The aristocrats

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First—Last evening at sundown several of us—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 silences 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 a moment it came again, lower still, for we were nearing the shore. “There is another.” And he steered through the water-lilies.