The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

After Stratford (a most lovable old town, of charming gray-shingle houses, which, to escape loneliness, crowded close to the edge of the elm-shaded road) we crossed the Housatonic. The shores stretched away into mystery, so broad was the river; and the moment we were out of a town, in the country, the scene was like a dream of Indian days, just interrupted by waking now and then at sight of some houses grouped round a common. There was Milford, for instance, which looked as if nothing could happen in its pretty peacefulness, yet it was the hiding-place of a regicide judge who ran away to America after the head of Charles the First was off!

At New Haven, the "City of Elms," we could have turned toward Boston along a fine road by way of Springfield, but we preferred to keep to the charming coast road, and it goes without saying that we stopped to prowl about among the college buildings; also we lunched. "A village of learning and light" the place is called, but of course its village days are outgrown, though the learning and light will remain forever, while Yale lasts. Washington reviewed the Yale students on the Green, which is the historic centre of New Haven, just as the college is its ever-pulsing heart. (I wonder if the dear boys had already invented that lovely Yale yell, and gave it in Washington's honour?) Benedict Arnold helped also to write the romance of the Green by drawing up his company there. The great elms which look down on it now must have seen him and perhaps read his treacherous mind, for they say the elms of New Haven are the most intelligent and learned anywhere in New England except at Harvard itself; and you know that knot-holes are trees' eyes. They don't tell this to any one save their most intimate friends, but Jack and I know tree language. At home in the park we put our ears against their trunks and listen in the spring, when they are most talkative and don't mind telling their best secrets.

The brown and red Yale buildings, restful and interesting, Jack and I loved, and we insisted on lingering to look at them, though every one was impatient with us except Pat, Peter, and the three dear bareheaded Boys. Peter thought the beautiful white library and its surroundings "like a vista of Washington seen through a diminishing glass"; so evidently he has been to Washington in his mysterious past!

If some of us hadn't suffered from motoritis and speeditis rather badly we should have pottered about half the day, but ours is a hard procession to manage. Besides, Ed Caspian hates to have Pat interested in things, because then he's obliged to get out and look at them with her, or risk her in Peter's society. This danger he runs only when he can't run himself. He is so proud of his well-shaped feet that he has his boots made too small, and if the weather is warm it's a real penance for him to walk far. There's really something pathetic about this, or would be were Caspian only a little less bumptious than he is, for if gossip tells the truth, the millionaire of to-day was once one of those sterling socialists who began their career to fame walking the king's highway with bare feet and their spare clothes tied up in their one handkerchief. (How awkward if they had a cold in the head!)

After all the fuss he made about "wasted time," we arrived early at New London, where we planned to spend the night. Something happened there, but I haven't come to that yet. First, I must tell you just a little about the dazzling beauty of the way! I should like to tell you a lot, and force you to stop at every place en route. Easthaven, with trees and a church steeple which almost succeed in reaching heaven; Branford, where Yale College was founded, and where there are the very nicest seventeenth century houses you ever saw —fighting houses with overhanging upper stories where you could look down through holes in the floor and pot at Indians trying to break in; Guilford, prettiest of all the villages on Jack's list of places where he'd like to live (we almost envied Fitz Greene Halleck, the poet, for being born there); Clinton, with its parklike common which reminded us of the Lichtenthal Allée at Baden-Baden; old Saybrook, worthy of its name, and thrilling for its antique shops; old Lyme, the haunt of artists, glimmering white in a grove of elms; Flanders village – East Lyme – where all the flowers on earth were jumbled sweetly together like happy families in every garden. But if I did delay you thus, your poor mind would become like one of these jumbled gardens, full of sweet things impossible to sort. Mine is like that already; but, after all, it doesn't matter so much for me, because Jack has promised to bring me this way once again before we go back home. Then, if I've mixed one village with another in a kind of mental earthquake, I can rearrange my tout ensemble. Impressions of the country, however, I shall never lose or blur disastrously with those of any other part: it is too individual, and makes too clear a picture.

Much of our way was like a private park bigger than any king or emperor in Europe ever owned. Then, after miles of trees with blue, misty vistas hanging between, like painted gauze curtains, we flashed suddenly out to open spaces purple-red with fireweed, and vast, flat stretches of tawny marshland swept with tides of colour, rainbow streaks of amethyst and rose-topaz. The Sound was within sight and smell. Salt perfume of ocean mingled with spicy fragrance from the sunburnt bayberry flung in thick ruglike masses upon bare gray rock, and azure veinings of the sea, stray among the marshes, made strong-growing water plants give out a tang that was tonic to our nostrils.

You may think that such a picture could be sketched in colour along the coastline of almost any country, but if so, you will be mistaken, for all this as we saw it was extraordinarily individual and American. Why, exactly, I can't define, but you will understand, if Monty doesn't. Though you say you haven't been much in New England you know what the soul of America is. Well, this soul, whose first (remembered) spark came from the Indians, was brightened to living fire by the Puritans from over the sea who called the world they found New England. Somehow, the combination is unique, and the same curious sense of personality runs through everything, linking all together as a golden thread might link many different coloured beads. The cedars crowning the hills could be only American cedars. "Joe Pye weed" (whose Indian name is lost, but whose pinky purple colour is ever present) is so patriotic a plant that it would perish rather than grow in foreign parts. The ponds crusted with water-lily pads and ringed round with young trees like children dancing hand in hand seem to sing "We are of New England!" And even the apple trees – immense domed tents of green and pink brocade – are like colonial ladies dressed in their hoop-skirted best.

New London, on the contrary – when we came to it at last – struck us as being like some town of England, or of Scotland. That was only a first impression, however, and a superficial likeness. We soon began to find out the differences, for New London was our night stop, and we had hours before dark to criticise and admire. It hadn't been a long run, as runs go, from New York, and at New Haven we heard motor fiends at luncheon near us in the hotel talk of "pushing on to Boston." Just such a fiend would Caspian be if he could, because he so hates the stops devoted to sight-seeing; but Jack and Peter are, after all, powers behind the throne, or, rather, behind the engines. They don't drive, yet unostentatiously they direct less determined or less firmly concentrated minds. Nobody except your Molly realized that we were to spend an afternoon and night at New London because Jack Winston and Peter Storm wished it, but so, indeed, it was. Nobody but your Molly guessed that a sight-seeing plot was hatching against Caspian and – incidentally – against Mrs. Shuster. Idonia Goodrich had been carefully incited to keen interest in New London because of the Yale and Harvard boat races, and though nothing was going on, she wanted to see the place where such things did go on. Where Idonia goes, the fickle Larry likes to go just now, for when a good-looking girl flags him with the signal, "I'm ready to flirt if you are!" he simply can't resist, which means that where Idonia and Larry go, thither goeth Lily also. As for Pat, she knows that actively seeing sights is her one hope (if any) of escape from Caspian. Consequently she had listened with almost unnatural interest to Jack's talk, before starting, of the principal "features" to be sought out at our first night's stopping place.

Were it not for Caspian's feet, I'm afraid dear Pat wouldn't have cared a whalebone to go and stare at the harbour because New London had been a big whaling centre. She wouldn't have bothered with John Winthrop's historic mill, which has never been out of use from his day to ours. She wouldn't have rushed from Nathan Hale's schoolhouse to gape at the Perkins Mansion, where Washington and Lafayette stayed; or if she had she would have consented to go in the car. As it was, however, that girl's energy was frenzied, and her exertions were rewarded at last by the dropping out of Caspian from her train. He limped back to the hotel, furious, leaving Pat with me and Jack, Peter, Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Pat was a new person when she had shed him, and we ended up our excursion with a wild, weird "movie." It was fun! I never laughed so much; and Peter Storm was like a boy. A cloud fell upon us, however, and damped our spirits as we returned to the hotel to dress for dinner. We knew that Caspian would be in the sulks, and that somehow Pat would be made to pay for her pleasure.

There he sat in the big hall, where he could see us as we filed guiltily in, very late. As a protest, he was already dressed, and looked like one of those neat little sugar men with yellow hair, red lips, and black coat that you see on lower middle-class wedding cakes. He held a book in his hand, but had been talking, or trying to talk, to a big, dark, handsome man who lolled in a neighbouring chair. In a flashing glance we gained the impression that the big fellow was bored by Caspian and had sought refuge from him behind a newspaper. But at sight of us Caspian hastily stiffened into an attitude of martyred waiting, and at the same instant the tall man jumped up with a queer exclamation. His paper dropped. He looked as if he saw a ghost, and – that ghost was Peter Storm!

"Mon Dieu!" or words to that effect I saw, rather than heard, him say. Then Peter got to him in two or three gigantic strides, as if in seven-leagued boots, and thrust his face close to that other astonished face. What Peter said I could not catch, because he spoke in a whisper and very fast. What the big man (bigger than Peter) said in return could not have been caught by the ear of a fox, for he said nothing at all – except with his eyes.

They, at first, expressed something like horror. Then they softened, or dulled, I couldn't tell which, and suddenly it occurred to me to flash a glance to Caspian. He was almost ill with curiosity. Pat had turned to stare at him, too, knowing already, through the bitter experience which had made him her fiancé, that C. wanted only a weapon with which to do Peter harm.

Certainly it did look as if Peter were desperately anxious to choke the man into silence. He had the air of wanting to stop some irrevocable word from being said, of urging, explaining, almost entreating. "What can it mean?" I asked myself, determined, however, to keep my faith in the Stormy Petrel at any price.

As I thought of all sorts of things, I heard Pat say, "I'm not going to dress. It's too late, and I'm too tired. I'll go in to dinner just as I am, if you will, Molly."

Instantly I guessed what was in her mind. The bright child was rallying round Peter. If I hadn't been sure before that she'd fallen in love with him, I should have been sure then! It was love that made her think quickly and find the best way to defend him – as she had found a way before, by sacrificing herself. She knew that, if he were left alone, Ed Caspian would try to get hold of the stranger (whom he evidently knew) the instant Peter and he parted. He would pump him if possible, and Peter's secret, whatever it was, would be at the enemy's mercy.

I rose to the occasion, or, rather, I sat down on it. I subsided into the chair close to Caspian which the man had jumped up from like a Jack-in-a-box. Pat followed my example by plumping into a seat on Ed's other side, and in common decency he could not bolt. "Why, yes," I said, "I should like nothing better than an excuse to dine as I am. Mr. Caspian is so smart, he must bear off the honours for us all."

Jack, of course, saw what we were up to, for he had seen the whole drama – tragedy, comedy, whatever it was! British though he is, it never takes him longer than a lightning (conductor) flash to seize any situation in which I am concerned. But I don't need to tell you that! You, too, have married a Britisher, and know just how much that dear old American joke about English slowness of comprehension amounts to – unless the creature is putting on airs!

"We'll none of us dress," said he, with a wicked gleam in his eye; the Boys joined him; and the dapper wedding-cake figure was surrounded and swallowed up by a wave of untidy tourists. We didn't leave him alone for a minute, until Peter Storm and the stranger were seen returning from their confab, and going toward the restaurant door together, without a backward glance for us.

Things were thus safe for the time being. I announced that I was rested, and would like to dine at once. Pat said that she was famished! We went to dinner therefore – picture it! – without even washing our hands.

Peter and the stranger sat at a little table at the farthest corner of the room. Caspian looked ready to burst with rage at being "circumvented," and to sink into the floor with shame of his unsuitably clad companions. As for me, I smiled at Jack a sardonic smile which would have made a grand "close up" in the "movie" we had just seen. The most experienced villain couldn't have improved on it.

"Say, who is that chap feeding over there with Storm?" inquired the innocent Tom.

"That," said Caspian, "is the military attaché of the Russian Embassy in Washington. He is here on business. His name is Captain Ipanoff. He is also a Prince."

His being "also a Prince" explained to me why Ed, our prize snob, should have tried to lure him from his newspaper with honeyed conversation. But it didn't explain why his eyes should start out of his head at sight of Peter Storm.

Up to date, the thing hasn't been explained; for now, as I write to you, it is the same night, and so far as I know, P. S. and his Prince are still together. I don't want – at least, I don't want to want – to know anything about Peter Storm that he doesn't wish known. But Ed Caspian will know if possible. I do wonder what the mystery can be, don't you? I shall write again almost at once, whether I have any more to tell on this subject or not. I can't stop long in the middle of the secret – I mean the trip!

Your very affectionate

    Molly.

P. S. Jack says curiosity is a misunderstood virtue. Without it the world would not have progressed. He's forgotten Pandora. But no, perhaps not. Hope was at the bottom of her box, and we should have missed it if she hadn't let the winged Troubles out.

XIX

PATRICIA MOORE TO ADRIENNE DE MONCOURT

    Moon Pond.
    Newport, R. I.

Mignonne:

I have found waiting here a letter from my Adrienne. It has been forwarded from Kidd's Pines. What can have happened to this poor letter I do not know, but it has been a long time on the way. I see it is written just after the last one, which I have had – it is two weeks now; so it brings me not much of news except that you like the American cousin more even than before, and a crisis draws near. All my love and good wishes go to you, chérie. Already it must be that things are settling themselves for you and your Marcel (I am sure he is your Marcel!), and the wishes will arrive late. Perhaps you will send me a cable; and it may come at any time, for you will be at home with dear Madame your mother and not with the Sisters. But I shall not really expect the message by telegram, for in France one does not send cables as one does in America. One thinks twice. It is an important decision to take.

As for me, all remains as when I wrote you last. I thought at first that I could not go on being engaged, but would have to break. Now I find it too difficult to do this, though I have not saved my poor Larry from his sacrifice. He bears up well, but that is because we are en automobile, and there are changes of scene, and nice people to make him forget. He is wonderful about forgetting, but I fear he may collapse when by and by he must look reality in the face. It is not always a pretty face!

I sometimes forget, too, for a while, but it is more difficult, for a girl cannot choose her own companions as a man can. I lie awake at night thinking of the future, because if I am to help Larry in a big, useful way I must marry – not just go on being engaged. Much money is to be settled on me, and I will give all to Larry. I feel as if I should not like to take any for myself. You and I used to say we should not let ourselves be married off to men we could not love, as so many of the old girls at school have done. But circumstances can be very strong. With me, there are complications. It will not be fair to dear Larry to speak of them. I do not see how they can arrange themselves without my marrying. Still, I try to think of the present and not of the future. I have this tour before me. It is not perfect, but at least I cannot be a Mrs. till it is over!

Here at Newport we visit friends of Larry's, all of us except the nice Tom, Dick, and Harry I told you of; a Senator Collinge, Mrs. Shuster's friend; the Goodrich family, who are so large and handsome, and a family of two who are a bride and bridegroom, and Mr. Storm. He is not at Newport at all, though the others who are not at Moon Pond stay in a pretty little hotel almost like a private house. It seems odd, they do not have big hotels in this wonderful place. The rich people who have made the new part so wonderful do not like to have tourists come and stay if they can help it. They want Newport to belong to them, and so it does, except the old town, which Molly Winston and her husband and I like best of all.

Do you not think "Moon Pond" a fascinating name for a place? The pond is in the garden of these friends where we spend two days and nights; and in front of the large lawn, with its great clumps of blue hydrangea, rolls the Atlantic Ocean. It would be lovely to stay here, for it is a beautiful place (a very big house built of gray shingles, soft gray like the feathers on a mother bird's breast, and not looking too big in a showy way, because it is rambling, with many verandas and unexpected nooks), but they will give us a dinner in celebration of being engaged. That spoils everything. I am glad Mr. Storm will not be at the dinner. I should not like to see his eyes. Mr. Caspian is not nice to him, but he is better than at first, because I was very angry at some things he did. I said I would not be engaged to a man who could be rude to another poorer in money than himself.

Yes, I think Peter Storm must be very poor in money, or he would not go on in this situation with Mrs. Shuster, who has Mr. Caspian for one of her best friends, yet lets him behave as he likes to her secretary. Mr. Storm is a proud man and of a high temper. One can see that when his eyes look like topaz fire, and his face turns red. Yet he shuts his mouth and makes fists of his hands, and says nothing instead of hitting or answering back. I am so sorry for him! He is the most interesting man you could meet. But I suppose you never will meet, for he will be gone out of my life long before you and I see each other once more – if we ever do.

He does not like to be in a fashionable place, and Newport is perhaps the most fashionable in this country. He came with us for the tour, as far as New London, a big, nice town which has a river called the Thames, like real London. Then he met a man he knew, and said he would join us again after Newport, at Fall River, on the way to Boston, which will be our next stop. The friend he met was rather mysterious. Or no, the way of meeting was mysterious. It was a great surprise to them both, and Mr. Storm took the man – a Russian Prince – off to a distance and never let him come near us for a minute. Mr. Caspian knew the Prince to speak to, and he would have asked him about Mr. Storm if he could, but Molly Winston and I would not let him. If Mr. Storm has something he wishes to keep a secret, it is his affair. But there is one thing I worry about a little. I do not see why I may not tell you that!

Before I made my promise to him, Mr. Caspian was so silly as to be jealous of Mr. Storm. He thought, like all of us, that there was some mystery, but unlike us, he believed it was a bad one. He wished to do Mr. Storm some harm. He even threatened to hire a detective to watch always what he did. But after we were engaged Mr. Caspian did not feel the same. I suppose he said to himself that he was more safe. He did not want Mr. Storm to go away, because he enjoyed being a tyrant to him, and showing his power over me.

It was like that till New London. I was rather silly there, I am afraid, but I was so tired of being with Mr. Caspian every minute. He seems to squeeze out my vitality like water from a sponge! I took a revenge by making him tired – in his feet, not his head. We all left him to go home and rest and be very cross while we enjoyed ourselves. But it is not me he would punish for that. It is poor Peter Storm! He begins to be jealous again as before, and I am afraid he may do the horrid thing he has threatened to do. A word he dropped made me think of it. I wish I could give Mr. Storm some hint to be careful. But even when I see him again (it won't be till day after to-morrow) I shall not dare. Perhaps I can get Molly to speak.

I can't help missing Mr. Storm when we go about seeing beautiful things. I told you long ago I liked seeing things with him. But I keep with Molly and Jack Winston as much as I can when we are out of doors, here at Newport. Larry's friends are very good. They let us go about as we like and come in when we like. Now that Mr. Storm is away, Mr. Caspian does not worry to be with me every minute. He knows some fearfully rich people at Newport. It is strange, isn't it, that he likes rich people much better than poor (except Larry and me), though he used to be a socialist and give lectures against capital? Peter Storm says that to be a true socialist is the finest thing in the world, and can save the world from itself; but I do not think Mr. Caspian can have been that kind, as he does not even like to talk of socialism now.

His friends here, the Hodges, live in a house which Jack Winston says could swallow up and digest Buckingham Palace. He has made me meet them, and they are very pleasant, but not so restful as the Langworthys, where we stay. When the Hodges find I want to see sights, they are surprised and laugh. It is not the fashion with people who live at Newport to see sights. They have seen everything in the whole world, and care only for seeing each other – the ones they know. Nobody else is worth knowing. Mr. Caspian tries to be like that, but it seems an imitation. With the real ones it is true, and not for effect.

It seems that our family must be very old, because everybody, even these grandest ones, are kind to us, and think it is great fun that we keep a hotel. Molly and Jack they like of course, because M. and J. are "great swells."

Now, chérie, I must stop, and go for a walk with them. Molly calls it a "potter." But you will not know what that word means!

A hundred wishes and loves! Your

    Patrice.

XX

NIGHT LETTER TELEGRAM FROM PETER STORM TO JAMES STRICKLAND

    New London.