William and Ella stood by the dock at Camp Pine Knot to greet Poultney and friends.
“William, you look marvelous! The great outdoors does wonders for your countenance!” Poultney said. “Look at this, your hands are so rough and calloused. What have you been doing all spring?”
“Let me show you to the guest house,” William said. He walked the group to guest quarters with Louise trailing close behind.
“It’s right out of the Alps!” Poultney exclaimed with wonder at the building William was transforming into a chalet.
“Yes,” William said with pride, “my workmen have indispensable knowledge of the lumber here, what works best, where and how to join the logs together. I’ve shown them a small model of a chalet, explained my vision, and they go right to work on it.” He led the guests to their cabins.
“When does father plan to arrive?” William asked Ella later while they sat on the front porch of the new cottage he had built for her.
“He said he would be here in a few weeks,” she said. “He was a bit vague about his arrangements.”
“Father, vague? What a surprise!”
“Hello there! So this is where you’re hiding.” It was Poultry. Not one to rest, he’d gone looking for Ella and William as soon as he was done unpacking his things. William gave them a tour, showing them all the buildings, except the cabin in the woods he shared with Louise, who had long since gone to the kitchen to make supper for the guests. Loud voices, hammers, and saws were the background music; the place was alive with construction. There’d been numerous improvements. Even Papa should be satisfied, Ella thought. The glass windows were in place on the dining hall, a couple of new outhouses were being built and placed in the woods behind the cabins, and the guest quarters were brilliantly done, neither too polished, nor too rustic.
“What’s this?” Ella asked when they reached the shore where the men were building a small cabin on top of massive logs lashed together with hemp.
“This, dear girl, is mother’s escape from the insects while she stays at Pine Knot,” William told Ella. “It’s a houseboat, as requested by our father.”
“Well, I think we should be the first to christen it,” Poultney said.
“Yes, it’d be a good idea, make sure it floats and all that. When the water warms up a little more we can launch it and idle out on the lake for a day,” William said.
They headed to the dining hall for a supper of fish and venison and the good wine Ella had brought from North Creek.
“What do you think?” Ella was sitting with Poultney on the front porch of the chalet waiting to hear his critique of her latest poem: Moon and Sea.
“Lugubrious,” Poultney said, languidly handing her journal back.
“How so?” Ella said.
“It just is.”
“No, it’s not. Not all of it anyway.”
“Yes, it is. Let’s see, ‘We sat together watching the glorious scene; And if each longed to reach the other’s hand ‘twas only known to the moon and sobbing sea’. Now if that isn’t mournful I don’t know what is,” he said.
“You never have anything nice to say about my writing. Did you notice that? You look for faults.”
“That’s not true. I just don’t extol you and you don’t like it.”
“That’s not the point! And you have no sense of good writing when you see it, Poultney,” she said.
“Really Ella, you asked what I thought of your poem. I told you and you can’t take it. Do you want my opinion or not?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, brooding. Poultney looked through the canopy of trees at the white trilliums sprinkled like powdered sugar on the forest floor.
He paused and glanced sideways at her before continuing. “Ella, every poem you’ve sent me to read lately has been a little self-indulgent. You need to get out of North Creek more often.”
“You know as well as I do I’d love that, but father won’t allow me to go anywhere without a chaperone, and William’s been busy.” She gestured to indicate Pine Knot as the reason she was a prisoner in North Creek.
Poultney shook his head and threw his arms wide. “Look around you. There’s plenty here to draw on for your poetry if you need inspiration. Much better I’d think than pining over that lad of yours from Scotland or wherever. ‘Come maiden, weep with me for love is slain’ and all that.” Poultney mock-slashed his throat with his pointer finger and grimaced.
Ella was not amused. “I’ve written poems about this place. I started on a piece called Raquette,” she said defensively.
“Well why don’t you let me read that then instead of your unrequited love poems.”
“I might, if I felt you wouldn’t make fun of it.” Ella picked up her journal and descended the porch steps in a huff. Poultney sighed.
“Where is Louise from?” Poultney asked William as they all sat in the living room of the chalet, close to the roaring flames in the fireplace with a decanter of sherry at hand ready to be poured.
“She’s part Mohawk,” William said. As if on cue, Louise entered. She sat down in a chair in the corner, picked up some mending and started to stitch.
Ella sat down while Poultney poured himself and others a sherry before taking a seat himself.
“None for Louise?” Ella asked.
“I don’t drink alcohol,” Louise answered.
“Well, my dear, you hardly know what you’re missing. So tell us your story. How did you end up here at Pine Knot?” Poultney said.
Louise proceeded to tell them how she and Ike met William through Charlie Bennett. She left out that she shared William’s bed. Only Ike knew that William followed her into the woods to the small hunting cabin. He had instructed Louise to keep their relationship hidden. He said it was for her own protection. “These people, my family and our friends, they will not understand,” William had told her.
William knew this baffled Louise. She didn’t understand the customs of marriage from William’s society. What she knew from her time in the Northern Woods was what she saw. Men and women lived as one because they wanted to be together, to have a family, to stay alive. You grew in love because you had to with your mate. There were not many choices. Official documents, ceremonies, these were all foreign to her. Her mother never talked about it, her grandmother only told her about the feasts they had in the longhouse to celebrate the unions of her aunts to her uncles. She did not witness any of these occasions. What she had with William was in step with what people did in the Adirondacks: they landed somewhere, settled, and made a home and family. The conventions that existed in the Adirondack woods were tenacity and common sense. If you didn’t have these, you didn’t survive.
The tranquil days were over as soon as Dr. Durant arrived. Although gracious to his guests, he harangued William with questions about the progress of the buildings from the minute he landed on the dock at Pine Knot. William and Ella found refuge on the Barque. They packed up their things, brought their friends along with Louise and Ike and told the Doctor it would be best if he stayed behind to watch over the workmen. It took five men to push the massive floating log hut off the beach and into the water with the party on it. They waved and lingered on shore to watch as Ike used the long pole to push the boat out to the open waters. William noted their long looks when his father barked at them to get back to work.
That evening as the group sat around the fire laughing about their day, Louise prepared the special tonic she made out of the bark of Mountain ash.
“This is delicious,” Dr. Durant said, lifting his glass in the air. “What’s in this concoction?”
“It’s made with the bark of the Mountain ash,” William said.
“You’ve got me drinking bark?” He spat some out of his mouth and it dribbled onto his beard. He wiped it off his chin with a handkerchief. “My God, William, you’ve been in the woods too long, you’re becoming one of the natives. Louise — get me a straight whiskey, now!”
Louise, who was sitting in the corner mending, looked up, startled. So was William. For the past few months he realized, no one had ordered Louise to do anything. She did what she needed to do when it needed to be done. If she didn’t do something it was because the deed was uncalled for.
William knew it was a bad idea for Louise to serve his father anything more. He’d clearly had too much wine at dinner. “It’s not as if you’re chewing on bark, it’s macerated after all.” He got up and made his father another drink, watering it down.
“What the devil does that mean? I’m no cook.”
Poultney saved the day. “Louise, this drink is lovely. And so are you.” She turned to Dr. Durant, “It means, Thomas, that she soaked the bark in sugar water before adding it to your rye.”
“Humph.” He didn’t agree but he decided not to argue. He finished the tonic in two gulps and asked for another one. “Here’s to taming the wilderness!” He raised glass.
“Here’s to enjoying the scenery,” William countered.
Poultney stole a look at Ella. “I’ll drink to that.”
A week went by and then it was time for Poultney and his friends to go back to New York City.
“I’ll be back in August,” Poultney promised Ella.
“August is too long.”
“While I’m gone you can think of me and write. Just try to be a bit more upbeat will you? As far as I can tell there is nothing unrequited about our love.” He smiled at her.
Ella smiled.
“It’s time we head back to North Creek and the city,” Dr. Durant said to Ella and William over dinner a few days after their guests had left.
William feigned indifference. “Yes, I know what you mean,” he answered. “I’m getting a bit antsy up here with no other companions but the workmen. But do you think it wise to leave them here alone? We have numerous supplies that could easily be purloined.” William knew and trusted his men, as he had weeded out those he didn’t, but he needed his father to doubt so that it would be his idea, not William’s, to stay.
“Hmm, you may have a point. Where’s Bennett?”
“Charlie Bennett is busy building his hotel. I haven’t seen or heard from him all spring. And that’s another thing to consider. The buildings are not all furnished. I was planning on meeting with one of the Stott’s craftsman. I hear he makes quality furnishings. We’ll save ourselves a lot of money if we can at least have some of the furniture made locally.”
“Well, then. When did you plan to do all of this? Maybe I can wait another week.”
But not William. He wanted his father gone. “Sadly, it will take longer than that. I’m not sure when the Stotts arrive. And Frederick asked me to check in with him on his plans for the Prospect House on Blue Mountain.”
“Oh yes, I forgot about that. I saw Frederick on the way in and he mentioned you were coming to offer guidance. You should see what he has already developed.”
William could just imagine from all of the grand plans he had heard the guides talking about; it sounded like one of the hotels on Fifth Avenue, but in Blue Mountain.
“I’d like to stay behind as well,” Ella piped in.
Oh God, William thought, she’s going to ruin it. I had it all planned to ask father if she could stay and now he’ll say no automatically.
“No.” Dr. Durant didn’t even bother to look at her.
“But Papa! What am I supposed to do back at North Creek? I’ll be so bored!”
“Ella, leave us. Now!” he ordered.
Ella opened her mouth to speak but stopped her verbal tirade when she saw the look William gave her. It said: Shut up. I’ll handle this. And so she did. She got up as daintily as her fury would allow and left the table.
“You know,” William said once she was safely out of earshot, “as much as I would hate to be distracted by Ella, you may be doing mother and yourself a favor leaving her behind with me at Pine Knot as well.”
“How so?” The doctor put a forkful of venison in his mouth.
“I know she pesters mother about how bored she is at home.”
William knew that Ella would get his mother into a frenzy about how miserable life was in North Creek, enough so that his father would eventually relent to their requests to visit New York City. But these excursions, sporadic as they were, cost him a fortune. The women always seemed to need, and purchase, the latest fashions in the windows of the many shops that lined Fifth Avenue. William knew his father would be glad not to have to listen to their banter about these trips at the dinner table. Besides, it would save him the angst of paying the bills.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea after all. You stay here, with your sister. I am warning you though, I expect to see some progress when I come back in August. You must have this place in shape by then. Don’t let Ella distract you from your work.”
William sighed and accepted his father’s decision with good grace. “Of course, Father. I understand,” William said. “And as if there wasn’t enough to do already, Ella informed me that Howard and Estelle may visit and Poultney plans to come back and bring a schoolmate from Yale.”
“Good. The more the merrier. As our guests spread the news with their friends how wonderful the experience is, we’ll win more investors in our properties.”
“We will indeed,” William smiled inwardly.