_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
June 18th
I wish you were up here with me, Polly; I am sure you would forget
all your troubles. It is such an extraordinary experience to be in a
primeval wilderness, where one never hears a church bell, never comes
suddenly upon a wayside calvary, never passes a peasant in costume,
nor a picturesque hovel. The civilisations and the arts that have
made Europe such an inexhaustible wonder never have ventured here.
It is Nature, virgin and ignorant, and it often gives me the most
unaccountable sensation. Perhaps when I am more familiar with it, I
shall be more successful in defining it. I have not grasped the spirit
of the place yet. There is nothing of the frowning majestic awesomeness
of wild mountain regions that I have read of and often imagined, and,
as surely, there is nothing of the peace of England--that peace that
must pervade any perfected civilisation just as repose comes to the
truly cultivated mind of middle years. It is something between the two,
beauty without tameness, solitude without calm, yet with none of the
feverish restlessness of the young civilisation at its feet, primeval
wildness without its terrors; for scarcely a living thing that harms,
human or brute, but has been exterminated; noble heights that never
frown. There you have the Adirondacks as I am able to interpret them
to you at present. They give me an intense pleasure, that is all I can
add. As we approached the mountains on the day of our arrival I thought
I should be disappointed, the foliage looked so _soft_. From a distance
one could not define a single tree; they are so densely limbed and
leafed, their branches grow so low, and they crowd so closely, that
the mountains looked as if covered by a thick shrubbery, through which
a path never had been cut, and out of which not a tree projected. But
after we were in the mountains all was changed, we drove through the
very heart of the woods, thick with high trees and full of a pleasant
gloom; and once in approaching them we passed a hill that looked to be
set close with green church spires, so thick were the spruce among the
maples.
The trees about the lake grow down to the edge of the brown water,
almost out of it, and so densely, that in rowing past, one rarely has a
glimpse into the woods. When one does, it is to see the great boulders
that have given the lake its name. They, too, are on the edge of the
lake, covered with moss that sometimes is green, sometimes a mingling
of the most delicate tints, pink and green and pearl and blue. Rioting
everywhere along the edge of the lake is the wild honeysuckle, pink
and intoxicatingly fragrant. By the Club House is an open field where
they raise hay. Just now it looks like a wild lawn full of buttercups
and daisies, almost as much of an anomaly up here in this wilderness as
these comfortable houses and gaily painted boats.
And the perfumes and the silence! how can I describe them? The fresh
primitive smell of earth that never has been turned, the sensuous
sweetness of the honeysuckle, the strong resinous vitalising odour of
the balsam tree. And the silence just misses being oppressive. The
birds sing one at a time. I have not yet heard a duet, much less a
chorus. Once in a while, there is the tinkle of a cow-bell, and the
wind is always playing gently with the tree-tops.
For a few days I greatly feared that Bertie would hate it, but he lies
for hours in the hammock, a balsam pillow beside him, either sleeping
or listening while Agatha or I read to him. He vows that he will shoot
deer with Mr. Rogers in September. That gives him two months and a
half--I wonder! I think I should be so happy I should quite go off my
head. But he is so young, and only a few of our ancestors have died of
consumption. Agatha, dear old mother, is conscious-stricken, because
the disease did not attack her instead of Bertie, and, although she
never would admit it, I think my aggressive health annoys her. I
believe that if I had rosy cheeks she would have left me behind; but if
I am white instead of pink, I have the deep vitality that I know Bertie
ought to have. I expect he often wonders, poor darling, why his sisters
of forty and six-and-twenty should have long superfluous lives before
them, while he, at barely eight and twenty, is stricken and miserable.
Agatha says it is the will of God, but I am afraid it was going the
pace and wet feet. Agatha frowns sternly when I suggest that it was
more Bertie’s fault than the Almighty’s, for although she will admit
that wet feet might have something to do with it, she will not even
listen to a hint of Bertie’s well-known delinquencies, will not admit,
dear austere nun-like soul, that such things exist in the world. She is
still inexorably opposed to your divorce, Polly; says that it is the
duty of a wife to accept her fate, etc., and when I try to explain, she
tells me I have no right to know anything about such shocking things
that do not really exist (God save her blessed inconsistent soul), and
walks austerely out of the room.
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.