The aristocrats — A Reader’s Guide

there were such things outside of books and noospapers.”

“Well, you shall speak to my brother,” I said. “Come with me.” I led the way to the veranda, not without misgivings, for I did not know what sort of humour our invalid would be in. And he _was_ in a wax about something.

“Bertie,” I said, “here is a young person, native to this beautiful wilderness, who wants to speak to you, being under the delusion that Dukes are quite unlike ordinary mortals.”

Bertie, who was muffled up in a horrid old overcoat, with white mits on his hands, glowered over his book.

“What rot!” he exclaimed. “What infernal rot. I should think you would have more sense. I wish you’d get me a decent novel. I hate these American things--all analysis, epigrams, scenery and virtue. America must be a provincial hole. Fetch me----”

But I had hastened the maiden away. As she was about to retire to the back regions, she stopped and turned her head.

“Well,” she remarked, “I guess I’m as good as he is, anyway. White mits! My land! _He_ don’t make me feel nobody, only tired.” And she looked quite pleased as she flirted her skirts through the doorway.

This letter should go by parcel post!

_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.

_Boulder Lake_, June 23d

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.