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 presently 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 —— —— —— ——,[A] and of course, a personage of vast importance in Washington. But she is no mushroom; she has belonged for heaven knows how many generations—eight, perhaps—to the haute noblesse of the country and was born 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 backbone 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 aspirants 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 it is a book I should like to read. But she will not talk. All she has said of Washington is to intimate her scorn of all “new-comers,” her boundless ennui of the duties of her official position, her sacrifice of her own inherited desire for segregation 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 that those countries which are not the United States are like diseases in the creed of the Christian Scientists—they do not exist. We merely imagine 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 degenerate. 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 Chipmunk 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 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 unruffled demeanour and has never so much as put out a little claw and scratched me. A woman of 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 collateral twigs—framed and hung in her library at Newport. 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 everybody 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.
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 degenerate 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.