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THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR DISCOVERS AMERICA
by
C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON
Illustrated
[Illustration: Patricia Moore]
Published by
Doubleday Page & Company
Garden City New York
Copyright, 1916, by
C. N. And A. M. Williamson
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
[Illustration: page decoration]*
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Patricia Moore _Frontispiece_
PAGE
Long Island
"There's absolutely nothing like it on the other
side of the water, not even in Devonshire or
Dorset" 87
Easthampton
"You enter beside the Great Pond, which is so
charming in itself and in its flat frame of village
green" 95
Long Island--South shore
"Artists would find a paradise of queer, cozy
gables, and corners of gardens crowded with
old-fashioned flowers" 102
"Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of
memories of Indians" 122
Sunnyside
"Washington Irving's dear old Dutch house is
like a beautiful living body with his memory
for its soul" 190
"The old Dutch Church at Tarrytown" 197
The Hudson River
"When we came into sudden sight of the river
there was a magical effect" 207
Delaware Water Gap
"Winding and wonderful it was in beauty" 213
"The mountains seem cleft in twain. It's a
marvellous effect--startling" 216
York
A bit of the rock-bound Maine coast 303
"The air is spiced with the fragrance of balsam
fir...on the way to Crawford Notch" 310
"The young, slender birches of the mountain
wayside" 319
Crawford's Notch, White Mountains 324
"I shall always think of Vermont as the State
of wild lawns and gardens" 330
"We found the Green Mountains particularly
lovable" 336
Captain Winston's maps pages 90, 114, 132, 209,
216, 239, 258, 295, 311, 325, 331, and 339
THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR DISCOVERS AMERICA
I
THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON (NEE MOLLY
RANDOLPH) TO HER FRIEND, THE
COUNTESS OF LANE
_On Board SS. Evangeline,_
_March 15th._
DEAREST MERCEDES:
It will be days, also nights (worse luck, for my cabin chirps like a
cricket, sings like a canary, and does a separate realistic imitation of
each animal in the Zoo!), before we get to New York. But I have crochet
cramp and worsted wrist from finishing a million scarfs since we sailed,
so I feel it will ease the strain to begin a letter to you. I dare say,
anyhow, I shan't close it till the last minute, with a P. S. to say
we're arriving safely--_if_ we do! One never knows nowadays. And we have
on board a man who's been torpedoed twice. I hope he isn't the kind to
whom everything happens in threes. By the way, he's the Ship's Mystery,
and this letter can't be a complete record of the voyage unless I tell
you about him. _Place aux dames_, however. There's a girl I want to tell
you about first. Or had I better polish off our own family history and
make a clean sweep of ourselves before beginning on anybody else? On
second thoughts, I will!
Jack's getting better splendidly. I can't say he's getting _well_, for
that will take a long time yet, I'm sorry to--but no, to be an Honest
Injun, I'm _not_ sorry. I'm glad--_glad_! He's done his "bit"--quite a
large bit--for his country, and if his bones and muscles were knitting
as rapidly as I knit socks for soldiers, he would insist on rushing back
to do another bit. Of course he wouldn't have consented to come over
here, even for the three months I've made him (figuratively speaking)
"sign on for," if the doctors hadn't all said he'd be a crock for
months. Even he has to admit that he may as well crock in America as
anywhere else; and I've persuaded him that I can't possibly decide what
to do with the place Cousin John Randolph Payton left me on Long Island
without his expert advice. It may be the first time I was ever unable to
decide a thing by myself, but there _must_ be a first time, you know.
And I'm simply purring with joy to have Jack at my mercy like this,
after all I went through with him at the front. We shall celebrate a
wedding day presently. Ten years married, and I adore Jack just ten
times more than I did the day I exchanged a Lightning Conductor for a
husband.
He does look _too_ interesting since he was wounded! All the girls gaze
at him as if he were a matinee idol or a moving-picture star, and
naturally they don't think I'm worthy of him in the least--an opinion in
which I agree. Luckily, _he_ doesn't. I believe he admires me as much as
I do him. And really, I'm not so bad to look at, I notice, now I've
begun to live again and don't need to worry over Jack every instant. I
had feared it might be necessary to own up to twenty-nine, only two
years short of my real age, which would be so wasteful. But thank
goodness, I see now I can safely retreat in good order back to
twenty-five, and stay there for some time to come. I always did feel
that if girl or woman found a nice, suitable age, she ought to stick to
it!
That's all about us, I think. So, speaking of girls, I'll tell you about
the one I mentioned. I want to tell you, because Jack and I are both
passionately interested and perhaps a little curious. Consequently I
expect her fate and ours, as the palmists say, will be mixed together
while we live on Long Island. In that case, she's sure to be served up
to you toasted, iced, sugared, and spiced, in future letters, so she may
as well be introduced to you now: "The Countess of Lane--Miss Patricia
Moore." Nice name, isn't it? Almost as nice as yours before you were
married to Monty. She has informed me, however, that she hates the
Patricia part because it sounds as if she turned up her nose in pride of
birth, whereas God turned it up when He made her--or else her nurse let
her lie on it when she was asleep. Anyhow, it's tilted just right, to
make her look like one of those wonderful girls on American magazine
covers, with darling little profiles that show the long curve of lashes
on their off, as well as their near, eyelid. You know that engaging
effect?
I have been invited to call her "Patty," or "Pat," both of which names
were in use at the French convent school she has lately left. But I
think she will have to be "Patsey" for me, as to my mind it's more
endearing. And "endearing" is a particularly suitable adjective for her.
Constantly, when looking at the creature, I find myself wanting to hum,
"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms," etc. There are simply
_crowds_ of them--charms, I mean. Big blue eyes under those eyelashes,
and above them, too, for the under lashes are a special feature; clouds
of black wavy hair; and milky-white skin such as true Irish beauties
have in poems, where it's not so difficult as in real life. This girl is
American, not Irish, but she's certainly the Beauty of the ship.
She is the _happiest_ thing you ever saw: and apparently she's coming
home (she calls it "home," though she hasn't seen America since she was
ten) as a conquering hero comes marching into a blaze of glory. All the
same, I'm sorry for her. I have a sort of impression--but why be a
croaking raven? I really don't see why! Every prospect pleases, and
there's no reason man should be particularly vile. When I allude thus
flippantly to "man," I refer to Papa Moore. I suppose when one comes to
analyze that "sort of an impression" the danger-note is sounded to my
heart by the girl's description of her father.
Not that she calls him "father," or even "papa," or "dad." She calls him
"Larry," his name being Laurence. She worships the ground he walks on,
she says, which is sweet of her, as very little of it has been walked on
in her neighbourhood for the last nine years.
It seems that Mamma and Larry made a runaway match, when he was twenty
and a half and Mamma seventeen and a quarter. He ran from college and
she ran from boarding-school. Mamma was an heiress; Larry was poor.
However, he had a lovely old house on Long Island (or rather his people
had it) and he came into it later when the others had kindly died: a
very historic old house, according to Miss Pat. She's intensely proud of
her parents' romance, and the fact that Larry is at this present time
only forty-one. "Of course forty-one is _old_," she explained to Jack
and me, "but not for the father of a grown-up girl, is it? It couldn't
be _done_ younger! And when you meet him, you'll see--why, you'll see
that I look old enough to be his _mother_!"
(She had her nineteenth birthday with a present of a motor car to
celebrate it, just before leaving France, and she looks sixteen. So
naturally Jack and I are curious to behold Larry. If her description
fits, he must be rather like the father in Anstey's "Vice Versa.")
When Pat was ten, Mamma twenty-eight, and Father thirty-one, the trio
went to Europe, which I think mostly meant Paris. Mamma was taken with
pneumonia after an Embassy ball, at which she was the prettiest woman,
and died of her triumph. Larry didn't know what to do with the child.
But some sympathetic soul who wanted to save the dear boy trouble
advised him to plant his little flower in the soil of France, where he
could come once in a while to see how she grew. He took the advice, and
Patty was planted in a convent school, where she has stayed till now, as
he never seemed ready to dig her up.
Just what Larry has done with himself meanwhile is not explained in this
first chapter of the romance, which is as far as we have got. All Patty
knows is that he left "_important business_" to dash over twice and see
her: once when she was thirteen, once again three years later. He was
"too handsome for words," and "the girls were all wild about him." Since
then, nothing doing--except letters and cheques. Apparently Larry was
under the impression that once a schoolgirl, always a schoolgirl.
Anyhow, he put off indefinitely the happy day when he could take his
fair young daughter to reign over his home. The Mother Superior wrote
when Pat was going to be eighteen, and Larry said he would come, but
didn't. Patty is sure he couldn't, because "he _adores_ her just as she
adores him," and is dying for the time when they can be together. At
last, owing to the war, all the older girls were leaving the school
except Patricia Moore; so Larry's memory had to be jogged, and this time
he opened his heart and sent for Pat. Dreadfully sorry he couldn't fetch
her himself, but gave _carte blanche_ for everything a girl could
possibly want in travelling, except a father.
I told you about the high-powered French motor car. Well, there's an
even higher powered French maid. She's the kind that you could describe
as "and suite," without the slightest snobbishness or exaggeration, when
registering your name in the visitors' book at a hotel. The car, which
Larry told Pat to buy for herself as a birthday present from him, is
forty horsepower, I believe; whereas I'm much mistaken if Angele isn't
about a hundred demon-power. She's geared terribly high, can "crank"
herself I should imagine, and has the smartest new type of body, all
glittering paint and varnish. Isn't it _nice_ that her name should be
Angele? It wasn't the Mother Superior who engaged this guardian angel
for Miss Moore, but the dear old Paris friend of Larry's who advised the
convent in the first place. Angele was _her_ maid, taken over from a
princess--an Albanian one, or something Balkanic or volcanic. The old
friend is a Marquise, and my opinion is that her genius lies in finding
safe harbours for incubuses (_is_ there such a word, or should it be
"incubi?"). Heaven knows what explosive thing may happen if the
high-powered Angele doesn't fancy her new garage and petrol.
Besides the car and the maid, Mademoiselle Patsey is bringing with her
to America a regular trousseau for her debut, which is to take place in
the grand manner. She won't let me see Larry's photograph because it
doesn't do him justice, and because she wants him to burst upon me as a
brilliant surprise; but she has shown me as much of the trousseau as her
stateroom and Angele's can contain. The rest's in the hold, and forms
quite a respectable cargo. If everything comes off as Patsey expects it
to do (and after all, as I said, why shouldn't it?) I do think that she
and her charm and her clothes are likely to dazzle New York. Nothing
prettier can have happened there or anywhere for a long time.
By the way, did _you_ ever hear of a Laurence Moore of Long Island,
whose place is called Kidd's Pines? There may be half a directory
bursting with Laurence Moores, but there can be only one with an address
like Kidd's Pines. It's named after a clump of pines supposed to be a
kind of landmark for treasure buried by Captain Kidd. Either the
treasure is buried under the trees, somewhere between their roots and
China, or the pines point to it. Can pines point? I don't see how they
can, any more than a pumpkin can point; but perhaps nobody else being
able to see is the reason why the treasure's never been found.
We haven't many young men on board. Most of the young men who travel are
going the other way just now; and that makes our Ship's Mystery more
conspicuous. One reason he's so conspicuous is because he's travelling
third class. (We used to call it steerage!) Maybe you'll say that
travelling third class doesn't usually make people mysterious: it makes
them smell of disinfectants. Also it puts them Beyond the Pale. Not
that I or any other nice woman can tell precisely what a Pale is. But
anyhow, if you go third class you have to show your tongue if the least
important person demands a sight of it. And if that doesn't put you
beyond Pales and everything else, I don't know what does.
That's why this man deserves such extraordinary credit for being
interesting and mysterious. Even if caught in the act of displaying his
tongue to the doctor, I believe you'd say, should you see a snapshot:
"Who _is_ that man?"
Now, haven't I worked up to him well? Don't you want to hear the rest?
Well, so do _we_. For we don't know anything at all, except that if we
go and gaze over the rail of the first-class part of this old-fashioned
tub of a ship, into the third-class part, we can generally observe a
young man who looks like an Italian prince (I mean, the way an Italian
prince _ought_ to look) telling the steerage children stories or
teaching them games. I'm not sure if he's exactly handsome, but there
must be something remarkable about him, or all the first-class
passengers wouldn't have begun asking each other or the ship's officers
or even the deck stewards on the first day out, the question I
suggested: "Who _is_ that man?"
I believe, by the by, it was a deck steward _I_ asked. I've always found
that they know everything. Or what they don't know they cook up more
excitingly than if bound to dull facts.
I added to the question aforesaid--"Who _is_ that man?"--another: "And
how _does_ he come to be in the steerage?"
It was the second question which got answered first. "I suppose, my
lady"--(Whiffitts will anticipate the far future by calling me "my
lady")--"that all his money was torpedoed."
This explanation raised such a _weird_ picture (can't you see the thing
happening?) that Whiffitts was obliged to begin at the beginning, and
not stop till he came to the end, my eager look a prophesied mine of
half-crowns.
Whiffitts simply loved telling me. It _is_ nice knowing something
somebody else doesn't know and is dying to! The name of the Ship's
Mystery is supposed to be Storm, Peter Storm. I say "supposed,"
advisedly. Because it may be _anything_. They don't worry with passenger
lists for third-class people; they're just a seething, nameless mass,
apparently. But anything remarkable bubbles up to the top, as in the
case of the alleged Peter Storm. Naturally, his fellow-passengers have
nicknamed him "The Stormy Petrel."
What is he really? we wonder. A jewel shines more brightly at night, and
perhaps it's the contrast between the Stormy Petrel and those
"fellow-passengers" of his which makes him look so very great a
gentleman, despite the fact that his clothes might have been bought at a
second hand--no, a fourth or fifth hand--shop. The creature wears
flannel shirts (he seems, thank heaven, to have several to change with,
of different colours) and they have low, turn-over collars. Apparently
all his neckties were torpedoed with his money, for he never sports one.
Instead, he ties himself up in red or black silk handkerchiefs, very
ancient and faded; and if you will believe me, my dear girl, the effect
is most _distinguished_!
I told you that he looks as an Italian prince ought to look and seldom
does; but he claims American citizenship. He sailed from New York in the
_Lusitania_, and was among those saved. Far from advertising this
adventure, the hero of it would apparently have kept silence if he
could; but it leaked out somehow in Ireland, Whiffits doesn't quite know
how. In any case, at the time of taking passage on the _Arabic_ back to
America, months later, paragraphs about the man's _Lusitania_ experience
appeared in the papers. He was catechized at the consulate when trying
to get a passport for the United States, and it came out then that there
was no Peter Storm on board the _Lusitania_. Our Mystery explained,
however, that in the third class there was a passenger registered as
"Peter Sturm." The name, according to him, was spelled wrongly at the
time. Nobody has since contradicted this statement, so it has been given
the benefit of the doubt. Once more the man's luck bobbed up on board
the _Arabic_, where he was saved again, and behaved well, rescuing a lot
of people. What he did in that way on the _Lusitania_ isn't known; but
the searchlight of fame was turned full upon him after the _Arabic_, and
has never ceased to play around his head. By the by, the said head was
wounded in the _Arabic_ affair, and bears a scar which runs down over
the left temple and is rather becoming. Also he got pneumonia from
exposure, and lay dangerously ill for some time. Several persons whose
lives he saved wanted to give him money, but he refused to accept. He
was nursed at a hospital in Ireland, and when he grew strong enough he
found work, in order to pay his own way to America. What he is going to
turn his hand to over there he doesn't seem to know, or won't tell.
We have a real live millionairess on the _Evangeline_ an American
millionairess from the West somewhere, a Mrs. Shuster. She's a widow,
about forty-five, common but kind. For "two twos" I believe she would
adopt the Stormy Petrel. She's been in Switzerland, where people used to
go to eat chocolate and see mountains, and where they now go to make
proposals of peace. I believe she made some, but nobody listened much,
so she came away disappointed and fiercely determined to do good
somewhere or know the reason why! She's a stout, wildly untidy woman
whose mouse-coloured hair is always coming down, though it's freely
dotted with irrelevant tortoise-shell combs; and whose elaborate clothes
look somehow insecure, the way scree does on the side of a mountain. Her
ideas leap out of her brain like rabbits out of holes, and then go
scuttling away again, to be followed ineffectively by others: and her
latest is benefiting the Ship's Mystery. She's sure he can't be
American, because Americans don't have eyes like wells of ink, and
short, close black beards like those of English or Italian naval
officers. Her theory is that he's a subject of some belligerent country,
who has conscientious scruples against fighting. The fact that he sailed
from New York on the _Lusitania_ last spring can't convince the lady
that she is wrong in her "deductions," as Sherlock Holmes would say. It
only complicates the mystery a little and adds ramifications.
To my mind, Mr. Storm hasn't at all the look of a man opposed to
fighting. I believe he would love it. The odd thing to me is, where
there's such wide opportunity on one side or the other, that he isn't
doing it. And Jack thinks so, too. I do hope he isn't a spy or an
anarchist, or a person who takes passage on ships to blow them up or
signal to submarines or something.
Of course I haven't suggested such horrors to Mrs. Shuster; and
yesterday she made up an exploring party for the steerage, so as to open
communications with the desired protege. The first officer had promised
to take her, and she asked me to join them. I happened to be talking to
Patsey Moore at the time, and saw by the way her eyes lighted that she
was dying to go, too. So I got her included in the invitation.
It was a lovely calm day, the long level lines of the sea punctuated
with porpoises, dear things like giant commas. A good many of the
third-class passengers were writing letters on their knees, and the
_quaintest_ paper. Among these was the Man of Mystery; and Mrs. Shuster
sailed up to him, billowing out in the breeze of her own enthusiasm.
"We've all heard of you," she said. "And the splendid things you did on
the _Arabic_."
Actually the man blushed! He rose up politely; and as he is very tall
and straight, rather thin, and extremely dark, he reminded me of a cedar
towering beside one of those squat Dutch trees cut into the shape of
some domestic animal.
"I really did nothing," he protested, with that guilty redness spreading
over his olive face, and making him more mysterious than ever. _Because
he had the air of being found out in something._ And the blush began
before Mrs. Shuster got as far as mentioning the _Arabic_. It was more
as if he were afraid she had met him before and recognized him.
"Well, other people are better judges of that than yourself," the dear
lady contradicted him. "I, and a lot more first-class passengers, feel
it's a shame you should be here. We want you to be up with _us_ and--and
telling us all about your adventures. The favour wouldn't be from us to
you, but the other way round, if you accepted the price of a cabin.
We're sure you're a gentleman----"
At that it was Patsey's and my turn to blush! It was such an awful thing
to say to the man, though the poor woman meant so blunderingly well. P.
and I were in the background--an easy place to be, because there's so
much of Mrs. Shuster. We weren't even a chorus, because we hadn't made a
sound or a gesture, and didn't intend to make one. But the colour effect
was unrehearsed and unavoidable. I felt a regular blush of red to the
head, as I used to say when I was small, and Pat grew scarlet as if
she'd been suddenly slapped. I expected to see the forked lightning of
scorn dart from those immense dark eyes of Storm's: but instead they
crinkled up in an engaging smile. One glance the man gave Pat and me,
against his own will I think: but it was a spontaneous combustion of his
sense of humour. It struck a spark to ours, and I dared to smile also.
Pat didn't quite dare, but looked relieved, though still evidently
scared about what might come next, and intensely, painfully interested.
"Thank you very much," said Mr. Storm. "I'm afraid you flatter me,
madam. I make no such pretension. It's kind of you to think of promoting
me, but this is my place. I shouldn't feel at home going first class, I
assure you. I haven't either the manners or the clothes to make me
comfortable there."
"Why, I think your manners are _beautiful_," that miserable
millionairess assured him, while my mouth felt dry, and I'm sure
Patsey's became arid as the Libyan Desert.
"We'll all risk that, if you'll come and entertain us with stories of
your adventures. As for clothes, I can take up a collection for you from
among the gentlemen of the first class. A shirt here, a coat there.
They'd be delighted."
"Thank you again," responded the victim, still smiling. "But I should
be--a misfit. And I haven't a story worth telling. I'm no Scherezade.
I'm very grateful for your interest, madam, but my best way of showing
it is to stay where I am--and where I belong."
"You're ever so much too modest," the unfortunate lady persisted. "Isn't
he, Mrs. Winston?"
I prickled all over like a cactus. "I think Mr. Petrel--I mean Mr.
Storm--can decide for himself better than we can," I stammered.
He looked at me, and then beyond me at Pat. "I'm _really_ grateful," he
repeated.
Even Mrs. Shuster understood that the rare plant preferred to remain in
the kitchen garden with the vegetables, and that she could not uproot
it.
"Well," she said reluctantly, "I'm sorry you feel that way. But do let
me do _something_ to--to show my appreciation of your gallant conduct on
the _Arabic_. You're evidently a man of education. I see that, in spite
of all you say. It isn't true, is it, that you're an American?"
"Quite true, madam," he answered coolly. "Do I speak like a foreigner?"
"Not like a _foreigner_, exactly. But--well, I don't know. I must take
your word for it. I guess, though, you've spent a good deal of time in
other countries?"
"I've been here and there," he admitted. "I had the craze for travel in
my blood as a boy." As he spoke, he smiled again, as if at some odd
memory.
"I dare say you know several languages?" suggested Mrs. Shuster.
"Oh, I've picked up Russian--and a little French, and Italian, and
Spanish."
"You ought to get quite a good position, then."
"I intend to try."
"But they say it's almost impossible to find work anywhere now, without
influence," she went on. "Have _you_ got influence?"
"None whatever, madam."
Her face brightened. She'd have been bitterly disappointed if he had
answered differently! "Well, we'll see what I can do for you on land,
since you won't accept anybody's assistance on water," chirped the
benefactress. "With your knowledge of languages, you might help me in my
Propaganda." (The way she spoke that word spelt it with a capital.)
The Stormy Petrel flushed up again, whether with annoyance or
embarrassment or a mad desire to laugh, I couldn't decide. He murmured
that she was very kind, but that he wouldn't trouble her. She must have
many people to look after, and he would be all right in one way or
another. He wasn't afraid.
"No, indeed, I'm sure you're never afraid of _anything_!" protested Mrs.
Shuster, breathless with enthusiasm. But at this moment the officer who
was our guide felt that the limit had been reached, even for a
millionairess. He hinted that there was more to see of third-class life,
and moved us on when our leading lady had offered a royal handshake to
the steerage hero. She would no doubt have pinned a V. C. on his breast
if she had had one handy, but was obliged to content herself with
screaming out reassurances as we were torn away: "I won't forget you. I
shall see you again, and suggest something _definite_."
Of course we didn't want to see more third-class life but we had to
pretend to. We saw where the poor dears (Mrs. Shuster called them poor
dears) slept and bathed (if at all) and ate. After a boring ten or
fifteen minutes we were returning by the way we had come, when a sheet
of paper blew along the deck. It made straight for me as if asking to be
saved, and I saved it; otherwise it would have fluttered into the sea.
Somebody had just begun writing on the paper with one of those blue
indelible pencils such as soldiers use in the trenches. There were two
or three lines along the top of the page, and they jumped right at my
eyes, though of course I didn't mean to read them--"in case you don't
get the wireless. You must see him and make him understand that this
can't go on. Men rose from the dead in old days. What has been done
before can be done again. Warn him that----"
There the sentence broke off.
I was thrilled. It was as if a door suddenly flew open in front of a
dull house in a slummy street, to show for an instant a scene of
splendour, and then slammed shut on your prying nose.
Of course I _knew_ the paper was Storm's, and the handwriting his (a
strong, educated hand) because there simply wasn't anybody else in that
crowd capable of it. But, as I told you, several of the steerage
passengers were taking advantage of the smooth weather to write letters;
and, as it happened, our Mystery was no longer engaged in writing. He'd
stuffed his pad and pencil into a pocket of his awful coat when the good
ship Shuster first bore down on him under full sail. Now, on our return,
he was standing at some distance pointing out porpoises to passengers
and rather conspicuously not seeing us. I couldn't yell, "Mr. Storm,
you've lost part of a letter you were writing!" But I thought it was the
sort of letter he wouldn't want knocking about, so I said in a loud
voice to our attendant officer, "Oh, somebody has dropped a sheet of
paper with writing on it!"
I expected Storm to start dramatically, feel in his pocket, and perhaps
claim his property with a keen glance at my face to see whether I had
read anything. I intended of course to put on what Jack calls my "rag
doll expression," one which I find most useful in social intercourse.
But the man didn't start. He could not have helped hearing my siren
hoot, but he never turned a hair or anything else. He went on pointing
out perfectly irrelevant porpoises. I had to admire his nerve! For
instantly I seemed to read the inner workings of his mind, and
understood that he'd deliberately decided not to claim the paper. He
guessed that I'd read the exciting words, and his mental message to me
was: "Do what you like, my dear madam, and be d----."
I called out again for whom it might concern, "Somebody's lost part of a
letter!" but no one took any interest in the announcement, so I added,
with an eye on the back of the Mystery's neck, "Well, I suppose there's
no use keeping it." I crumpled the paper into a ball, and tossed it over
the rail where it couldn't be missed by the eye of Mr. Storm.
"He'll be glad to know I'm not showing it about, or brooding over it
like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle," I thought. But the eye I wished to catch
remained glued to the porpoises, and only they could tell whether it
darkened with dread or twinkled with suppressed laughter. Even Mrs.
Shuster hadn't the "cheek" to try and attract the man's attention, and
we returned to our own class thanking our conductor for "all the
interesting things he had shown us." I wondered if he knew that while we
spoke in plural we thought in singular!
"The _dreadful_ old lady will never let go of that poor fellow till
she's ruined all the romance, and made him a respectable paid propaganda
or something!" sighed Patsey Moore when we were tucked into our deck
chairs once more.
I laughed, but saw that she was quite serious, almost tragic. One of her
charms is her funny English. She's lived in France and talked French so
long that she has to translate herself into English, so to speak; and
sometimes she has the quaintest conception of how to do it. Also she
rolls her "rs"; and if the Mystery had heard himself alluded to by her
as a "pr-r-opoganda" he would never have forgotten it. As for Mrs.
Shuster--she mightn't have minded the Maxim gun of that long-drawn
"d-r-r-_read_ful!" but her very vitals would have melted over the "old
lady." Despite her largeness and oddness of appearance generally, she
considers herself a _young_ widow, with a personal fascination beyond
that of her banking account. I, with the mellow leniency of--let me
see?--twenty-six, find this pathetic. But Patsey on the sunny slope of
nineteen can't even envisage my viewpoint. For her, a woman over thirty
is middle-aged. When she's forty she is old, and there's an end of it.
How much the poor baby has to learn! I hope she won't do it in being
outrivalled with her best young man some day, by a dazzling siren of
forty-five who knows all the tricks of the trade and looks younger than
any respectable woman ought to look at half that age!
_March 19th_.
I was interrupted there, and I seem to have done nothing else but be
interrupted ever since, either by big bumpy Mrs. Shuster, or some one,
or else by big bumpy waves which make me want not to write letters. At
this moment Patsey is calling "Oh, _do_ come and look at the Statue of
Liberty! I thought I remembered her twice that size and twice as
handsome!"
Dearest Mercedes, I must go at once and browbeat Jack (who's never seen
the lady you know) into admiring her at pain of losing my love.
Ever your affectionate
MOLLY.
II
THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON TO HER FRIEND THE COUNTESS OF LANE
_Awepesha_, _Long Island_,
_March 21st._
You dear, to send us such a nice expensive cablegram! We found it
waiting when we arrived. Of course the name of the place limped out of
England hopelessly mutilated. But how could a British telegraph operator
be expected to spell Awepesha? The name is more American than the United
States, being Indian; and meaning "it calms." Belonging to Long Island,
it is Algonquian of course. Don't you think that rather a nice name for
a place on a shady shore by quiet waters, where fierce winds never blow,
and soft mists often make you look at the world as through an opal? It's
an appropriate name, too, because poor Cousin John Randolph Payton, who
died and left Awepesha to me, built it after separating from a Xantippe
wife who made his life a Nell.
Everything is sweet; and the large white house has the calmest face you
ever saw: wide-apart eyes, and a high, broad forehead, under drooping
green hair--elm hair. Jack loves it. He says I mustn't dream of selling,
as he rather thought it would be wise to do, before he saw my legacy.
Now his feeling is that even if we don't spend more than two months out
of twenty-four at the place, we simply _must_ keep it for ours. You
know we were married abroad, and this is Jack's first sight of anything
Colonial. When I used to talk about a house being "Colonial," it left
him cold. He had an idea that to the trained eye of a true Englishman
"Colonial" would mean debased Georgian. But now he admits--he's a
darling about admitting things, which I hear is a rare virtue in
husbands!--that there's a delicious uniqueness about an American
Colonial house not to be found anywhere or in anything else the world
over. It is, he thinks, as if America had spiritualized the Georgian era
and expressed it in terms of airy lightness unknown to the solid Georges
themselves. Of course, our home isn't _quite_ the real thing, but a
copy. It's forty years old, whereas Kidd's Pines--but oh, my dear, that
_reminds_ me! You'd never believe what has happened to that poor child,
Patricia Moore, whom I "starred" in my ship's letter to you. When I
wrote, she seemed on the topmost crest of the wave. "Poor" was the
_last_ adjective I should have selected to describe her position in
life.
Compared with her, _nothing_ has happened to Jack and me. All we've done
since I posted that letter on the dock (waiting for the kindest pet of a
custom-house man) can be expressed in three words, _veni_, _vidi_,
_vici_. We came, we saw, we conquered--or anyhow took possession. It's
much the same thing. But Patsey! Her world has turned upside down, and
Jack and I are trying with all our wills and wits to turn it right side
up again. The Mystery Man is entangled in the scheme, too, in a weird
way. But I must begin at the beginning, or I shall get tangled myself.
Pat put on a smart Paris frock to land in, and meet "Larry": also hat.
She looked a dream, and felt one. Every woman did her best in the
clothes line (I don't mean a pun), but Mrs. Shuster transcended us all.
You can't _think_ what she was like in one of the new-fashioned dresses,
and a close-winged hat with a long stick-out thing behind exactly the
shape and size of a setting hen. You may imagine a description of Mrs.
Shuster irrelevant to Patsey Moore's fate and the entangling of the
Mystery Man: but you'll see in a few minutes that this is not so. Our
dear millionairess had been "making up" to Pat as well as to Jack and me
a good deal, for several days before landing; and you know how Jack and
I just _can't_ be rude to fellow human beings and take steps to shed
them, no matter how we are bored. I inherited this lack of _shaden
freude_ from dear father, and Jack has inherited it from me. At least,
he says he didn't mind how much he hurt pushing people until I softened
his heart beyond repair, and turned it into a sort of cushion for any
creature needing sanctuary.
When we saw the Dove of Peace (her nickname on board) preening herself
in clothes which would have made the Queen of Sheba "look like thirty
cents," I was weak enough to breathe the desired words of admiration.
"Gorgeous" was, I think, my adjective; and it was no fib.
The poor dear was pleased, and volunteered the information that she'd
"dressed up to kill" for a particular purpose.
"It's really for my protege's sake," she explained. "I marconied my
friend Mr. Caspian to meet me. You know, _the_ Caspian--Ed Caspian,
who's come into the Stanislaws' fortune. I think I've told you I know
him _very_ well?"
(She had indeed. If she'd told us once she'd told us a dozen times. I
longed to say so. But one doesn't say to Mrs. Shuster the things one
longs to say. She would go to bed and die if one did.)
"I've wired him to meet me at the boat, because I thought I'd interest
him in brave Peter Storm," she went on. "That poor fellow's so quixotic
he won't take favours from a woman. But he can't refuse a helping hand
from a man like Ed Caspian."
"Have you told Mr. Storm what you're going to do for him?" I ventured to
inquire.
"Not yet," said Mrs. Shuster, slowly and conspicuously covering with
gloves a pair of hands more ringed than Saturn. "I thought I'd surprise
him. You see, he's persuaded the authorities that he's an American
(though you know what _I_ think!), so he's no emigrant, but a returning
citizen of the United States. That's what his passport makes him out to
be. I've seen it. I asked to. He'll be getting off the ship with the
rest of us, and I shall just say, 'Mr. Storm, I want you to have a
little talk with Mr. Caspian, the great social philanthropist.'"
"I see!" I responded inadequately. "But I thought, judging from the
newspapers, that Mr. Caspian had--er--turned over a new leaf since he
tumbled into all that money."
(You've read, I suppose, Mercedes mia, about the change in the White
Hope of the socialists when suddenly he found himself the tenth richest
man in America? I'd never met him myself, till the day of our landing:
I've been on the other side of the water so much since Jack and I were
married and father died. But one has often heard of Ed Caspian, the
"gentleman socialist," the shining light of settlement workers. And
since this money came to him several friends have written that it was
sad--or funny, according to the point of view--to see how he'd altered.)
"It's only the gutter papers that print those horrid stories," Mrs.
Shuster reproached me. "Why, they say things against _Me_ sometimes!
They say all I do is for self-advertisement. Did you ever hear such a
wicked lie? But we Public Characters have to put up with a lot. It's our
martyrdom. _I_ know Ed Caspian through and through. At one time--" (she
blushed and bridled as only a fat woman with two or three chins can
bridle, and I understood what she wished me to understand, though Ed
Caspian can't be more than thirty-two, and she's perhaps
forty-five)--"at one time--oh, well, he was a poor young man with noble
principles, and I'm always interested in such. My poor husband left me
free to do as I liked at his death, and I was able to help several
institutions Mr. Caspian was working for. I've been in Europe since he
got his money; but I have perfect faith in him. He's richer than I am
now, by a long shot, but he used to say he'd do anything to prove his
gratitude. It's up to him to prove it to-day. I sent him a long telegram
from Sandy Hook, and, by the by, mentioned you and the Honble Captain
Winston."
Jack is attacked with acute goosefleshitis whenever she calls him that,
but I think it's pathetic, she relishes the word "Honourable" so much,
and makes it sound round and fat in her mouth like a big chocolate
cream. Of course, Jack and I are quite _nobodies_; but it did occur to
me when in the same breath she said, "Ed would do anything," etc., and
"I mentioned you," that Mr. Caspian might know about Jack's father; and
that he might find it better worth while bothering to meet Lord
Brighthelmston's son than merely to prove his gratitude to a
benefactress no longer needed.
Well, anyhow, the not very good ship _Evangeline_ steamed slowly to her
wharf at an early hour of the morning, and Patsey Moore and Mrs. Shuster
were two of the most excited people on board. Jack and I expected no one
to meet us, because purposely we had let no one know. So we were not
desperately emotional for our own sakes. But we were for Pat's.
"In a minute we'll see Larry!" she kept exclaiming. And her cheeks were
like roses and her eyes like sapphires--literally, sapphires.
We all gazed at the welcoming, waving crowd; but as the mass
individualized into faces, male and female, there was nothing admirable
enough for Larry. Pat gave up hope almost as willingly as a lioness in
the Zoo would give up her food at half-past feeding time. But at last
she had to bow to the inevitable. Larry had not materialized. She was in
"M" and we were in "W," so we couldn't do as much for her as we should
have liked, and for a while had to leave her to the tender mercies of
her maid. It was a relief to my mind, therefore, when I saw Mrs. Shuster
introducing a man--Mr. Caspian I had no doubt--to the girl. Hurrying
back to "S," she saw me peering out from "W" and flew to me,
breathless.
"He came, you see!" she panted. "Dear fellow! He's just the same. Not
one bit spoilt. But oh, what _do_ you think he's told me--about Miss
Moore's father?"
"Not dead?" I breathed.
"Worse!" She stopped to pant some more. I could have shaken her.
"Don't keep me in suspense," I begged. But the lady's eyes had lit upon
her protege. "There's Peter Storm!" she exclaimed. "I've been watching
for him. I was afraid he might get away without seeing me."
He certainly was in the act of getting away, though I wasn't so sure
about the rest. "Mr. Storm!" she cried. "Mr. Storm!"
He was forced to turn. Mrs. Shuster beckoned. He came toward us, though
not with the long strides which had been leading him in another
direction. He took off his cap, bowed gravely, and murmured something
about having a man to meet.
(Jack was absent on leave, searching for some one to look at our
trunks.)
"Oh, Mr. Storm," said his guardian angel, "I wouldn't have missed you
for anything. But I was afraid you might have misunderstood my message.
I've sent for a very important man, a great friend of mine, to introduce
you to--Mr. Ed Caspian. He won't be long now. But when I mentioned Miss
Moore, the young lady on the ship, and pointed her out to him, he told
me the most dreadful news about her father. The poor man is absolutely
ruined and bankrupt and everything else that's bad; and here's this dear
child with trunkfuls of clothes and a motor car to pay duty on. Mr.
Caspian was _so_ interested when he saw her (that shows he's as
good-hearted as ever in spite of the newspapers!), and he's ready to do
anything to help, even to paying all the duties."
Half-forgotten gossip hopped into my mind like a toad. Somebody had
shown me a paragraph in a scandal-loving American paper about the
"change of heart" Ed Caspian had undergone with his change of purse.
"Oh, he can't be allowed to do anything of that sort for Miss Moore," I
said quickly. "Her father must have heaps of friends who--and anyhow,
_we_ shall look after her. I do hope Mr. Caspian isn't telling the poor
child about her father's troubles?"
"Well, he offered to break the news to her gently," confessed Mrs.
Shuster, looking guilty. "I told him she was so worried about Mr. Moore
not coming to the boat. I'm sure Mr. Caspian wouldn't say a word to
frighten her. He's as gentle as a fawn. I always found him so. And we'll
_all_ do things to help dear little Miss Moore. We'll club together; I'd
love to."
I hardly heard. Without a thought of answering I dashed off to the
rescue of Pat. But I was conscious, as I dashed, that the Ship's Mystery
had given me a look. Not a word had he spoken since Mrs. Shuster began
on the subject of Patsey Moore (not that he'd had a chance), but the
look was one which nobody, no matter how preoccupied, could _help_ being
conscious of--it was so brilliant and so strange.
On the way to Patsey I caught sight of Jack in the distance and diverged
to him. "I'll get hold of a man in a minute," he said, thinking I'd
grown impatient.
"Never mind a man!" I snapped. "Never mind anything!"
"Not even your hats?" he laughed.
"_Hang_ my hats! Oh, Jack, Pat's father's ruined, and that Caspian
creature is telling her--unless we can stop him. Do come!"
Jack came. But we were too late. The roses on Pat's cheeks were already
snowed under when we hurled ourselves at "M." They both turned as we
came up, she and he together. I wasted only one glance on Mr.
Caspian--just enough to see that he was a small man perfectly turned out
by his tailor and fairly well by his Maker: all the upper part of a
blond head and face rather beautiful and idealistic, the lower part not
so good, might even be a rude contradiction. Then my eyes went to Pat's,
which were more sapphire-like than ever, because they glittered behind
tears that she'd have died rather than let fall. By not winking she had
induced the tear-vessels to take back a few, and the process would go on
satisfactorily, I was sure, if nothing untoward intervened.
"Have you and Mr. Winston met Mr. Caspian?" she asked, as formally as at
a school reception for teaching young girls How to Succeed in Society.
Her lips were white and moved stiffly, as lips do when they are cold,
though the day was mild as milk. "Mr. Caspian says he knows Larry
slightly, and--and--that he's in great trouble."
"I'm awfully sorry to be a bearer of ill tidings," Ed Caspian defended
himself to Jack and me, "but Miss Moore was worrying--when Mrs. Shuster
introduced us--because her father hadn't come to meet her, and I thought
it would perhaps be best----"
Well, I won't bother you, Mercedes, dear, with all the "we saids" and
"he saids." We--that is, Jack and I--soon realized that Caspian knew
what he knew about "Larry's" affairs by hearsay, or from the newspapers.
He was scarcely acquainted with Larry himself: had only met him at
houses of mutual friends. Laurence Moore had come a regular cropper, it
seemed. Things had been faring badly with him for some time "because he
was no business man, and fellows were always persuading him to go into
rotten things." "But we'll see him through, Miss Moore, we'll see him
through," Mr. Caspian finished up. "Don't be unhappy. And I see in the
papers that the fine old house is yours and can't be sold. Your father
made it over to you legally, years ago. So that's all right, isn't it?"
"Have--have things been in the papers about us?" asked Pat. The tears
had been put neatly back where they belonged, without one dropping out,
and she looked pitifully brave--ready for anything, no matter what. She
didn't know enough about the world to resent anything Caspian had said.
On the contrary, she was probably thinking he meant to be kind--showing
himself a good friend of Larry's and all that. Of course I realized from
the first that the instant he saw Pat the man simply snapped at her. If
indeed he had the intention of helping Larry it had been born in his
mind within the last fifteen minutes, and whatever he might do would be
for value received. Not that it was quite fair to blame him for that.
With another type of man I might have thought it thrillingly romantic
that he should fall in love at first sight and resolve to save the
girl's father. But with Ed Caspian it was different--somehow. You see,
he used to pose as a saint, a sort of third-rate St. George, with
Society for the Dragon: he was all for the poor and oppressed. I
remember reading speeches of his, in rather prim language. He was
supposed to live like an anchorite. Now, here was St. George turned into
his own Dragon. What an unnatural transformation! He, who had said
luxury was hurrying the civilized world to destruction, wore a pearl in
his scarf-pin worth thousands of dollars if it was worth a cent. He had
all the latest slang of a Bond Street Nut. (By the way, over here when
one talks of a "nut" it doesn't mean a swell, but a youth who is what
they'd call "dotty" or "bunny on the 'umph" in a London music hall.) And
though his eyebrows still had that heavenly arch which must have made
his early reputation, the rest of him didn't look heavenly at all.