The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

"After that affair of the Wilmot this afternoon I shouldn't like to advise Miss Moore to exchange chauffeurs, even for one day," said Peter. "Mrs. Shuster's very good-natured. I expect she'll wait. If not, she can fill my place with some one else, permanently."

Pat was amused, though I'm not sure she understood the little play of cross-purposes as well as I understand it. And she doesn't seem to attach any importance to that part of the telegram which is the most exciting, to my idea. Why would it be inconvenient for our fair Lily to have her secretary return to-morrow? Something is up at Kidd's Pines! I vaguely suspected as much when she let us come away without her. When Jack wakes I shall ask him what he thinks. Love.

Your affectionate

    Molly.

P. S. Jack thinks something so wild and woolly that I daren't tell you what it is till I know, for fear he's wrong. Much less will I tell Pat. And we can't know for two or three days unless we abbreviate the trip which all of us would hate to do.

VII

EDWARD CASPIAN TO MRS. L. SHUSTER

    Easthampton,
    Wednesday morning.

My dear Friend:

I know you mean well, and I don't like to scold, but really, really I have a big bone to pick with you! I didn't ask you to telegraph. I said telephone. I wonder if you ought to consult an aurist, dear lady? And even if you did misunderstand, you might have concentrated on what you were doing for five minutes, don't you think? I don't wish to be disagreeable, but what you have done has given me a sleepless night. Several other things have gone wrong, too, but this is the worst, because I'm not sure what the consequences may be. Add to not sleeping the fact that I'm up at an unearthly hour in order to write to you, and to hear news of my Wilmot (which had an accident yesterday), and you will excuse me if I don't trim my sentiments with roses.

Almost the last words you said to me were, "One good turn deserves another." I did you a good turn in speaking of you in a certain way to a certain person, as you asked me to do. It was a pleasure to serve you, because of the gratitude owing you for many past kindnesses when life was something of a struggle for me. Still, you seemed to think the other day that I had paid a good part of the debt, and that it was up to you now. I don't think I should have asked the favour I did ask, if you hadn't offered. We were both pretty frank about what we wanted, and after what passed I felt I could count on you, as you could count on me.

All the evening after I'd come in from a disgusting and pointless expedition I expected to be called to the telephone. There was a dance at the hotel which I was unable to enjoy, as I have never learned any of the new dances, and some girls seem to have little appreciation of the higher pleasure of sitting out with a partner of intelligence, not to mention money. By the way, not only did I owe an exceedingly unpleasant adventure with my car to Captain Winston's obstinate determination to see Montauk Point (where there's nothing to see), but I owe him another grudge for upsetting my plans for the night. At dinner, casting his eye round the dining-room, he happened to remark that none of the young men present looked tall enough to act as partners for those beanpole Goodrich girls. "Beanpole" is my expression, not his. "Storm is the right size," he went on meddlesomely, in that calm British way he has of taking it for granted that whatever he says must be right. "I wonder if Storm dances?"

Your errant secretary was dining at another table, by himself, and at some distance from the tables of the rest of the party, who were grouped together in order to talk across. Miss Moore was with the Winstons, and chairs had been reserved for the Morleys; but Mrs. Morley was tired and didn't come down; of course the bridegroom kept her company upstairs; and I was just in time to ask if I might have one of the vacant places, before two of those dreadful boys made a rush for the table. When Miss Moore heard Winston's question about Storm she looked up, apparently in surprise; for though you have made him your secretary and he has been a good deal spoiled by every one at Kidd's Pines and those Awepesha people, she first saw him, you must remember, in his own class of life as a steerage passenger. It must have seemed queer that Winston should expect the man to dance with girls like her and the Goodriches. Naturally she didn't put her surprise into words. She is too kind-hearted.

If Storm had any conception of what his sphere in society ought to be, he would, when asked, have answered, "I don't dance." He need not have lied and said, "I can't." His conceit is such, however, that he hadn't the grace to keep out of the limelight when it suited his purpose to pose in it. He did dance, not only with the Goodrich girls, but with Miss Moore. Perhaps you can understand why I told you that his being along would spoil this trip for me, and why I asked you as a particular favour to recall him on the excuse of urgent business. I can now drive a Grayles-Grice very well, certainly as well as he can; and my chauffeur could have run him back to you at Kidd's Pines in the Wilmot.

While I was momentarily expecting a 'phone call, a telegram was brought to me in the ballroom, where I was sitting out some new-fangled thing everybody seemed idiotically wild over. The envelope was addressed to me all right, but I couldn't make head or tail of what was inside until suddenly it popped into my head that you'd been absent-minded and mixed Storm and me. It seemed almost too bad to be true. And worse than all, Storm was in the act of studying his message with the assistance of Miss Moore. Of course he'd got on to the guiding idea, and probably put her on to it also. The fat is thoroughly in the fire now. Even though I still expect to get news about the man which will queer his pitch considerably (as I prophesied to you), there may be a lingering resentment in Miss Moore's mind against me. She is apt to think, from what Storm will have put into her head, that I might have minded my own business. Little difference is it likely to make with her that I have been and am acting for her good! In that connection, you were more sensible! You refused to discharge the man without proof, but you did pay my judgment the compliment of changing your attitude toward him. Now, however, it seems to me you have a perfectly good excuse to get rid of him permanently, without regard to my possible discoveries. Apparently he doesn't intend to obey your order to return, but is determined at any cost to go on to the end, playing the gentleman of leisure who can drive a high-powered motor car while he's being paid for addressing envelopes! A bitter end may it be for him! I shouldn't wonder if it would be. I shall do my best to make it so. It will come at the Piping Rock Club, where I have got an invitation for the members of this party for a dance. If Storm has the cheek to go, his blood be on his own head! The dance is, as Miss Moore says, the "climax" of our tour. I hope it may be so for Storm in one sense of the word, though not in hers.

I have told you before that I can get you a better secretary than he is, at a day's notice; and perhaps you will presently be willing to let me try, now his "eyes alone" don't seem worth the money, as you once thought them. Other eyes are of more importance to you in these days. Apropos of the latter eyes, I understand why it may have been inconvenient to let Storm come back, but certainly he couldn't have been as much in your way in a big house as he is in mine in a motor car.

I shall travel in the Grayles-Grice in spite of him, as the Wilmot is out of the running for days. But the trip is spoilt.

I felt I must let you know how your mistake has affected me. But I have not ceased to be

Sincerely your friend,

    E. Caspian.

P.S. I am wiring you to send him on the proofs of the new peace tract to correct on the way. That may keep him out of the car a few hours.

VIII

PATRICIA MOORE TO ADRIENNE DE MONCOURT

    Long Island.
    At a Beautiful House
    Where We Are Guests.

Mignonne:

You cannot figure to yourself how the life is wonderful, just after one has thought, "Crack! the sky tumbles!" But yes, you can figure it, because of your adventure at Easter.

I am almost too happy. I live in a story of fairies, and I ask myself, is it too good to last?

You know, chérie, how I loved always to read the books of romance, when we could hide them from our kind Sisters, who think it wrong for the young girls to fill their heads with such thoughts till after the marriage. Since I have left the dear convent, I have read earnestly in journals the writings of critics who live by having opinions about other people. I see by them that romance is not truth. It is only the dull things which are real. Yet for you and me, life is now running like the stories at which these critics laugh the most. That is why I ask myself, "Can such things go on?" For it seems that critics must know better than me (or should I say "I?"). Perhaps they have reason. Perhaps we shall end in a monotony of grayness like the books these wise men and women praise for "the realism." Or we shall fall down, down, in tragedy? – for that, it seems, can also be true to life; only just the happy things are not true. Yet at present let us live joyously for a little while as in one of those dear books we read in secret at school: books of romance and even of mystery.

For instance, look at what you write me of your family, which mixes itself so strangely with my experience. But no, surely it cannot be that the handsome new American cousin with much money, who visited your mother's château in your vacance of Easter, is anything to our Monsieur Moncourt. It is only a coincidence that his name shall be Marcel, and that Marcel is a name existing with the de Moncourt men since the centuries. I regret almost that I have written you of our Marcel Moncourt just at the moment when this marvellous cousin has jumped into your life; but, even if there is a connection, you must not comprehend it badly. Do not for an instant picture that our Monsieur Moncourt is a cook. But, what a word for him! He is a real Personage. He is a Celebrity. All the world is proud to speak with him, and he can have as much money as he wants. That is why it is so curious he should come to us for a little nothing at all, just through the influence of Mr. Storm, which also I do not understand. But, as I tell you, if there is a cousinhood or an unclehood, it is not a thing for shame. The young Marcel will of course tell Madame la Marquise everything the moment he passes so far as to ask for you. And then, if he is so rich and so beau, and has the blood of the de Moncourts in his veins, what does the rest matter? If I were in your place, dear Adrienne, I would not worry on the idea that our Moncourt may be this mauvais sujet of a Paul Jean Honoré Marcel de Moncourt you mention, who vanished in his youth, and has so long been counted as dead. Probably that one is quite altogether dead, and our Moncourt has no lines with the de Moncourts of France. He perhaps took the name because it has a noble sound. That is one of the things one doesn't ask a man, is it not? But if it is important for your happiness, my Adrienne, I can perhaps arrive at it through Mr. Storm, who must know all, and learn, too, if there is a son of our Moncourt we have not heard of yet.

And now for myself again!

It is so gay and such an amusement to have a whole band of young men paying attentions to me, little me, who but the other day did not even raise the eyes to a man in taking promenades, without a bad mark on my conduct! Larry does not object at all. He laughs. Girls are born to love the flirt, he says, and indeed, dear Adrienne, he loves it himself! He makes it with all the ladies, even the fat Mrs. Shuster of whom I have written. But that is his manner. I do not inquiet myself for him, not more than he does for me.

At present he is at home, because, though he is a great boy, he has you can't think what a sense of duty. It is for this he stays at Kidd's Pines to welcome new visitors while I am away en automobile with some of our guests, and chaperoned by dear Molly Winston.

Apropos, it is Molly Winston who gives me courage that life can after all be full of pleasant things and good endings, for she and Jack go on having romance and grand adventures. She believes that if "you want things enough," they come to you sooner or later. She is a very nice chaperon to have.

Three dear boys are in love with me, not enough to hurt them, but enough to make me pleasure and themselves, too, all fighting together and pretending to be angry if I am more kind to one than another. Also there is always Mr. Caspian. He has now asked me what we used to call "The question"; and in America it is done to the girl herself, as we so often read, not to the father or mother. But, it seems, he spoke first to Larry, almost in the French way. When I have answered no, I was too young (that is the best to say when you are caught by surprise and wish not to offend). He told me that Larry wished me to think of him, because they had made up a big friendship, they two, and there were deep reasons why I should engage myself. I went to Larry to inquire of this, and he said he did not go so far as Mr. Caspian thought. However, it would be good for me to be nice to Mr. C. and not make him sorrow, for a time, until some things were settled. So I am being nice, but sometimes it is difficult, because Mr. Caspian and Mr. Storm are not sympathetic. Still, don't you find the little difficulties in the life are like the cloves and cinnamon in the rice pudding which we at school asked for in a "Round Robin?" (Oh, that nice word! We found it, you remember, in an English book!)

Mr. Storm drives my darling car, with which we make many dollars from our visitors who love to go on tour. I am considered too small, though I can do it quite well and have no fear. In smooth places without turns Mr. Storm lets me take the wheel. I cannot talk when I drive. I am too happy and have a thousand emotions, like a beehive filled with bees that keep flying home with honey. But he can talk, no matter what happens, and he says things I remember. They seem to paint my brain with pictures which he gives me to keep. So his words are like his eyes, not to be forgotten. You know in our garden at the convent there were flowers which would not be banished, though the gardener pulled them up by the roots again and still again: poppies for instance. Some thoughts which come to one from other people's minds are like these. They persist, and they plant their seeds in a deep place where they cannot be pulled out.

Mr. Caspian is like the gardener at the convent. He tries to stamp out these thoughts, to plant others in me. But the roots have gone down where he cannot find them.

He has come into our automobile, because his own is broken and being mended at Easthampton, where we stayed a night, and I danced with Peter Storm. I let Mr. Caspian come, instead of saying he had better go with the boys in their car, the Hippopotamus, because of Larry asking me to be nice. But I do not let him drive ever – except to-day when I am not in the car, as you shall hear. It is too pleasant having Peter by me when I have to cry, "Oh, what a lovely place!" or, "See the wonderful view!" or, "Here is a funny sight!" He has a mood which matches mine, and it would not be so with Mr. Caspian. I do not know why, but Mr. Caspian reminds me of an iron fence. You could drape him with pretty flowers, but underneath there would always be the iron fence. Perhaps Peter Storm may be a stone wall under the ivy and blossoming things. But stone is part of nature, and has beautiful colours deep in it, soaked in from sunsets and sunrises and rainbows through thousands of centuries.

All the things I see as we travel in the car – fast as a glorious strong wind which blows past the beauties of earth – all the things I see are more emphasized when I have Peter sitting by me, seeing them, too. That is why life is so wonderful. I feel things in double, as with two souls. Yet of course I am not in love. Do not think that, or you will be wrong. It is my intellect which is waking up, after it was kept in pink cotton by the Sisters; for you know learning school lessons does not wake up our intellect. It only puts on a bright polish, so by and by it can reflect the world when it's out of the cotton. And, oh, it is a sweet world, here in the country that is my home!

By and by I will tell you about the house where we are now, and a kind of mystery which gives the fairy-story effect. But you would not know what these days have been if I left out the tale of our travelling. I sent you a fat envelope of postcards, as I promised, with pictures of Easthampton: the windmills and the old houses, and the big waves. You will like the one of the long fierce wave like a white cat's paw. They call it the "sea puss." I hoped it meant that really: a giant cat that seized bathers, and people far up the beach as if they were mice running away. But Captain Winston, who loves the history as we love the bonbons, says no, they have only stolen that name for a great tidal wave which sweeps in from the sea on this side of our island. It was in Indian days but a meek little word: "seepus," small river.

The postcards of Southampton are all pictures of beautiful new houses which rich people have built among the dunes. I could not get old ones, though Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of memories of Indians and early English settlers who were jealous of the Dutch. Now it is a colony of "cottages" bigger than many of our French châteaux, and of the most unexpected, charming shapes, covered with flowers. Girls and boys who like to dance and have fun all summer like it better than Easthampton, so their mothers have to like it better, too. You will not believe when you look at the pictures that not three hundred years ago, if there had been postcards then, you would have seen only forty rough log-houses built behind palisades for fear of Indians; maybe the watch-house was where the Country Club is now! Instead of dances and parties the only pleasure was to go to church, where you were called by the roll of a drum. A stern man named Thomas Sayres beat on the drum and you had to go whether you liked or not, because Abraham Pierson, the first minister, governed the state as well as church.

I am not sure even the Indians weren't nicer to live with, because they liked beads and bright things, as we do, especially mirrors. Why, they sold anything they had for mirrors! And they were kind and pleasant till the Dutch and English spoilt their dispositions. Their parties – yes, they had parties! – were in their cornfields – oh, miles of beautiful cornfields that are covered with dark mysterious cedars now, like sad thoughts of the sunny past. The Indian families came to help each other in the cornfields, and the young men fell in love with the maidens and proposed as they do at our dances. If you said "no," perhaps they knocked you hard on your head, and took you anyhow! I am pleased it is not so now. I should not like Mr. Caspian to do it.

He was very nice, though, at Southampton, and asked to have the Grayles-Grice stop at one of the shops (the most fascinating shops, like at Vichy and Aix where your dear mother took us the summer before the war). There he bought wonderful bonbons – candies. I ate only one, and the Goodrich girls the rest.

You will like the picture I send of the cottage which has been built on to a windmill. I should love to have that. There are lots more windmills, soft and gray and fluffy-looking, like Persian pussy cats sitting up in the dunes; so maybe I shall have one some of these days.

We saw some lovely roads in France when we motored with Madame la Marquise, but we were never on any road quite so sweet (I have to say sweet, it is a right word!) as the road of the Shinnecock Hills. We curved so much among the dunes, I was not allowed to drive, though it was easy as flying in a dream; and the dunes were the colour dunes would be in dreams: gold and silver mingled with warm blue shadows. They had a look of gold and blue flame in fires made of driftwood, because the sun was so bright on them that day, and if you screwed up your eyes to peer through your eyelashes, there was a rose tint with the gold and purple splashes in the sea, like tails of drowned peacocks. You know it is like putting on magic spectacles to peep at the world that way. Peter Storm told me how to do it.

He tells me many things, queer little things and queer big ones, because he has "knocked about the world" and learned them for himself. He does not think he will ever settle down to be happy in one place; but he likes Long Island to rest in while he takes a long breath. He says what I call its "sweetness" comes from having two Ice Ages that have given it a "legacy" of small soft hills and harbours made before men were born or thought of.

I suppose the Ice Ages made the Shinnecock Hills, though they look as young as I do, and as happy. Captain Winston, who loves Indian names, says "Shinnecock" really means "plain, or flat place." But never mind, there has been time enough since the hills were named to mix things up! And most people care more about talking "golf" in this part of the world than of Indian times; for there is a wonderful golf club close by. Mr. Storm will teach me to play, and already we begin; but I have not come to that part of my news yet.

I cannot think the Ice Ages had much to do with one of the things most charming which make the character of Long Island: I mean duck ponds. Oh, but the most enchanting duck ponds you could sit for days to watch! And the ducks are not looking like the dull ducks of every day, in other places of the world. They are most elaborate ducks, and their ponds are full of sky and clouds you'd think they would stumble over when they swim: bright, laughing ponds like eyes in the landscape.

Now, would you believe a village called "Quogue" could be pretty? It is as if croaked by a frog. But there was a fairy story I remember, where every time the frog croaked (he was a prince cursed into a frog's skin by a bad godmother) jewels fell out of his mouth. So one could imagine it had been with Quogue: and the jewels turned into beautiful houses. The houses are very old now; that is, old for America, which makes them more beautiful. It is only the middle-aged houses that are not beautiful here, and that is true all over the world perhaps; for people had a terrible cramp in their sense of beauty fifty years ago.

Quogue is on one of those lovely inlets the Ice Ages kindly made. Quantock Bay has not a sound of romance, but when you know that it means "long tidal stream" you hear it differently ever after. And it is fun to find out that "Quogue" is all the years haven't nibbled off the word "quohaug," a name the Indians gave to a great, round, purple-shelled clam they loved.