But we do know things, don’t we, Polly? I wonder if, in face of all I have been so close to, I ever shall have the temerity to enter the undemonstratable state of matrimony? Of course I know of a decent number of comfortable marriages, and—well, two—happy ones, but somehow the others, particularly yours, stand out; to say nothing of the fact that all the girls who married in our first season, eight long years ago, are flashing pretty strong. Sometimes I feel like a widow with a past! But how many confidences I have listened to, and how much sympathy I have been called upon to pour into temporarily blighted lives! It is a blessed relief to be here in this silence and fragrance and beauty; and when the horrors that men and women make for themselves come into my mind, I go out and look at the solitary peak that towers above the long receding range of mountains at the head of the lake. Sometimes it is pale blue, sometimes light green; under a rain storm it is a lurid grey. More often there are long shadows on it, which constantly change in form, and the highest wind never seems to ruffle its forests. It takes the significance out of our petty civilisation and I sometimes wish I could live alone on it. I don’t suppose I really do, though. Of course I have not lived yet, myself, and I dream my dreams, and hope for better things than I have seen. I have filled my writing-desk with balsam and I hope a little of its healthy fragrance may reach you.
19th
To-day I had an experience which, in a way, reminded me of my policeman. Once or twice I had noticed about the house a stout straight freckled-faced girl, a daughter of a villager on an outer spur of the mountains who was pressed into service by our invaluable Quick when the house-maid he engaged in New York deserted him in the earlier stages of the journey. As I came out of the woods this morning our rural handmaiden marched up to me with an almost defiant air, a very high colour, and said:
“I’d like to speak to a dook, ma’am, I mean lady.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes, I’m going away. It’s the first place I’ve ever lived in where the hired girls didn’t eat with the family, and I haven’t felt nice since I’ve bin here. I don’t see any reason why you should be so terrible proud if you are English; and all the help sayin’ ‘your grace’ and ‘your ladyship,’ makes my flesh crawl.”
“We are not proud,” I began, but she interrupted me passionately.
“Oh, yes you are. You hold your head as if the ground warn’t good enough for you to walk on. I can’t help lookin’ at you because you’re so beautiful with your black hair and your blue eyes and white skin, and your nose is just lovely! That there Lady Agatha don’t look so very different from any other old maid that I can see, and I’m sure she dresses wors’n anything I ever seen. I don’t mind her, but you—you—make me feel like dirt. I just stare and stare at you and hate myself because I can’t keep from wishin’ I was you——” Here she made a struggle to control her voice and keep down her tears. “I went to school till a year ago,” she continued, “and I’ve paid lots of visits to well-to-do farmers in this county, whose daughters has had a year’s schoolin’ in Utica, and I call them all by their first names—so I can’t bear to feel the way you and all these high-toned help make me feel——”
Here I felt so sorry for her, she was so plainly suffering in her dumb lacerated pride, that I took her hand and patted it. “Don’t worry about all that,” I said. “We belong to different countries, that is all. Everything is on quite another plan in England. I can imagine how absurd our old-fashioned titles must seem to you over here. You see how wise your ancestors were to drop them. I cannot help mine, but I can assure you that I am not proud—I never have thought of such a thing. It is you who are proud, and I think your pride very fine. Why do you wish to see my brother?”
She was somewhat mollified by this time and answered with a flash of anticipation in her eyes: