About two miles from here is a lake entirely covered with water-lilies.
It is seldom that a boat cuts the surface or a fish line is cast, for
the water is too warm for trout, and our fishermen disdain bull heads
and sunfish. Consequently the green lily pads have spread over every
inch of it, and scattered upon them are the waxen cups with their
golden treasure. It is a scene of indescribable beauty and peace, and
the low hills above the shore, instead of the usual haughty mountains,
are almost as sweet and wildly still.
The keeper carried a boat there yesterday, and Mr. N. rowed me about
for an hour. I gathered an armful of the lilies and hung them all
over my hat and gown, linking the long soft stems in my belt until
they trailed to my knees. I felt so happy in catching at the beautiful
things as the boat grinded through their hidden part, and in adorning
myself, that I quite forgot Mr. N., who had fallen silent. The silence
of one of these Americans, by the way, is quite different from that of
our men. They are at so much pains usually to entertain and interest
a woman that their silences indicate either a pleasant intimacy, or
depression, never a lordly superiority to small matters. Therefore,
I suddenly paused with a cluster of lilies half raised and directed
my glance to my companion. He looked neither musing nor sad. His eyes
were fastened upon me with eager admiration, his whole face, that
lean powerful nervous face stamped by unconquerable emotions, was so
concentrated, that I felt myself blushing vividly, and I waved the
cluster of lilies at arm’s-length.
“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” I exclaimed gaily. “Is there
any flower in the world so artistic as the water-lily?--from its pure
cold form to its aloofness from the leaves?--and always alone, never a
blossom and its buds, never a group, gathered as if in fragrant gossip.
It is the nun among flowers, sexless, childless, angelically pure and
cold, asking nothing of this life but to bloom white and unspotted in
some mountain convent like this, a convent of perpetual silence, with
its wall of hills, its roof of blue, embroidered with gold at night and
haunted by day with fleecy clouds that look like wandering angels--Oh,
dear! I forgot the thunder-storms and the cries of angry deer, but
doubtless the lilies merely close up at such unholy sounds and pray in
unruffled serenity.”
“Lady Helen, will you marry me?” asked Nugent.
Polly, I gave such a start that the boat rocked, and I felt like a
silly girl who never had been proposed to before. Moreover, I blushed
scarlet. But, although I had, over and over, imagined his proposal,
none of my conceptions had been anything like this. I had pictured him
losing his head suddenly when we were walking alone in the woods, or
keeping guard over the fire in the living-room at night. I had--well,
there is no use going into details of what did not happen. Suffice it
to say that the proposal was delivered in tersest English under a four
o’clock sun, while he had an oar in each hand. And as I could not run
away, and as he gave me not the slightest excuse to be angry there was
nothing to do but to give him some sort of reply.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know,” I said.
“You mean that you are not sure that you love me, but that I may hope,”
and his face turned as crimson as mine--no easy feat, for it is about
the colour and consistency of leather.
“It is the sort of thing you can put in a good many different ways.
And there is so much to be considered. You have the double magnetism
of mind and sex, you always interest and never bore me, and you are
entirely different from any one I have ever known. I am twenty-six, and
like all women, eager to be in love--that I never have been makes my
longing for that particular heritage the keener. Moreover, I am on the
rebound from two years of cruel anxiety, days and nights of tears and
waiting. For the first time I feel that I belong to myself once more,
that the world and all its delights are mine--and you happen to be the
only man. How it would be if I had met you in England in every-day
conditions--that is the problem I cannot solve. These wild mountains,
this life full of novelty, the novelty of everything--Oh, I don’t know.”
“Have you any prejudice against marrying an American?”
“No prejudice. That is not the word. It is--well, the very novelty
that draws me to you is what I am most afraid of. You see--as I
said--I never met any one in the least like you before. The men I have
known, whether Englishmen or Europeans, are all men born of the same
traditions as myself. Fundamentally they are the same, no matter what
their individualities. But you--you are just as different fundamentally
as every other way. How do I know but that your great attraction for me
is partly the spell of your fascination, more still the novelty which
appeals to my somewhat various mind?”
“You certainly have given the matter some thought,” he said, smiling
with a sort of joyous sarcasm, but in his usual harsh abrupt tones.
“I’ll debate the matter if you like. Your uncertainty of mind is due
to the fact that you have gone fancy-free to the age of twenty-six.
Unless a woman early acquires the habit of falling in love, it becomes
more difficult every year--the disassociating of the mind from the
emotions--the surrender of self--you struck me when I first saw you
as being so implacably proud in your absolute self-ownership--it was
delicious--I knew you never had kissed any man--when will you give me
your answer?”
“When? Oh! Well--before--” brightening--“when Bertie is quite well.”
“Your brother is as good as well now. Soulé says there isn’t a microbe
in him. The Adirondacks and common sense are all he wants. He has
acquired both. Can you assert that you know it would be utterly
impossible to love me?”
“Oh, no, I can’t say that.”
“Then take the plunge. I will answer for the rest. You won’t love me
before you marry me. I feel sure of that. I am equally sure that you
will love me after. And all the differences from your traditional
man--they will transpose themselves into commonplaces when they have
become the familiar details of daily life.”
“But English women never marry American men,” I exclaimed, grasping
wildly at a straw. “It always is the other way.”
“There lies your chance for fame,” he said more lightly than one would
expect from his face. “You are already the most delightfully original
of women. Don’t do anything so commonplace as to go home, after having
all your blood made over by the Adirondack air, and marry a great
landlord with a rent-roll and six titles. Fancy the stimulation of
watching a determined American throttling a fortune out of his chaotic
country, helping him in his ambitious career, rising with him step
by step until he is head and shoulders above the seventy struggling
millions of the United States of America. Does not the prospect please
you? You see I am practical. I hate self-control. I know very little
about it. But I dare not be lover-like, not the least bit, till you
give me permission.”
“Oh, please don’t! Yes, the life _would_ be interesting. But I adore
politics. Would you throw over that Trust and go in heart and soul for
reform, with the ultimate intention of being a distinguished statesman?”
“Yes--but it would mean a curtailed income.”
“I have quantities of money--it _would_ be rather an original
international match, wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly would. And while you could expend your entire income on
dress and jewels if you chose, you would have to make up your mind to
live according to _my_ income.”
“Oh!”
“I _should_ be a failure if I settled down to live on a woman’s money
at my age--forty-one--; moreover my divorce from the interests of
capitalism would be deprived of its point. It would be the sacrifice
that would tell most in the beginning. No native of the British Isles
would be accused of the disinterestedness of marrying an unwealthy
American when protected by a rent-roll. Nobody would suspect your
income.”
“That is a nice polite thing to say to me! How would you like the idea
of people saying I married you to be supported--with the inference that
no one in England would have me?”
“I do not care a red cent what any one says or thinks if I get you.
That is the only thing in life that interests me at present.”
“Bertie might oppose it so violently that he would have another
hemorrhage.”
“If he were convinced that you loved me and if you wept a few
judicious tears, common gratitude would force him to consent without a
hemorrhage--and if you postponed the announcement a month he couldn’t
have another if he tried. Besides, he loves you devotedly--you know his
opposition would soon be exhausted. I have seldom seen a brother and
sister so united. He would end by feeling with you and making vivid
mental pictures of your great desire for happiness--if I could only
create that desire in you.”
“Oh, dear!” I said. “You must give me time. I _can’t_ say anything
definite for days and days. _Please_ talk of something else.”
“I have no intention of worrying you. Let us land here. I have another
lake to show you. If this is a cloister, rapt and holy, that is a
refuge for lost souls, dank and sinister.”
Much interested, and delighted at his ready conformity to my wishes, I
stepped ashore and followed him along a “runway” (deer run), for about
a mile. It turned and twisted through the wood and sometimes we had to
climb over fallen trees, not having the lightsome feet of the deer--who
could leap a house, I should think. It was not a dense wood, and the
sunlight fairly tumbled in, but so divided that it seemed palpable
enough to catch by the apronful. Some of the leaves looked to be made
of light, and a sea-gull--they nest in these forests--seemed swimming
and drinking in an upper lake of sunshine. But, abruptly, this
charming impression was behind us. The wood grew dark and I noticed
that the ground was very springy and soft--as our moors are in places.
“We are on a swamp--made of the decay of trees for a hundred years--”
he said--“but you are quite safe. It is at least five feet deep.”
This was sufficiently creepy--only five feet of rotted bark and leaves
between ourselves and the lake--although I reflected that if it could
support trees, our additional weight would not sink it--but in a moment
we stood on the brink of the lake.
Polly, I never have seen so desolate a spot. Even the mountains had
deserted it. The forest about it grew on land as flat as a plain, and
the trees hid the peaks which were only a few miles distant. And so
many of the trees were dead. Lightning had blasted them and scarcely a
spruce had escaped the blight. All about the shore the lake was choked
with rotting trunks, their naked branches projecting starkly above the
water--which had no movement. Its tarnished surface, as ripless as a
marsh, did not even reflect that deserted wood--they held themselves
aloof from each other; and yet they seemed dying together. The lake has
no inlet, Mr. N. had told me as we came along; it is fed by springs
and the moisture of the forest. I could imagine it dropping lower and
lower, as the trees about it died, until--a century hence?--a dry
bed choked with rotting trees would be visited as the tomb of one of
Nature’s failures. In England such a spot would be the headquarters of
a dozen dark and terrible stories, and would have done threadbare duty
in fiction. But old as it is it is still too young for that complicated
thing called life to have centred about it. It is on one of the New
World’s peaks, and not in another generation will she have time to
discover it. It is like those unhappy mortals who die and rot before
they have guessed that there is aught in the world to live for. Poor
stranded ugly duckling. I felt more pity for it than terror and almost
resented the calm insolence of its beautiful fellows--two thousand of
them, I am told. I wondered if its hidden springs met and gossipped
with other springs, who in turn poured their cold freshness into
other lakes, and with it their tale of a comrade forgotten by Nature
and despised by man. Doubtless they would deepen their amber-brown in
scorn, those spoilt beauties of the mountains, worshipped of men and
darlings of Nature; not a ripple of pity would agitate them, I would
vow.
“Look,” said Mr. N.
He pushed his feet hard against the swamp, putting much spring into his
body--and for a hundred yards the shore trembled, the trees moved as if
on a seesaw. My nerves are strong, but that was too much. I grasped his
arm.
“Come!” I said, “Take me away--please. And do you go ahead. I want to
look at a living being till I get out of this wood.”
And we went back to the lake of the water-lilies, that looked pure, and
sweet, and happy enough to pray for their lost neighbour.