I have been here four days, Poll, and not heard the words
“aristocratic” or “refined” once. Oh, blessed relief! And--yet--they
just lack unselfconsciousness. Is that the word, or is it a suggestion
of reserve under all their animation and candour and naturalness, a
reserve that is not so much mental and personal as racial and as--well,
there is no help for it--aristocratic? I think that is the explanation,
after all. They _feel_ themselves to be the true aristocrats of the
country but are too well-bred to mention, or, perhaps, to think of
it. There is just the faintest dearest little air of loftiness about
them and it is so manifestly natural that I fancy it is as much the
real thing as the “self-made” American. I have come to the conclusion
that the modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence is
something like this: _I am as good as those that think themselves
better and a long sight better than those who only think themselves
as good._ When they are established on the top step like these people
here, with no more flights to conquer, there is really nothing left to
do but to slide down the banisters.
None of my Chipmunk Lake friends are of the “new-rich”; every fortune
up here is at least three generations old, and Mr. Van W’s is six.
Well, they are welcome to feel themselves anything they like, for I
find them wholly delightful, and they have been charming to me. Mrs.
Wilbur Garrison looks rather sad and tired but is always gay in manner
and interested in what other people are talking about. Mrs. Reginald
Grant has several pasts in the depths of her eyes which her long
lashes always seem to be sweeping aside as if it were a matter of no
consequence whatever. Mrs. Meredith Jones rather goes in for charities,
and Mr. Nugent says she really is a hard worker as well as a devoted
mother and an irresistible coquette. She has a Greek profile, a cloud
of golden hair, a Juno bust and a rather cynical mouth.
I do not know what Mrs. Hammond meant by saying there were “no men.” I
should say there was one apiece.
There is a young widow, a great belle, visiting Mrs. Grant--Mrs.
Coward. She is very thin and not in the least beautiful, although her
face lights up when she talks and has a sweet expression. But she holds
herself with a calm expectancy that every man will fall at her feet,
and she flatters more than any one I ever met. Then she delivers her
opinions with such an air! They are usually platitudes, but you know
how a manner blinds.
A Miss Page, a Southern girl, is visiting Mrs. Garrison. She has an
ideal manner, is always impersonal in her conversation and seems as
amiable and unselfish as possible.
The unmarried men live in the little Club House, which has a
smoking-room but no dining-room. We all dine in our own camps when we
are not entertaining each other, which is usually.
The children are established for the summer in other country houses,
where all these people will go after their three weeks’ rest from every
care. The two husbands up here are quite nice, and devoted to sport.
When the fish won’t play in this lake they tramp off to others.
But enough of the people. I am going to tell you of the weirdest
experience I ever had. Save it for me, Polly, for if ever I write a
book I certainly shall put it in.
First--Last evening at sundown several of us--two in a boat--went out
on the lake in the hope of seeing the deer come down to drink. The
men paddled, making so little noise and movement that the boat seemed
gliding by itself through the silences of space. There was a yellow
glow in the West--the aftermath of the most magnificent amber sunset;
mountains and lakes of molten cloud--but the stars were not out and
there was only that light from nowhere through which the vision gropes
surely but always with surprise.
Mr. Nugent paddled our boat--he sat in the stern, I in the bow, with my
back to him--through the Narrows, then, after drifting about for a few
moments pointed toward the shore most distant. I had been warned not to
speak, and not a word had been uttered when a low suppressed voice from
behind gave me a start. “Look, look!” it said, “do you see? Straight
ahead.” I saw! A reddish brown something was walking along the bank
and in a moment I saw it toss its horns. But it was not of the deer I
thought just then but of the strange sense of intimacy that suppressed
voice on the darkening silent lake had aroused in me. In a moment
it came again, lower still, for we were nearing the shore. “There is
another.” And he steered through the water-lilies.
A mate had joined the buck and they cropped and drank for a few
moments, then walked along the shore and into an arbour-like opening
of the forest, exactly like people making a stately exit from the
back of a stage. Almost immediately two does came bounding out of the
forest and waded into the water until only their heads and red backs
were visible. We remained motionless, almost breathless, but in a few
moments they must have noticed us for they made hotly for the shore.
When they reached it they stood for at least five minutes with their
heads thrown back staring at us. Then, although we were, apparently, as
lifeless as the lily pads, their reasoning faculty must have satisfied
them that we were aliens and therefore to be feared, for they suddenly
turned their backs and made for the forest as hard as they could go,
leaping over one high bush after another, until nothing could be seen
but the white lining of their tails. Then the exhibition being over we
talked all the way home, and that strange sense of intimacy with a note
of mystery in it was dispelled.
It was to be renewed, however, for we had not done with the deer. That
night at eleven o’clock, when Mr. Van Worden was sound asleep--he
really is very dull--Mrs. Van W. and I, Mr. Nugent and Mr. Latimer
stole down to the boat house by the light of a lantern. We were muffled
up in the darkest things we possessed and I felt exactly as if we were
conspirators, or smugglers, or refugees from justice.
In the boat house the men lit a lamp they had brought and placed it
in a wooden case, open in front, which was on the end of a pole about
three feet high. (This light is called a Jack.) The pole was set into
a hole on the bow of the boat Mr. N. intended to paddle, and it was to
serve as a sort of search light, not only to see the deer by, but to
fascinate what moth-like instinct they possessed.
All prepared, we pushed silently out into the lake. Can you imagine
the scene? The mountains--there are so many of them!--were black.
The sky seemed dropping with its weight of stars. The clear glassy
lake reflected the largest of them and the black masses of the forest
that rose straight from its brink. And just ahead of me--shall I ever
forget it?--floated a white mist, rising and falling, writhing into a
different semblance every moment, the light making it the more ghostly
and terrifying. I could not see a living thing; the other boat was
behind us and I was in the bow as before, staring at that ghostly mist,
quite forgetting the deer. A line of Tennyson’s haunted me:
“The dead steered by the dumb went upward with the flood,”
and I longed to utter it aloud, but dared not. Once I turned my head
to see if Mr. N. were really there. He looked black and graven, as if
indeed he were the dumb servitor. The others I could not see at all.
And again there was that sense of gliding, unpropelled, through the
silences of the upper Universe, only a thousand times intensified. And,
surely, never were so many stars gathered together before. It seemed
to me that the big ones must drop into the lake, they looked so heavy,
and so close, and the little ones were like a million grains of golden
sand. I thought of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the princess who carried a
robe of stars in a nut-shell.
But more often I watched that white mist, just in front of the prow and
me, and nowhere else. Where did it come from? I have no idea. They tell
me there was a mist everywhere, and that by the aid of our light we saw
it just ahead, but I saw none of it elsewhere, and I saw the stars and
the trees in the lake.
We must have floated for a half hour, searching almost every inch of
the banks without a glimpse of deer, when Mr. N.’s paddle stopped
suddenly. At the same moment I heard a slight trampling in the brush
close by, then a louder, as if a great buck had been brought to bay and
were pawing up the earth. Then there was a terrific snort--I had no
idea anything could snort so loud--then a long warning whistle, then
another snort, and another. By this time he had made up his mind to
flee the danger, for the snorts were accompanied by a crashing through
the brush in the opposite direction. The faster he went the louder he
snorted, until distance tempered the sound. It must have been five
minutes before the last faint note of his anger came back to us.
“I am afraid he has warned off all the others,” came that low hoarse
whisper from behind me, and it was the last touch needed to deepen the
mystery of that unreal midnight.
Mr. N. paddled for ten or fifteen minutes longer, then giving it up,
made for the boat house. We glided in noiselessly and he helped me
out at once and extinguished the light. Then we stood on the narrow
pier between the boat and the other slip of enclosed water waiting for
Latimer and Mrs. Van W. There was no sign of them on the dark lake
for several moments, and we were obliged to stand very close on that
strip of wood in the darker boat house. I can assure you it was very
weird; but with a man like Mr. N. beside one it was impossible to feel
frightened. In the boat he seemed so far away. Of course I imagined
that all sorts of things had happened to the others, but presently
they came gliding toward us and into the boat house. We all stole
home--without a word. It was long before I fell asleep.