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.
Just missed getting into scrape here. Saved by presence of mind. You have heard me speak of Ipanoff. Met him accidentally. He has relatives seeing America, awaiting them New London; found me instead. Shall stay to-morrow, letting my party go on. Meet Fall River by train. Couldn't stand Newport. Writing you on business.
P. S.
XXI
MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCÉDES LANE
A Gorgeous Hotel in dear old Boston.
Best Mercédes:
I am thrilled with New England! It has got into my blood, which is of the south. Why do we – you and I and the rest of us – dash over to Europe before we're old enough to see much of and appreciate our own country? Still, I'm thankful we did, or we shouldn't have met Jack or Monty.
Are you tired of travelling with me and my Lightning Conductor? You said you couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't be; so if you've changed your mind, you've brought this on yourself.
I didn't quite realize, even with my first warm glow of admiration, all that New England meant, in a concrete way. I realized the beauty, the individual charm, the historic interest, but now I'm beginning to put them together in a bouquet where one flower sets off another. Oh, dear, I wish that not quite so many things had happened before our day! It would have been easier to sort them about a hundred and fifty years ago. Yet, a hundred and fifty years ago there wouldn't have been an Emerson, a Thoreau, a Hawthorne, a Longfellow, a Whittier, a Bryant, a Lowell, or an Oliver Wendell Holmes, to say nothing of half a dozen others I'm too excited to recall at the moment. It would have been sad to come here before they lived and embroidered the tapestry of life with their lovely thoughts – almost the difference between travelling on a gray day and in clear sunshine. For New England belongs to these philosophers and poets just as much as it belongs to the Indians and Puritans and Soldiers of the Revolution.
Now you see what my mood is! I think Jack has inspired it, for he can quote most of the New England writers, if not by the yard at least by the inch. He says he used to learn their wit and wisdom to repeat "at his mother's knee." I shouldn't have supposed Lady Brightelmston's knee capable of it; but one never knows!
The last time I wrote you was at New London. I posted the letter at Groton, I remember, because I was thinking so hard of "The Peter Storm Mystery" that everything else went out of my head. My dear, he stayed behind, with his Russian friend, leaving Pat to the mercy of Caspian!
You have to cross by ferry to get to Groton – old Fort Griswold – and the New London side is too amusing. Practically all the boy population of America seemed to be there to see us off. They had come on purpose to tell motorists what to do and whither to proceed, thus extracting dimes in gratitude or blackmail. Good gracious! If we tried to do half the things they advised, nay, insisted on, we'd be as busy as bees the rest of our lives or else go mad! I can tell you we were thankful to escape on to the charming, peaceful road we found after the ferry had shed us on the other side. Soon we turned off on to a rough short cut; but it was fascinating, too, and would have been like scenery on the Crinan Canal if it hadn't been still more like itself. The hydrangeas growing in the gardens were marvellous, great trees of them, with different shaped flowers from ordinary human hydrangeas, flowers like huge bunches of white grapes seen from a distance. The flat blue and pink kind prefer to grow close by the shore. There was another darling tree – one on every lawn nearly – Rose of Sharon. Do you know it? The name alone makes Jack glad he came to America. And then, the colour of the marshes! – crimson and orange-gold, with streaks of emerald. Where there weren't marshes, the meadows were white with Queen Anne's lace. She must have sent a lot of it to America! Tiger lilies grew wild, dazzling colonies of them, and from gray rocks ferns spurted and showered. Isn't it charming that a river called the Mystic should run, or, rather, gently dawdle, through a world like this? Its mother is the Sound; and perhaps because it's very historic, it justified its dignity by leading us out of this flowery fairyland, past stern, faded farmhouses to a wide country of rolling downs, bathed in silver light – downs whose sides were spread with forests like dark tracts of shadow.
We passed through Westerly of the granite quarries, and suddenly we realized that we were in Rhode Island. Don't you like the name "Watch Hill?" I do. And I liked the place, which "summer people" love. But all the neighbourhood is enchanting. It doesn't matter where you stay! I never saw so many flowers, wild and tame: tame hydrangeas, wild grapes, wild spirea and bayberry, half-tamed, worried-looking sunflowers, with so much sun they don't know which way to turn. All this within sight of the Sound, with islands and necks of blue-green land like a door ajar to the ocean.
It was a fine drive, after Wakefield, along the Narragansett front, the most countrylike road imaginable, with wild shrubbery on either side, and then the most ultra-civilized hotels, an army of them on parade, with the sea for their drill sergeant.
At Saunderstown we took ferry for Newport – a double ferry, but neither journey was long. A mist floated over the water like the ghost of the Queen Anne lace we had passed; but we had glimpses of Fort Greble and Fort Adams. Oh, there's heaps to see at Newport besides the haunts of the Four Hundred! We landed at last in a dear old town with quaint but rich-looking houses of retired sea captains and other comfortable folk who simply don't exist for the eyes of Society, though they no doubt have a background crowded with brave ancestors. Jack and I meant to stop at a nice little hotel which exists apologetically; but friends of Larry's insisted on our staying with them. We should have thought up some excuse to refuse (not that we'd fib: but it's fair to economize truth at times!) if Pat hadn't begged us to accept. You see, Ed Caspian was invited as her fiancé, and Mrs. Shuster as Larry's, and there was to be a dinner in honour of the two couples. The poor child, a lamb led to the slaughter, seemed to think that the altar of sacrifice would be more tolerable if we were present to scatter rosemary and rue upon it. We consented, of course. But I felt quite hard toward Peter Storm, who had, in a way, been appointed by Jack and himself as her unofficial guardian in the Grayles-Grice, and had apparently failed her by stopping behind with his Russian.
We were able to relieve the strain a little by taking the girl out for walks in the old town, a part of Newport most interesting to us, least interesting to Caspian. Dear Father brought me once to Newport to visit people in a house which called itself a cottage and looked like a castle, but that was when I was seventeen, in a summer holiday in the midst of school life. I had the intense ambition of a flapper to be a débutante; and because I envied girls who were "out" I did all I could to usurp their prerogatives by flirting and "dressing up." I didn't care a rap for anything or anybody over thirty. The Casino, the Yacht Club, Bellevue Avenue for shopping or driving, Bailey's Beach, that haven for any modern Venus to rise from the foam if she has a lovely bathing dress, the twelve-mile Ocean Drive in all its luxury and millionairish beauty – these represented Newport for me; and I bet they'd have meant the same for you in your salad days! They're still great fun, and perfectly delightful and almost unique, it is true, but now I feel, with Jack, the "call of the past." The Old Stone Mill, with its contradictory histories, is more fascinating than the Casino. I could get quite hot and angry arguing with any one who disputes the fact —fact, I say! – that this extraordinary gray-stone tower draped with creepers and backed with trees is the memorial of a Viking's wife. Longfellow's "The Skeleton in Armour" was one of those poems which Lady Brighthelmston's knee taught to Jack. "Speak, speak, thou fearful guest!" I had forgotten, I'm ashamed to say, but Jack has reminded me about the figure in "rude armour drest" which appeared when they took away a wall. I just won't have my Viking Tower torn out of the eleventh century and stuck into the seventeenth. So there! I don't see why it isn't right to believe the nicest things in the past of a country instead of the worst, as you must do with a woman, if you're not a cat!
Pat and I are going to read Fenimore Cooper's "Red Rover" because the scenes are laid in this neighbourhood; at least I am going to read it, and Pat will if Caspian gives her a chance to do anything intelligent in future. He won't if he can help it, I'm sure! You ought to have seen the boiled codfish look in his eyes when Pat, arriving at Moon Pond after an excursion with us, tried to entertain him by talking of Matthew Perry building the first steam vessel in the American Navy and arranging a treaty that opened the door of Japan to the west! There's a monument to him in the park, and we'd been looking at it.
Well, in spite of Fate, I think the child enjoyed her Newport days, if not her Newport evenings, and indeed, she seemed to have the feeling that they were snatched from the jaws of the said ruthless lady. We mooned about among the entirely charming and more or less famous houses, in what ought to be called Oldport, a very, very important place for more than a hundred years before a tidal wave of fashion swept over it about the middle of the eighteenth century: great families coming in their own schooners, with their servants and horses, from Charleston and Savannah. You can't think of the exciting, historic things we found out in our "moonings": history on the sea, even before Captain Kidd's privateers were being chased along the shore, for Rhode Island always "loved to fight if she could fight on the sea"; history on land, from the time that the inhabitants were abandoning their houses in fear of Sir Henry Clinton and the British fleet, up to these brilliant days of Astors and Belmonts and Vanderbilts. Jack and I got so resigned to visiting Larry's pleasant friends that we should have been sorry to leave if it hadn't been for our curiosity to see "what would happen next" in the Peter affair.
The last thing we did was to get up with the sun and start out for an excursion to the Forty Steps. But, after all, Jack was too lame to manage them. He was very cut up, but his sense of humour came to the rescue as usual, and he was showing a brave face again when we started off in the motor once more, for Fall River – and beyond. Then, if not before, we should have realized what a marvellous frame Newport has. I suppose in some ways no other spot is equal to it. Even Jack says that, and there are few of the great show places of the world he hasn't seen. As a send-off, we gave ourselves a detour and said good-bye to the Ocean Drive. The fleet, which had been visiting for several days, was steaming off to sea. We looked across walls of blue hydrangeas and "rosa rugosa" hung with berries like lumps of coral, out to the gray ships speeding fast through cataracts of sapphire spray. It was a wonderful sight and a wonderful day! The morning sun seemed to paint the rocks purple and turn the high spurting surf to fountains of diamonds. It lit the young gold of maple trees, and the delicate crysophrase green of weeping beeches that sweep the lawns along the twelve-mile drive (consoled Niobes weeping only happy tears!) and threw ladders of light down to the marshes. You will think I am always writing you about marshes. But these are super-marshes. If there are marshes by the Sea of Glass they must be like these. They are so full of faded rainbows that their colour seems to drain into the crystal veins of water which wind into them from inlets of the sea, and turn the crystal into deep-dyed amethysts.
As we went on along the shore, the tiny waves ruffled under our eyes like frills of lace on a baby's baptismal dress. The sea became a wide river with dreamland visioned on the other side. Oh, what a contrast to all the beauty of the "Peaceful Isle" and its surroundings to dash into Fall River! Here and there is a house, or a charming name of a street, to tell that it was once a pleasant old village like other New England villages, but Commerce has sacked it of all that is beautiful – or, if it has left anything by mistake, we didn't see it. The ugly, work-marred town smote us like a blow in the face, and yet we saw that it has its own fierce, flaunting interest. I shall never again think of a Fall River boat as a restful thing. A Fall River boat was all I knew of Fall River before, except that a big Revolutionary battle was fought there. Now a battle between Labour and Capital is ceaselessly going on. It was a joy – a selfish joy, perhaps – to spin out of the town limits and come into Devonshire. Really, it was Devonshire – Devonshire in look and in the names of places. What of Taunton, for instance? So we flew on to Boston, through a series of exquisite parks such as surely no other city in the world can have for a frame.
There was just one attractive feature about Fall River for us: not the Picture Palaces, of which there must be about a million; not the coloured posters of the Azores, put up to please the homesick Portuguese labourers, but the reappearance of Peter Storm. Frankly, dearest, I had been afraid in my inmost heart that the Mystery was going to close round Peter like a dark cloud, hiding him from our sight forever. Caspian had perhaps hoped that this might be the case. But Peter had said that he would be found standing at the corner of Elm Street (there wasn't an elm in it, or any other tree), and there he was, though we were early at the rendezvous rather than late.
I forgot to tell you that Pat started out from Newport in our car, the bride and bridegroom squeezing into the Grayles-Grice. I'd accused the girl of not looking well – a stupidity of which I should never be capable if I hadn't an object to gain – and she had owned to a slight headache. I said that I had some wonderful pillules that I could give her; but I must administer them myself, and they must be taken every half-hour. Of course there was nothing for it but she must come to us; and she brightened visibly with every mile, though whether owing to the pillules or the increasing nearness of Fall River, I can't say, and wouldn't if I could.