It was Hewitt, the butler—the helper, Alice corrected herself. In those clothes, he was nothing like the Wards’ butler in the city. “Family’s having cocktails on the lawn,” he said. “You can join if you like.”
“Thank you,” said Alice—and only then did she notice, peering out from behind Hewitt’s leg, a tiny bright-eyed girl with a thin braid.
“Well, who’s this?” said Alice, and it was the first time Hewitt smiled.
“This is Tessie Jo,” he said.
The girl grinned. Buried her face into the fabric of Hewitt’s pant leg.
• • •
The front of the house was, in fact, the back of it: the lake side. The water looked cold and comfortable all at once, the sort of water that contained warm pockets, hidden springs.
Four adults in high-backed chairs sat on a small beach, facing away from her. Alice didn’t, at first, know who they were; and then she heard her sister’s laugh, charming and warm, a laugh that was often commented upon by others. Delphine had put on a hat that Alice had never seen before, and was sitting next to Peter. From the back the group looked like two couples; only the empty fifth chair said otherwise. In front of them, the little girl—Tessie Jo—ran back and forth across the beach, stopping from time to time to make piles of wet sand.
Peter caught sight of Alice before anyone else and rose from his chair with formality.
“Miss Ward,” he said.
She approached, trying to look carefree. But again she felt ill with pretending.
One of the other members of the party stood, too, and Alice recognized him as Peter’s father. He had to be: he was a white-haired version of the son, similarly thin, groomed, similarly severe.
“Miss Ward,” said the elder. “We’re happy to make your acquaintance.”
Alice had reached the group by then, and she turned her back to the lake, facing the house and all of them, standing awkwardly in the middle of the little arc of chairs, as if she were about to break into song. What, she wondered, could Peter possibly have said about her? Peter, who had known her for all of one night?
Peter’s mother—she assumed—had remained sitting, as had Delphine. The mother looked younger than the father, but dowdier, carrying thirty extra pounds, wearing a dress that—Alice thought it before she could stop herself—did nothing for her figure. She smiled abstractedly in Alice’s direction.
Peter stepped forward. “Did you find your accommodations comfortable?” he said.
Alice was struck, suddenly, by the stiff way he spoke, as if he were from another time. Their friends in the city were loose-lipped, irreverent, delighted by scandal. Politeness, they believed, was only to be directed at those who ranked lower than you, who served you in some way.
“Very comfortable,” said Alice. “Thank you.”
• • •
Dinner went better. The wine was helping Alice, who had only been tipsy twice before in her life. She did not like the taste of alcohol or the way it made her body feel. But she did enjoy the way it gave the room a warm, comforting shine. Delphine carried the conversation, and for once she was grateful for her sister’s vivacity, even as it emphasized Alice’s lack thereof.
The talk moved from the history of the Adirondack Mountains to the daily operation of the farm down the road: a special passion of the elder Van Laars. Then the flies—always the flies—and finally gentle inquiries into their life in the city, their education, their pursuits.
“And how is old George Barlow?” asked Mr. Van Laar Sr. in between bites. “Haven’t seen him since Peter’s college days. I always found him funny.”
In his voice was a certain dismissiveness, and Alice looked to Delphine to see if she would be offended. But instead, she smiled.
“He’s still funny,” she said.
“Liking his work?”
“His studies, you mean,” said Delphine, and Mr. Van Laar raised an eyebrow.
“Surely not. At his age?”
“Oh yes,” said Delphine, conspiratorially. “He’s dropped out of the family business to pursue a degree in ornithology at Columbia.”
There was a twinkle in her eye as she delivered the news—which had been the gossip of last season in Manhattan, delivered over and over around the city as the punch line to a joke. Ornithology! If there was one thing Alice respected about her sister, it was that she had made a bold choice when selecting the man who would become her husband. George Barlow—though he came from wealth—was in no other way an obvious match for Delphine. He was not even very handsome; he was thin and slight, with an overbite, with dark eyebrows that were constantly furrowed. And yet her sister loved him: this much was plain to Alice.
“I’m sure you knew that, Dad,” said Peter. “It caused quite a stir.” But in his voice, too, Alice detected humor.
“I should say so,” said Mr. Van Laar. He took a bite, and chewed it pensively. “You know, I thought Cornell was the place to study birds.”
“It is,” said Delphine. “But we couldn’t leave Manhattan, so Columbia had to do.”
“Is he earning good marks?”
“Top of his class,” said Delphine.
This was when the conversation flagged. The sound of cutlery on plates could be heard throughout the room.
Delphine said: “May we hear about the summer camp?”
Peter and his father exchanged glances. Then Peter began.
• • •
In the 1870s, when the Adirondacks were still a nascent vacation destination for New Englanders, the original Peter Van Laar visited from Massachusetts and fell in love with the land.
He returned several times to conduct land surveys. At last—with the help of a skillful local guide—he selected the plot on which Self-Reliance would be built.
The Van Laars’ version of the story, Alice couldn’t help but notice, was different from the driver’s. The people of Shattuck weren’t mentioned much. In their version, Peter I—pronounced, in the Van Laars’ lexicon, Peter One—carried lumber in bundles by hand, climbed tall ladders, personally oversaw the arrival of every part of the original structure from Switzerland, and made certain it was reassembled correctly. Just down the road from the house, a working farm was built to ensure that no guest would ever go without the comforts of home.
Peter I was known as unconventional. “The last Van Laar,” said Peter III, “who could possibly be described as such.” He smiled tightly. Continued: he was impish, playful, childishly exuberant until his dying day, beloved and reviled in equal measure by business associates. The subject of gossip columns. The possessor of dozens of mistresses.
When Peter I announced his idea for a summer camp, therefore, it was met with no surprise—but with a great deal of amusement, even ridicule, from his social peers.
Still, Peter I persevered. He dedicated to this cause a group of buildings he had originally constructed as hunting cabins. In his eighties already, no longer able to participate in physical activity with as much vigor as he had previously done, he commissioned a group of locals from Shattuck to build the rest of the necessary structures on the grounds. His dream was to indoctrinate generations of children in the importance of conservation, of responsible stewardship of the land. He named the camp after his favorite writer and thinker, another great advocate for the outdoors. The man who, incidentally, had also written the essay after which the main house was named. Camp Emerson ran for one eight-week session each summer, said Peter III. At first, its charges were few in number. But after several successful seasons—operating at a loss—the camp’s reputation grew. Within a decade, Camp Emerson became a sought-after destination for the children of well-to-do New Englanders and Manhattanites. Today, most of the participants were the children of friends and acquaintances of the Van Laars.
Delphine clapped her hands together, delighted. “Oh, I love the sound of him,” she said. “The first Peter. I love the whole story. Don’t you, Alice?”
“Yes,” Alice said.
“Did you ever attend yourself?” asked Delphine, and Peter shook his head quickly.
“Camp Emerson? Heavens, no,” he said, as if she had asked something strange.
• • •
Across the table from Alice, Mrs. Van Laar had little to say. She sat pleasantly and quietly in her blousy, unfashionable dress, with her lipstick slightly askew. She smiled every so often at Alice, and she ate her dinner with real pleasure, closing her eyes as she chewed.
