ; Lady Helen Pole, on the following day 
 having received a cablegram announcing the sudden 
 death of the Earl of Edge and Ross and the imme- 
 diate departure of her friend for the United States. 
 
 THE PUBLISHER. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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