I have restored N. to favour but now give him only half my time, that
he never may be quite sure of me again. Mr. C. apparently is quite as
high in my good graces, and while he is merely stimulated and on the
verge of becoming serious, N. shows a curious mixture of alarm, anger
and energetic determination--and has taken no more rows or walks with
Mrs. C. I have managed to convey to him that I will accept no divided
homage, and he is now only too eager to give me the whole of it, and
keeps out of Mrs. C.’s way. I must say she is a thoroughbred. She has
never betrayed jealousy or pique by the flutter of an eyelash. Perhaps
I’ll restore Mr. Carlisle to her presently, for I am rather tired of
him. There is none of the quality of the unexpected about him. He is
a well-proportioned mass of good points and good fortune--all trained
outward; he never has had the necessity--I believe his family has had
wealth and position for four generations--nor the inclination to look
very far into himself, consequently the crust has deepened and the
personality diminished. Mr. N., on the other hand, while as well-born,
has had all his faculties sharpened by a struggle with the impinging
forces that array themselves against the young man seeking to conquer
them without money. But first of all he received a college education
and distinguished himself by his talents and hard study. Given the
illuminating education first and the struggle of the wits for mastery
afterward, and adding to both the advantages and the principles of a
gentleman--and the inner life, the soul, of such a clever man could not
fail to be developed, complex and interesting. I have had only glimpses
of it, but it has excited my curiosity so that I naturally could not
watch another woman carry him off with equanimity. But I don’t think
there is any danger of another lapse. He has renewed his efforts to
interest me, and--it certainly _is_ clever of him--has not so much as
addressed me with his eyes again. That is to say there is no appeal
in them. But there are other things, Polly, and there is something
about the man that fearfully suggests the impossibility of failure.
But the weather is so heavenly just now that I wish everybody in the
world could have everything he wanted. It is like living in a crystal
dome and being bathed by invisible waves of soft stimulating perfumed
air; with splendid masses of rich and tender greens, of amber-browns
and turquoise blue, and the golden glory of sunsets for the eye, and a
vast uplifting silence. It is a sort of voluptuous heaven, virtuously
seductive.
The other day several of us walked down the mountain to one of the
farms to see the haying. It was a grand valley among the mountain-tops.
From the farm we visited we looked over rolling wooded hills, dotted
with houses, cattle, and a solitary white church spire, to a great
irregular chain of green mountains, encircling the horizon; other
peaks, faint and blue and distant, showing beyond their depressions;
and the forest, the forest, everywhere beyond the clearings of the
farmers.
The hay had been cut and the mechanical rake was gathering it into
heaps when we arrived, while men pitched it into a wagon where another
man stood with a pitchfork pressing it down. The sweetness of that air!
I never shall forget it; I was doubly glad I never had used perfumes.
It was drenched with the sweetness of newly mown hay and it almost
intoxicated me. I fancy that if Mr. N. had seized the occasion to press
his suit--however, I do not know. He did not, and as there were some
ten people in the field it would not have been so romantic, in spite of
the fragrance. They gave me a hand-rake and I raked quite a good deal
of the pretty green stuff that it seems shocking the farm-yard cattle
should eat.
I was very much disappointed in the appearance of these mountain
farmers. How few things in life resemble the traditions of them--we
have been so victimized by poets and romanticists. I expected great
brawny muscular fellows, with enormous legs, brown skins, and deep
chests. But they are pale and thin and stooping, not one looks as if
he would see sixty or as if he got the least pleasure out of life. Mr.
N. explained that hard work while they were young and no cessation of
it thereafter had broken their constitutions. In winter they work on
the roads which they are under contract to keep open, and of course
it snows and freezes heavily and frequently. During these same severe
months they also go in the woods and help to “draw” the logs the
lumbermen have cut during the summer for the pulp mills. These logs
have to be piled on sleds and drawn to the creek, to be floated down
to the valley after the spring rains. The men rise at three in the
morning, working by torches till sunrise, and seldom get to bed before
eleven at night! No wonder they are old men at forty. And I don’t
pretend to say how many cords of wood they cut a year, or how many
stone fences they have built, or how many thousand stones they dug from
the ground before they could farm.
When all the hay had been removed the field looked like a great green
lawn--brilliantly green under the five o’clock sun. Beyond was a dip,
then the thick masses of the dark green woods, touched into richer
green by that blaze of sunshine, then the mountains, sombre and faintly
blue. It is a beautiful land, Polly, but it depresses me to think that
while it means new blood and new life and all cure for the outsider
of leisure, it sucks jealously back into its own store of vitality
the little store of its struggling children. It is an unnatural and
snobbish mother, after all.
Mr. N. calls me “Maud Muller,” since I raked the hay. Did you ever come
across that Quaker poet, Whittier? He lived here in America, but I am
told he is the poet of the English quakers as well. Mr. N. recited
“Maud Muller” to me, as we stood apart in the field--after I had tired
of raking. It really is a beautiful and musical poem, but I could not
see anything quakerish about it.
When I write “I am told,” Polly, you may assume that my authority
is Mr. N. As far as my limited comprehension can perceive he knows
everything.