_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
June 23d
_Dearest Poll_:
None of the Club people here yet, and if it were not for newspapers
and letters--a man in the employ of the Club climbs this perpendicular
mountain every evening with the post--I should cease to believe in
a world which lives in my mind as a mere clash of sound. It _is_ so
quiet here! Sometimes when I am alone in my room I throw a shawl over
the clock to muffle its ticking. It seems a cheap intrusion upon this
colossal silence. I have been in the woods for hours at a time when
not even a bird has trilled, nothing but that soft soughing of the
unsleeping wind in the tree-tops. In the evening an occasional caw-caw
comes from the forest, a lonesome cricket shrills, a frog croaks in the
reeds.
I often go deep down into the forest and listen to the faint monotonous
hum of the leaves, always a soft sound, when one gets away from the
rigid spruce, because the leaves of the maple are as delicate in
texture as they are in tint. And these leaves, in places, seem to
fill the woods. Unless you throw back your head you barely realise the
existence of the trees, only that gently moving lace-like curtain of
green many-pointed leaves that meets the leafy ground. The sunlight
splashes here and there. I have found a gorge whose gloom is eternal;
in the friendlier depths the twilight is almost green. You know how I
despise all theologies and churches and vulgar public demonstration
of what should be man’s most sacred inner life; but when I am alone
in the forest I always say my prayers; and that occasional solitary
communion with God is surely the only true religion for intelligent
beings. I have heard of “revival meetings” in which people “stand up
and confess Christ.” _Public emotions._ How unutterably vulgar and
cheaply sensational. And what pleasure can a religion be that is shared
with the multitude, that is formulated, ticketed, branded with the
approval of others? I hope everybody I know, except the one or two I
love, thinks me a pagan. I am jealous of what is more truly my own than
anything else can ever be.
But to return to my woods. I have spoken of the sleepless wind, but
occasionally it goes elsewhere, and I have sat for hours on one of
the boulders which strew these mountains, born of some unimaginable
convulsion, modelled by unrecorded glaciers, and waited eagerly for
even a bird to give the silence a tiny but startling shake. And yet,
as I have written you before, I think, there is none of the peace of
England here. But it is magnificent, this feeling of lofty remoteness,
of standing just under the sky, of feeling and hearing the silence.
There is sweetness and charm rather than grandeur in these woods, but
still not peace. Nature is much like human nature. While her youth
lasts--and how much man has to do with the quickening of time!--she
suggests turbulence in her silences, there is something disquieting,
even forbidding, in that very sweetness which is a careless incidental
gift. Sometimes when I am alone in the forest, a mile or more from
home, not even another “trail” but the one I dare not leave, the ferns
and dogwood brushing my waist, that broken green curtain motionless
against a colossal boulder, not a sound, not a fleeting suggestion of
any world beyond those ancient trees with their young leaves, those
immeasurable depths with other mountains and other forests beyond
them, all beauty, the very idealisation of one’s dreams of the “forest
primeval,” the isolation of mountain-tops made manifest, a fear comes
over me which I have no more been able to define than I have yielded
to. I know that the bear is infrequent and harmless, the panther is
gone for ever, that a poisonous snake has never been seen on the
Adirondacks, that tramps are unheard of, and that I cannot lose my way
if I keep to the trail. And as you know I am what is called heroic, and
have spent hours alone on English moors and in English woods. Never
before have I felt the sudden terror that assails me here in this
beautiful gentle and unthinkably aged forest, with its eternal virginal
youth. Some day the meaning of it will come to me suddenly, like the
girl’s face in the moon; you know I manage to get to the core of most
things.
Bertie is getting a little bored, and is restless, but is so much
better that he is very good-natured about it. He takes a short walk
with me in the forest every day, and a row when the sun is full on the
lake. I often row him, it is so good to have him all to myself. Agatha
has been the best of mothers to us, but after all she is _not_ our
mother, and she is almost too old for a sister. We love her, but we
love each other far more, more indeed than we ever have loved any one
else, but Dad; and sometimes when in his wretched physical weakness
Bertie drops his head on my shoulder, and becomes as confidential with
me as in his innocent boy days, I see into a soul that has more good in
it than bad, and much strength in spite of the sad weakness his broken
confessions reveal. I am sure now that if he recovers he will become as
useful, if not as great, a man as Dad. Ah, there was a man! He admired
Agatha from a distance, but he kept us two so close to him that we
ought to be a thousand times better and more sensible than we are. But
he has been dead six long years, Bertie has rank and riches, and I am
beautiful. What hope that the world would let us alone!
Agatha is so happy at Bertie’s improvement that she does not
care--except on his account--whether the lake people come up at all
or not, and, besides, she is too good to be bored. I do not mean that
sarcastically, for these people who are constantly thinking of others
never have time to sit down and commiserate their Ego.
This evening I was down at the edge of the lake watching the sunset--a
blue one of many shades, from limpid pale blue lakes to masses of rich
ultramarine, instead of the usual splendour of red and gold--when the
keeper passed me in a boat. He paused and pointed to the end of the
lake.
“Fog’s goin’ up the mountain, Miss,” he said. “Sure sign of rain; and
I heard a cuckoo in the woods to-day, another sign as never fails.
I guess them big fireplaces’ll come in handy for a day or two.”
Fortunately we have plenty to read.
I forgot to tell you that Jemima, our erstwhile handmaiden, of whom
I wrote you, and who is now “visiting” the lake-keeper’s family,
yesterday brought me two charming offerings, a basket of wild
strawberries from the meadow and a bunch of half-wild half-cultivated
pink roses. I simply buried my face in the roses, their sweetness was
so poignant, so delicious, that I wanted to inhale and absorb it all
at once, and I pressed them to every bit of my face and neck. The
strawberries, too, were so fragrant! such tiny things, but with a most
agreeable acid sweetness. I have not seen Bertie enjoy anything so much
for a long time; and when I could no longer smell my roses--alas! for
the quick blunting of mortal sense!--I smothered Bertie’s face in their
pink fragrance and enjoyed them again, vicariously.