And in a moment, Polly, we “were there.”
Have you wasted any time, my dear, imagining 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.
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 inwardness of the situation. The forest, the beautiful 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 excellent luncheon of fried ham and hard boiled eggs, mutton cutlets and fried potatoes, hot chocolate and cake, with a grateful appetite, I can assure you. Mr. Van Worden fried the ham and potatoes and made the chocolate, and we all coddled 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’ll 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. 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 nightly 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 return 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 situation. We were as helpless against certain circumstances 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 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 followed. 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 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, and as I rather feared that Mr. N., under the influence 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 apprehension that other Republicans seemed to feel.
“No; I can’t say I do,” he said. “Nothing is ever as bad in politics as the anticipations; anticipations are the exaggerations of much talk. Besides—it is quite on the cards that Bryan will be an arrant snob before he has been a month in the White House. Likely as not, his first taste of Society will induce conservatism. When 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 in. Then, the only thing left for us to do is to marry his daughter to a gentleman and persuade him to send his son to Harvard. His reform will be accomplished in less than a year. There is no snob so complete as a democrat reformed by the right sort of visiting 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 become downright aristocrats; and when the shirt-sleeved voter from Lincoln, Nebraska, calls, will conceal their ennui and irritation indifferently well. That means alienation of the sons of the soil, and no second term for Bryan. If Washington 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.