on?" shrieked one of a carful of school teachers deserted by their
chauffeur. He, from a distance, explained not too patiently that the
trouble was, the thing _wouldn't_ roll. I am pretty sure that not one of
the men engaged was in a hurry for it to budge; for you know as well as
I that all men are deeply romantic at heart, the oldest boys as well as
the youngest boys--or more so. This girl looked like Romance
incarnate--the face that we see in the sunrise and in our dreams--and it
couldn't be often that most of these good commonplace chaps came in for
such an adventure.
"Oh, Mr. Storm!" exclaimed Miss Moore when I added myself to the rank of
recruits. Everybody stared at me. I felt I was not liked. "You see I've
br-roken down!" she explained with the smile of a child. "The poor car
won't move without ter-r-rible danger, and no one can find out what the
mystery is--though they're _so good_ to me!"
Perhaps she wildly hoped there might be a bond between the man of
mystery and all other mysteries. It didn't seem likely that where so
many men had failed I should succeed; still, I'd driven a Grayles-Grice
(you remember, don't you?) and perhaps they hadn't.
"I suppose you don't know things about cars?" she questioned anxiously,
as I drew nearer.
"I know some things," I admitted with due modesty. And suddenly I wanted
to succeed where these others had failed. Because, though I had done
some small favours for her, she hadn't known about them, so she had
never thanked me except in the most casual way. I thought it would be
rather nice to be thanked by her. I gazed at the Grayles-Grice, which
also gazed at me from under her bonnet, and seemed to wink with her
carburetor.
"How do you know she won't move?" I inquired of every one in general and
no one in particular.
"The young lady begged us not to try, as it had been tried already by
two gentlemen on motor bikes, who had to go on before this lot came,"
the school teachers' chauffeur defended the crowd's intelligence and his
own. "I thought it might be a ball broken in the bearings had jammed a
rear wheel, but it ain't that; so we took a squint at the differential,
but it ain't that either."
"Shall we try again to give her a shove?" I suggested. "The traffic
can't be held up here all night. Pretty soon it will be solid between
here and New York."
"Oh, _don't_ try till you find out what's the matter!" cried Miss Moore.
"There was the most hor-r-r-rible noise when those two other men tried.
We might be killed!"
I made her get down, and then, with a couple of bold volunteers, risked
the mystic peril that lurked behind the "hor-r-rible noise," by
attempting to push the car to the edge of the road.
If you will believe me, the Grayles-Grice rolled silently and smoothly
as if she were on skates. In a moment she was out of the way, and the
coast clear for the crowd. But no man near enough to have seen Miss
Moore stirred until I had made a further discovery. The deep-rooted
trouble which had defied the gray matter of all explorers proved to be
nothing more or less than complete lack of gasoline. No one had thought
of that, because the search had been for something serious and esoteric.
"Gas" was offered on all hands, and the G.-G., having drunk long and
deep, was once more refreshed as a giant to run her course.
"Shall I drive, or will you?" I mildly asked Miss Moore.
"_Can_ you?" she inquired.
"I don't think I've forgotten how. I drove a Grayles-Grice once for a
year when I was down on my luck."
(You'll let that statement go unchallenged, won't you? It was the most
beastly year of my life.)
We were about to start on a return journey to Kidd's Pines, with me at
the helm, and quite an audience looking on, when two policemen came
bumping along in a short-nosed car. They bawled out a question: Had any
of us "folks" seen two fellows on motor bikes?
Miss Moore was the only one of the "folks" who had. "Do tell them I saw
the men," she appealed to me. And then before I could open my lips she
had (characteristically of woman) plunged into the recital herself. Her
car had come to a standstill, she explained, in the middle of the road.
She couldn't make it start. Two motor bicycle riders had appeared and
would have passed, but she signalled them to stop. She begged the pair
to push her car out of the way. At first she thought they meant to hurry
on. They went past her, one on each side. But they muttered something to
each other, stopped suddenly, and jumped off their machines. They were
laughing together as they came running back. They said, "All right,
Miss," and took hold of the Grayles-Grice as if to wheel her to the edge
of the road. But then there followed a fear-r-ful bang, like a pistol
shot, and Miss Moore noticed a queer smell--a little like the Fourth of
July when you were a child. She was frightened, and so were the men. One
of them cried out, "Something wrong here! This'll take an expert!" And
the other warned her, _whatever_ she did, not to let anybody who didn't
understand that make of motor try to budge the wheels an inch. Then the
two were obliged to go in haste because they had a ferryboat to catch.
Not long after autos and autos began to stream along from both
directions, and were held up because she warned every one not to move
the car.
Clever dodge, wasn't it? The pair had robbed a jewellery shop window,
and bagged a whole trayful of suburban engagement rings. As it happened,
the police had taken up a wrong scent before they got on the right one.
But had the watchdogs come along a few minutes earlier they would have
found their way blocked effectively. One of the thieves had fired a
torpedo in the road just behind the G.-G. to scare the chauffeuse (one
of those big, fat torpedoes motorists and bicyclists sometimes use to
frighten dogs) and so had secured a clear road to the nearest ferry.
The policemen found the fragments of the torpedo in the dust--after I
had suggested their looking for it.
That is the way I entered Miss Moore's service as temporary chauffeur,
combining the duties as best I may with secretarial work for Mrs.
Shuster. I'm not sure yet how the two parts are to be doubled
successfully, but I'm sure of one thing: I don't mean to throw either
part up at present, so there's no use in your grumbling or preaching.
Some new people have come to stay in the hotel, a jolly family of boys
and girls, and a few days' motor trip is suggested, with me at the helm.
The party will consist of the jolly Family, about whom more later; Miss
Moore as conductress; and Captain and Mrs. Winston accompanying in their
own car, as chaperons. For some extraordinary reason, which puzzles me,
Mrs. S. is not going. Apropos of this excursion, I warn you, my dear
friend, that you needn't fash yourself to answer my letter in a hurry.
You may take time to think. Mrs. Shuster is not only willing, but
anxious, for me to drive for the party. I can't imagine why. But I shall
certainly _know_ why, and perhaps to my sorrow, when I get back. If I
hadn't taken on the job, Caspian would. He spent two days away from
Kidd's Pines, and Moncourt (just back from a trip to town as I finish
writing) saw him in N. Y. in a Grayles-Grice, apparently taking a lesson
how to drive. (His own car is a Wilmot.) When he returned, it was
without the Wilmot. Said he'd had an accident, and his auto would be
laid up for a week; he hoped Miss Moore would let him avail himself of
her G.-G. when necessary. He was too late, however, for this particular
occasion. All arrangements had been made in his absence. I've nobly
refused an extra salary; but I expect to have heaven knows how much
extra fun. I bet Caspian's car will be mended unexpectedly soon, as
another is booked to drive the G.-G. this time.
Yours, P. S.
The Wilmot has arrived from New York, and doubtless will follow us like
a tame dog. If my hand has not forgotten its cunning, the said dog will
find itself often outdistanced.
VI
THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON TO THE COUNTESS OF LANE
_Easthampton, Long Island._
_The loveliest moonlight April night._
DEAREST MERCEDES:
We're just beginning a short motor trip, pausing here all night because
it's beautiful, and because there's a dance which Pat and a large family
of girls, appropriately named Goodrich, wish to sample. To tell the
truth, I shouldn't mind dancing, myself! They're going to have a quaint
new thing dedicated by its inventor to Long Island. It's called the Gull
Glide. But Jack did too much last week, teaching Patsey to drive her
giant Grayles-Grice, and he says if he danced anything it would have to
be the Shamblers' Shake. I wouldn't put my nose inside the ballroom
without him; vowed I'd be bored stiff. The Goodrich girls' mother is
chaperoning her brood and Pat. I made Jack "seek his bed," as the French
say, but I'm on the balcony of our private sitting-room, in the
moonlight, writing by an electric lamp whose shade looks like an
illuminated red rose seen through silver mist. The music, which throbs
up to me like heart-beats, mingles with the undertone of the sea and
makes me thankful that Jack's so nice and loves me so much. Not to be
loved in such music and such moonlight would make one feel one wasn't a
woman!
The dance has just begun and will last hours. I've no intention of
trying to sleep till it's over, because I'm sure Pat will have things to
tell which really _can't_ wait till morning. Things like that never can!
Meanwhile I shall have time for a long letter to you--the kind you say
you like to get.
This is really for Monty also, since you are now with him, helping him
to get well, "Somewhere in France." Jack wanted to write a few lines
to-night, to put with mine, but his arm is very lame. He said, "Tell
Monty this is like old times, when he was recuperating in Davos, and I
was 'Lightning Conductor' for Molly Randolph."
Good gracious, what a lot of water has run past mills and under wheels
of motors since then! But luckily (since you ask us to chronicle our
adventures, as Jack did for Monty in those days) we can still mix the
honey of love with the lubricating oil of the machine. It will most
likely be Pat's and somebody else's love, not ours, although our stock
never runs dry. But you're interested in Pat's affairs, and really they
_do_ get more complicated and exciting every day. I shan't tell you much
about them just now, but will save that part of the narrative for by and
by, in case there's anything to add at half-past midnight. There
generally is news from the front about that time.
Meanwhile, Monty (who is as ignorant of this country as Jack was only
the other day) clamours for J.'s "impressions of America." Since Jack
can't put them on paper, I will. I know all his most topographical
thoughts, because he's trying them--not "on a dog" but on me, while I
drive the car to save his good right arm. "The Lightning Conductor
Discovering America" I call him, as everything surprises and interests
him so hugely, you would think he was an "O Pioneer!" Long Island isn't
your "pitch," Mercedes dear, and you don't know much about it from the
inside, so to speak. You may imagine, therefore, that it's a small,
sophisticated spot on the map for us to _discover_. But there's where
you're wrong, my dear! It's not small and it's not sophisticated. It may
look tiny on paper, but it feels far from tiny when you set forth to
motor over it. It feels about the size I used to picture England before
I went abroad.
[Illustration: LONG ISLAND "There's absolutely nothing like it on the
other side of the water, not even in Devonshire or Dorset"]
Jack fancied (he dared not say so to me till he could add "I made a big
mistake") that America was new and indigestible, like freshly baked
bread. As for Long Island, he visioned it as a seaside suburb of New
York. Now, he's so fascinated with Awepesha and its environment that
he's simply bolting history by the yard! You know, he always was keen on
that sort of thing when he travelled; but like most Britishers he
flattered himself that he had been _born_ knowing all that was worth
knowing in the history of the United States: a little about the
Revolution and the Civil War, and "--er--well really, what else _was_
there, you know, if you'd read Cooper and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' when you
were a boy?"
Now, he browses in Cousin John Randolph Payton's respectable library,
where every book is bound like every other book in "half calf," and he
sees that things began to wake up over here several hundreds of years
ago. He has even discovered that an ancestor of his was one of the first
important settlers of Long Island, apparently a perfect pig of a man who
was horrid to innocent Indians--charming Indians who believed that
Europeans meant what they said. I can't reconcile it with Jack to have
had a pig for an ancestor, but he certainly had, at least one. Luckily
the tendency has run out in the family ages ago.
But to turn from ancestral pigs to our Island!
Jack says the history of Long Island is the history of the whole country
in miniature, like "the world seen through the little eye of a sparrow,"
as Emerson would have said. In fact, it's _Some_ island, as Emerson
would _not_ have said; and of course we think our part the loveliest and
historicalest of all. There's more variety in history as well as scenery
on this island than in many entire _states_. You simply take your
choice. You say to yourself, "Do I prefer Indian history and names? Or
do I prefer the Dutch? Or does my taste run in the direction of the
English? Do I want to visit the sites of Indian massacres or
Revolutionary battles? Does pirate treasure lure me? Am I thrilled by
the adventures of whaling-ships and their brave captains?" When you've
chosen, you point your auto's nose in the direction desired. The only
thing you _couldn't_ find in the Island's thousand miles of glorious
roads--(yes, my child, a thousand miles, to say nothing of the not so
glorious ones!)--the only thing, I repeat, would be something completely
modern.
That proud statement doesn't sound true, but it is. You could find
plenty of new houses, the newest of the new: palaces of millionaires,
middle-sized houses of middle-class people who are happier than the
happiest millionaires; fantastic cottages for summer folk; cozy cottages
of "commuters"; queer colonies of Italians, and even of darkies; but
there isn't a foot of Long Island ground on which these palaces and
houses and cottages and colonies have sprung up that isn't as historic
as European soil. It's enthralling to see how intimately and neatly
history here links itself with history on the other side: history of
England, France, and Holland; noble names and great events. That's what
delights Jack, picking up these links, and fitting them together like
bits of jigsaw puzzles. He's absolutely _thrilled_, and wants to stop
the car whenever we come to one of the curiously deformed old trees
which still, on country roads, mark the direction of ancient Indian
trails. This fad of Jack's leads to awkwardness during our present
excursion, as we're part of a weird cavalcade which I'll describe to you
later. But just now I _can't_ let you off those trees!
The Indians of different tribes had a way of bending one of the lower
boughs of a young oak chosen for the sacrifice, bending it so that it
grew horizontally, pointing the way along the trail for the initiated.
They would have trees done like that at regular intervals; but if you
were a silly European you wouldn't know without being told what the
trees meant by sticking out their elbows in that significant way; and so
you would stupidly proceed to get yourself lost.
Think what those old trees could tell, if by laying your ear against
their trunks you could understand the murmurous whisper inside, like
secret voices behind a thick closed door! They look extraordinarily
intelligent, thrusting out their long arms and crooking up their elbows,
as I said. It's just as if you asked them, "How do I get to the sea?"
and they, with Indian reticence, answered with a gesture instead of
speech. Some of these arms have grown to such a length and thickness
that they look like the bodies of animals. You can imagine little girls
and boys riding on them, playing they are on horses. Or you can picture
a fair maid and a man sitting side by side on one of those big,
low-growing branches, as if it were a comfortable sofa. It would be a
_lovely_ place to be proposed to on a summer's day!
Does your respect for Long Island begin to grow? I haven't told you yet
a quarter of the things that give it interest.
Our part of the Island, the eastern part, used to be harassed by British
cruisers in the Revolution. Also it is the Captain Kidd part. I suppose
even Monty knows about Captain Kidd? It seems that he used to be Jack's
favourite pirate. When I was at the pirate-loving age I didn't care for
Kidd as much as for others, because he had such respectable beginnings.
Think, a Scotsman from Greenock of all places! And then he became a
pirate not for the fun of flying the black flag like storybook pirates,
or because he was disappointed in love, but because he cannily decided
that he could gain more by turning pirate than by chasing pirates, which
Lord Bellomont, the Governor of New York, had sent him out to do. Worst
of all, when he was caught Kidd put the blame on his crew, and vowed
that they'd forced him into evil courses. Now that we've a house on Long
Island, however, I've taken Captain Kidd to my heart. He belongs more to
the Moores of Kidd's Pines than to us, of course, but I value and vaunt
him as a neighbouring ghost of distinction.
[Illustration: map]*
Both our place and Kidd's Pines are not a great distance from Shelter
Island, where one lovely umbrella pine exists, under which the pirate is
said to have buried his treasure in 1669. He may have emptied his
pockets there one day, but that's _nothing_ to what he seems to have
done at Kidd's Pines. Gardiner's Island--very aristocratic and
historic--isn't far off, and it was from there Captain Kidd sent word of
his arrival to Lord Bellomont, whose famous syndicate he'd betrayed and
made a laughing-stock by turning pirate. He had his six-gunned sloop
_Antonio_ in harbour there, hoping to "make good" with the authorities;
but he must have guessed that there wasn't much chance for him. He must
have expected the very thing to happen that did happen: to be arrested
with his whole pirate crew, and sent to England in a man-o'-war. If he
foresaw that event, he'd not have been silly enough to bury his treasure
on Gardiner's Island, where everybody would rush to search for it the
minute his back was turned, would he? No, he'd take a few of his most
trusty men and make secret night expeditions in boats from Gardiner's
Island to some part of the shore far enough away not to come under
suspicion. Then he would have to mark the place where the treasure was
buried (oh, but a treasure rich and rare, for he'd brought everything
away with him when he left his stolen ship, _The Quedah Merchant_, at
San Domingo!), mark it in a way not too conspicuous, but permanent, in
case he had the luck ever to get free and come back. No good marking
with stones, because some one might build; but what a smart idea to
plant trees so valuable that nobody to whom that land was granted would
want to destroy them! This is what the canny man of Greenock is supposed
to have done. He'd brought the tree-slips from the south when he risked
his spying expedition into northern waters. He meant to make a present
of them to Lord Bellomont if the Governor were lenient: but the
Governor's heart was flinty, and Captain Kidd found softer soil for the
planting of his trees.
It makes a nice story anyhow, doesn't it? And Kidd's Pines as a hotel
can put on five dollars a day extra at least because of the romance and
glamour of that hidden hoard. By the way, it's "going some," that hotel
inspiration of ours. What with history in general, buried treasure in
particular, Marcel Moncourt's fame, Larry's charm and connections, and
Pat's fatal fascinations, people flock to lay their money on the shrine.
They're not all the right sort of people yet, but their money's
good--and you can't think how amusing some of the poor pets are!
This Goodrich family I mentioned--a father, a mother, and three girls
(who look as if they ought to be what I used to call "thrins")--are real
darlings. They're so rich they can have everything they want, but they
don't know what to want. They've always lived in Colorado close to the
Garden of the Gods, and the only trips they ever took before were to the
Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon. Consequently the scenery of the
East looks to their eyes the height of miniature Japanese landscapes
where you can step over the tops of the highest trees. They are built on
the Garden of the Gods scale themselves, and take up so much room in a
motor car that they ought to pay extra. (I _do_ hope the girls may find
men tall enough and brave enough to dance with them to-night!) When
Peter Storm first saw the family, he quoted the blind man in the Bible
who received his sight by a miracle: "I see men as trees, walking!"
The Goodrichs aren't, however, the latest addition to the circle at
Kidd's Pines. Two days before we were due to start on this little jaunt
three youths we'd met on the ship turned up. They'd been "doing" the
battlefields of France they told us then, seeing the "backs of the
fronts"--nice boys, just out of college--and they'd hardly the price of
a meal left among them, they joyously said, when we landed. Of course
they were in love with Pat in a nice, young, hopeless way. They bade her
good-bye forever; but when they heard of the family crash, and read that
the previously Unattainable One had become chatelaine of a hotel, they
begged, borrowed, or stole (or more likely pawned) things which enabled
them to rally round her as clients. They could "run" only to one room
for the trio, and that the cheapest in the house; but you never saw
three such radiant faces, till this motor expedition happened to be
mentioned.
Fancy their feelings! Boats and bridges burnt at vast expense, and
nothing to show for the holocaust! The adored one gliding away from
under three disconsolate noses next day in an automobile full of Other
People! Tom, Dick, and Harry (according to us; Jim, Charlie, and Frank
according to their sponsors in baptism) simply couldn't bear it. They
went out; and four hours later came back with a car (Lord made it, so
let it pass for a car!) which they had bought somewhere, second or third
hand, for a song. Even a song of sixpence would be dear for the
great-grandmother of the whole progeny of Lords! The thing must be eight
years old if it's a day, but the boys are as pleased as Punch with
their bargain. The oldest of them (Tom) thinks he has learned to manage
the poor old lady; and on the strength of his knowledge and cheek they
have hitched themselves to us as the tail end of our procession. They
announce their intention of going also to the Hudson River country, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New England with us later, when we make those
trips according to plan. My heart bleeds for the poor lambs, but Jack
says they're perfectly happy, and those who don't fall by the wayside
will draw lots in the end who is to propose to Pat.
They have no money, and no hats (at least I've never seen them wear
any), and every one ignores their real names; but in their way they are
unique, and it will add to the gaiety of nations to have them along if
they're not killed before our eyes.
Speaking of the cavalcade, which I may as well describe since I'm on the
subject, Peter Storm is driving Pat's Grayles-Grice, as Papa Goodrich
says he would "as soon hire a canary bird to tame a mad bull as let that
little slim Miss Moore pilot his family in a man-sized motor car." It
seems that our soldier of fortune, P. S., was a chauffeur once for a
year. He seems to have been most things, and I'm less than ever able to
classify him. But whatever he is or may have been, if I hadn't fallen in
love with Jack once and for all, I _might_ have fallen in love with
Peter Storm. There's something _very_ queer about his past, that's
evident; and only his conscience or bump of prudence prevents him from
letting himself go on the tide of love for Pat. I see him looking at her
now and then--an extraordinary look! But all his looks are
extraordinary. I'd give anything almost if he'd confide in me.
Perhaps he will. Lots of people do.
[Illustration: EASTHAMPTON "You enter beside the Great Pond, which is so
charming in itself and in its flat frame of village green"]