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 homage, 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 betrayed jealousy or pique by the flutter of an eyelash. Perhaps I’ll restore Mr. Carlisle to her presently, for I am rather tired of him. There is none of the quality of the unexpected about him. He 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, consequently 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 conquer them without money. But first of all he received a college education and distinguished himself 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 danger of another lapse. He has renewed his efforts 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 everybody in the world could have everything he wanted. It is like living in a crystal dome and being 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 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 appearance 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 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 cessation 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. During these same severe months they also go in the woods and help to “draw” the logs the lumbermen 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 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 sunshine, 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.
16th
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 telegram 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 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 conscience 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 contempt 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 accepted 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 forbid. But they are so determined, these Americans.