_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Chipmunk Lake_,
August 4th
_Dear Polly?_
I have solved the mystery of Mrs. Opp, and it has been the cause of
much thought and speculation on my part. Her father was a German noble,
high in favour of his Kaiser some fifty years ago. For some reason he
fell from grace and was expatriated, his estates confiscated. He came
to this country with a large family, drifted to one of the Northern
counties of New York State and tried to make a living by farming. Of
course he was a failure, poor man, but he was highly respected in the
humble community, not only for his worthy character, but because he
could read and write in seven languages. It was also known that he
corresponded with Bismarck. Some twelve years after his arrival in the
New World his youngest child was born--she who now is Mrs. Opp, wife
of the keeper of Chipmunk Lake. By that time he was a common farmer
and woodsman, working fourteen hours a day with his sons for a bare
living, with neither the money nor the time to educate his superfluous
children. The little girl grew up in the woods, turning her hand to
everything, from milking to making syrup from the maple trees. When her
father died and the farm was divided she “hired out,” and supported
herself until she married, some ten years ago.
There you have the key to the mystery; the unconscious pride of
carriage, the gracious manner, the well-kept teeth and nails, the more
than suggestion of breeding in her face. But all this becomes strange
only when you realize her absolute unselfconsciousness. I have talked
with the woman over and over again and it is as plain as her descent
that she has not the slightest appreciation of what she is and has
been deprived of, much less cherishes any pride or vanity in it. It is
all unconscious, this persistence of inherited instincts through the
most unfavourable circumstances, with not an impulse in the brain to
guide it. And how short it stops, this heredity! It goes so far and no
farther; the brain, most important of all, is choked with the weeds of
a bitter fate. Still, she is happy--why should I pity her? She has her
handsome woodsman, her placid mountain life, that eternal _youngness_
in her face. Courts could give her nothing more; rather, would they
give her too much.
But how it sets one to thinking, Polly. I have tried to imagine myself
in similar circumstances: Dad exiled with a large brood, myself born
on a mountain farm, “hired out”----The respectable amount of brain I
had inherited from a long line of brilliant and useful men would be as
surely mine as now--but with nothing put into it, _could_ it have been
wholly ignorant and unambitious and unsuspecting? _Could_ I have cooked
without protest for Mrs. Van Worden while her distinguished brother
addressed me merely to demand more potatoes or the pepper? _Could_ I
have been content with finger nails and teeth, and a backbone with a
pride the brain had forgotten? Oh, no! I cannot imagine it. I should
have demanded schooling, read my father’s correspondence with Bismarck,
fed myself with his nightly tales of past splendour, and married an
American of the _haute noblesse_--in short, my heredity would have
worked itself out along the lines of the conventional novel, that is
always so pleasantly prone to give you life as it should be, not as it
is. Here I am face to face with a fact I never have met in fiction,
and I am grateful for it--even while I feel sad as I speculate upon a
fate I happily have escaped. The Fact is Mrs. Opp of noble blood and
low degree, jolly, hearty, happy, unwarped by what she knows not of
ungrammatical--and ambitious for a hotel on the St. Lawrence river.
Surely, there is a motif for a novel of advanced realism.
I have talked it over with Mr. Nugent. He is so interesting and
illuminating to talk anything over with. We take long walks and
rows every day. He is my constant cavalier, for it would be really
unprincipled of me to attempt to cut any of these women out, they have
been so sweet to me. A party of us always start off together, but there
are so many paths in the forest!
I cannot analyze for you, Polly, the stage at which I have arrived
with Mr. Nugent. He has not actually _said_ anything, so far--he is
too clever--but he has a faculty of embracing me with an invisible
presentment of himself, which is very disturbing. I don’t know what
to think--except that I think a great deal about him. It is very
sweet--but if only I could be sure. He is so different--everything over
here is so different from anything I have ever known. (I don’t idealize
him. I wonder if that is fatal?)