watches what he does and asks questions. He has persuaded Papa Goodrich
to consent to her driving in easy places. But there are few easy places,
because there are too many people enjoying this beautiful island, and
just missing you by a miracle at corners. So I suppose it will be the
same on future trips, and if Mrs. Shuster doesn't "kick," her secretary
will continue to fill the bill as chauffeur till a professional one is
engaged--a _Neutral_ one, who neither yearns for the blood of Britishers
nor the eyes of Austrians. Strange that Mrs. Shuster didn't want to come
with us! The back of the Grayles-Grice is fairly full of Goodriches, but
there's generous capacity for two more fattish passengers.
Mrs. S. said she would stop at home and help Mr. Moore receive guests,
in case others came in his daughter's absence. But there's nothing in
_that_ excuse, really. Even Larry could have come away if he liked.
Marcel Moncourt is equal to every emergency.
In our car we have offered to take a honeymoon couple named Morley with
whom we feel sympathetic; and Mr. Caspian, the ex-socialist, in a roomy
Wilmot, takes--_himself_.
Please look carefully at the map of Long Island which I send, and agree
with me that though graceful in shape it's a long-bodied, short-legged
island. Jack says it isn't. He says that I ought to see it's a lobster,
and that what I call its legs are its claws. We live on the southern
edge of its top, or northeast leg--or claw. If leg, it is kicking
Shelter Island, the biggest of the baby islands swimming gaily about
within reach. If claw, it is engaged with the aid of its southern mate
in trying to grab the morsel. And a dainty morsel, too!--as I have seen
for myself to-day by crossing over to the little island for the first
time. I've been so busy getting settled I couldn't do any sight-seeing
even in the neighbourhood, unless one counts running back and forth
between Awepesha and Kidd's Pines.
We started out to-day on one of those pale opal mornings for which it
seems Long Island is famous in spring and autumn. Literally, sky and
water were one vast cream-white opal, shot with pink, and that wonderful
flaming blue which rum has when it's set on fire. Our two places aren't
very far from Greenport, as I've mentioned on postcards; and it's at
Greenport that you take the nice red ferryboat across lovely, lakelike
Peconic Bay, going to Shelter Island.
Things and thoughts are on such a large scale in America, even in the
East (though the Goodriches don't see it!), that nobody seems astonished
at the bigness of the said nice red ferryboat. To my British Jack,
however, it loomed enormous for the smallness of its "job"--just running
between the mother island and her baby islet! But when he realized just
what the job in question was, he changed his mind about its being a
small one. Our cavalcade was only an insignificant unit (as they say in
war) among the force of motors which mobilized as the moment for the
boat's departure came. There was a regular regiment at last; also lots
of horses drawing old-fashioned gigs and quite smart "buggies," and
capacious carts; crowds of passengers on foot, women and children,
young men and girls--so _pretty_, some of the shopgirls on holiday
pointed out to us by the man we bought tickets of. They might have been
princesses by their exactly right clothes (right at first glance,
anyhow) and their proud air, if you hadn't seen them chewing gum and
heard them saying "Huh?" to their young men. By the way, that ticket man
was the _dearest_ old thing, who very likely had never seen New York. He
grew his beard under his chin like a kind of muffler, and said
broad-mindedly while we were waiting that he didn't care "_what_
people's religion was, so long as they went to their church twice every
Sunday, rain or shine." We tried to look as if _we_ did, because we
liked him so much. He'd been a sailor in his day, and was proud of
Greenport for its past--a fascinating, whaling past.
In spite of the crowd (bigger I'm sure than aboard the Ark, packed
though it was to supply a new world with living creatures) there was
room for us all, and there was room in the bay for our hugeness, among
the flight of snow-white butterflies pretending to be sailboats.
Six minutes getting across; and then we touched at a gay little
landing-place as different from that of serious, serene Greenport as the
ex-sailor's own church would be from a _the dansant_. I suppose when
other sea-going men of old made money and grew just a little, _little_
bit frivolous, they thought no more of whales, but moved across that
bright stretch of water and spent their riches building pretty houses
for their children to enjoy. "Shelter Island" is a charming name for a
place to rest in after a strenuous life, don't you think? And the homes
to forget whales in are peaceful as days of Indian Summer after storms.
The finest, and perhaps the newest ones, which have nothing to do with
memories of adventure with grand old monsters of the deep, are on
Shelter Island Heights. But I should rather live lower down in some
house yellow as a pat of butter, under great drooping trees. By the way,
Shelter Island's maiden name was _Ahaquatuwamuck_. No wonder she changed
it. She _had_ to! Incidentally an Indian chief, Yokee, delivered "unto
Capitanie Nathaniel Sylvester and Ensigne John Booth one turfe with a
twige in their hands," which meant giving the English possession
according to a custom very cannily established by the British. Then poor
dear "Yokee and all his Indians did freely and willingly depart." I
don't believe a _word_ of the willingly! They were just hypnotized!
We meant to have only a look round, and go on by another ferry to Sag
Harbor, thence to arrive at Easthampton. But what do you think happened?
Tom, Dick, and Harry's preposterous Hippopotamus broke out in an
eruption of flame at the very moment when our procession was passing in
review before a large beflagged hotel which faces the Bay. Of course it
had never occurred to the boys to bring one of those patent
extinguishers which all thoughtful automobiles wear now as a matter of
course. And I suppose that (at best) they would have done the Shadrach,
Meschach, and Abednego act if Peter Storm hadn't heard yells and dashed
back with paraphernalia from Pat's car. Jack dashed also, but Peter (I
call him so behind his back) was nearer, and hadn't been wounded. In
three minutes the Hippopotamus was grinning with her mouth wide open,
and the fire out, but looking exactly like one of those uncouth beasts
you see in frescoes of the Inferno, in ancient monasteries abroad.
All the people in the world were on the wide veranda of that immense
hotel, gazing at the free show, and we'd have sold ourselves bag and
baggage for about thirty cents. It is a gray-shingled hotel trimmed with
white, and battalions of rocking-chairs, mobilized in soldierly ranks,
were all left rocking wildly at the top of their voices, their occupants
had sprung up so suddenly. It did give a ghostly effect, as if the
spirits of vanished guests had seized the chairs and begun visibly to
use them the instant their rivals in the flesh were out!
If you fancy that we were able to escape from the eyes and the
rocking-chairs without further pain, that shows how little you know the
Hippopotamus. Being on fire had given it heart-failure or something.
There it stood in front of the hotel, preventing any one else from
driving up, till the animal's blushing keepers had pushed it to one
side, and we were too noble to pretend we weren't acquainted with it, or
even to go on and let it follow. We'd started in the morning, though we
had practically no run to make, because we wanted nearly all of one day
to potter about Easthampton, seeing sights. But it ended in our having
lunch at Shelter Island. The dining-room of that hotel was big enough to
hold nearly every one in New York, and most of the inhabitants of that
and other large cities seemed to be there. I never saw so many "types"
in my life, as one haughtily says in the Casino at Monte Carlo. Most of
the girls were pretty, but there were people of all sorts of shapes and
sizes; and you can't conceive how the pretty, just right ones, back in
rocking-chairs on the veranda after luncheon, looked at the plain, just
wrong ones who ventured to amble past them in humble quest of other
chairs. Good gracious _me_! I wouldn't have run that gauntlet for any
prize less than winning Jack's love, unless I simply _adored_ my own
clothes and features!
Toward two o'clock we got away, still feeling as if we'd been pawed over
and rejected in a bargain sale. But though eyes stared coldly, flags
waved over the hotel as if in our honour, music played, and breezes
blew. All the same we were quite glad to get to a peaceful, countrylike
ferry which would take us from the island of humiliation to a harbour
where no one would know what had happened--namely, Sag Harbor on the
right or lower claw, according to Jack, or the left leg, according to
me.
There's a perfect flotilla of miniature islands in between the claws,
and people live on them or spend summers on them. I should like to buy
them all, because I couldn't be sure which I should like best, and
whichever I had, I should know the ones I hadn't were nicer.
This was a wee ferryboat, almost as wee as the things you cross lochs
in, in the Highlands of Scotland, but it hadn't so much the air of that
being its day to tip over--which was a comfort. As for Sag Harbor, don't
make the mistake of supposing that it sagged in any untidy way at the
edges, or anything dull like that. Could you call a place dull which was
first heard of historically in connection with a reward for killing
wolves? There's a dear old town not far from the ferry. In its sedate
middle-age it was a great whaling place, and is still crammed full of
sea captains' descendants who are, in their turn, crammed full of
fascinating stories of old days of great adventure, just as their
serene-looking, aged houses are crammed full of shells and coral and
other ocean-borne treasures from the far corners of the world. Any of
these people (we met some) can tell you that "Sagg" Harbor or the
"Harbor of Sagg" (it's dropped the "g," as lots of smart people do in
England!) came from the word Sagma, or chief. Jack likes to believe
that, just as he likes to find a romantic connection between Sagma,
chief, or great man, and saga, or great song. But there are other less
picturesque suggestions. If you'd seen what a fine old place Sag Harbor
is, you'd hate to think it owed its name to a mere ground-nut the
Indians called "Sagabon," or, still worse, "sagga," "thick-growing,"
which these ground-nuts were: "tubers big as eggs and good as potatoes,
40 on a string, not two inches underground."
Poor Jack simply stubbed his brain against the hardest of these Indian
words at first, but now he has developed an almost inconvenient passion
for them. When he looks at me steadily, and I think he is about to
exclaim a sonnet to my eyebrow, he bursts out: "Tomahawk comes from
'tumetah-who-uf,' he who cuts off with a blow"; or, "Syosset _sounds_
Indian, but is Dutch in origin. It came from 'Schouts'--'sheriff'"; and
so on. I never know when I'm safe, but I'm as pleased as he is with the
old Long Island place-names, English as well as Indian. Lots of them
seem to tell as much about their meanings in a few syllables as an
intimate chapter of history; Forge River, Sachem's House, Canoe Place,
Baiting Hollow, Execution Rocks, Harbor Hill, South Manor, Bethpage,
and a whole pink and green mapful of others. Of course Jamesport was
named after horrid old King James the Second, when the Island was under
English rule; and every governor and grandee must have a place named
after himself! But those names I've jotted down do call up pictures of
life in the first settlers' days, don't they?
I suppose while people are alive, they never realize how romantic their
own times are! They always look back. What kind of creature will sigh
for the far-off quaintness of _our_ days and make fun of our spelling?
Those colonists who came in droves from France and Holland and England,
to chase away Indians as dawn chases away the shadows of night, would
have been surprised if they'd heard their times called romantic, yet how
thrilling they seem to Jack and me, as we repeat the old names they
gave, and see the "havens" which welcomed them in the New World!
If we hadn't felt already that Long Island was one big haven, we should
have begun to feel it at Easthampton. When I say "haven," I mean a sort
of hearth and home for weary voyagers, you know, for this Island _does_
give you the impression of having more heart than most places. Perhaps
this is because (despite all the Indian fighting and battles of the
Revolution) it was from the beginning of its civilization the bourne of
homemakers. And, anyhow, when people did horrid things here in the past
they prayed about them devoutly; they didn't build their dining-halls
over the dungeons, and comfortably feast while their prisoners starved!
[Illustration: LONG ISLAND--SOUTH SHORE "Artists would find a paradise
of queer, cozy gables, and corners of gardens crowded with old-fashioned
flowers"]
But about Easthampton. There's absolutely nothing like it on the
other side of the water, not even in Devonshire or Dorset, where the
seashore villages are so lovely. Perhaps he will change his mind
to-morrow, but to-day Jack says Easthampton is the prettiest place he
ever saw.
I wonder if I can make _you_ see what it's like? Perhaps you may see
with your mind's eye, but I'm afraid for Monty it's hopeless, as he's
never been to America, where everything is so completely different from
other countries. Easthampton could be described in several ways by
several people, and they would all be right. A history lover would see
dignified ghosts of Indian chiefs treating with prim Puritans driven
from New England by grim religious dissensions. He would see the best
whaling-boats of the New World being made. He would people the oldest
shingled houses with families whose possessions are now stored in the
picturesque museum. "This place of dreams belongs to the past," he would
say, feeling pleasantly sad as he stood by the Great Pond, gazing at
irresponsible, intensely modern ducks. Artists would find a paradise of
queer, cozy gables, and corners of gardens crowded with old-fashioned
flowers that matter more than all the ancient books in the museum
library. They would remember Easthampton for the green velvet moss and
golden lichen on its ancient roofs, the faint rainbow tints in the old,
old glass of its tiny window-panes; for the pink hollyhocks painted
against backgrounds of dove-gray shingles; for its sky of peculiar
hyacinth blue like a vast cup inverted over wide-stretching golden
sands. They would remember gray windmills striding along those sands
like a procession of tall monks with arms lifted in benediction;
whereas the summer girls and their summer young men would think of the
charming, glorified cottages with their awnings and verandas and lovely
lawns and masses of blue and pink hydrangeas; also of the big and jolly
hotel where we are staying to-night. (The Hamptons wouldn't have done
for _them_ in old days when men and maids--"persons of the younger
sort"--were hauled up before the courts if they were out after nine
o'clock!) While the picture for children would be of a shining beach
smooth as silk, and immense lengths of white waves, marching rank after
rank in an endless army, with deep rolling music of unseen drums.
You may take your choice of these Hamptons, or like me you may say,
"I'll have them all, please!"
Anyhow, you enter beside the Great Pond I told you of, which is so
charming in itself and in its flat frame of village green that it
deserves the capital G and P it's always spelt with. I do believe if you
dared begin it with little letters you'd be driven out of town, and not
with "'Fruites,' and corn, and coates," as the Indians were invited to
leave in their day. _They_ had a nice well, in a green plain, perhaps
where the Great Pond is now, for all I know. There's an old Indian Bible
which tells about it, when the Montauks--a fine brave tribe who sold out
_dirt_ cheap to the Puritans--lived in their village, which is still
commemorated by the name Amagansett. (By the way, I promised Jack to
tell Monty that "sett" means meeting-place, which explains why "sett" is
the tag end of so many village names here.)
As I said, you come to the Great Pond, and you feel ashamed of being in
a motor car, though hundreds of other people are equally guilty. It's
all so green and sweet and peaceful, that speed seems a crime. The
street, if you can call it a street, is as broad as a generous mind.
Never was an English village-green as perfect as this, I suppose because
the self-banished English folk who created it worked from an idealized
picture treasured in their hearts. And there are old gray and white
houses as beautiful as houses in dreams, and pretty new houses which
carefully contrive not to look out of keeping with the old ones. Also
there are windmills, sketched on clear open backgrounds--windmills which
the English settlers didn't mind copying from the Dutch on the other
side of the Island.
Now can you fancy what Easthampton is like? But even if you can, you'll
never, never smell (unless you pack up and come here) the wonderful
fragrance of salt sea and sweet flowers which I shall always have in my
mind's nostrils (why can't one have nostrils as well as eyes in one's
mind?) when I think of this place. And oh, I nearly forgot to tell you
about that _great_ feature, the museum and library, though we spent two
hours browsing in it, and "musing" (appropriate word for Easthampton!)
by the fountain in its garden. They've made the building look as
Elizabethan as though it had been shipped from Surrey; and its books and
pictures and relics are _fascinating_. So are the girls who are the
guardians of the place. They are the only young things there.
Luckily it was the one day of the week when people are allowed to go
inside the quaintest of the houses in the village (I _hate_ calling it a
_town_, though perhaps I ought to), the wee bit hoosie where John Howard
Payne lived. If you don't know that he wrote "Home, Sweet Home," you
ought to. It's the dearest little gray nest you can imagine, and I envy
the people who own it. No wonder J. H. P. was able to write such a song!
But how surprised he'd have been, all the same, if any one had told him
that a hundred years or so later crowds of pilgrims would come to
worship at that humble shrine!
We had time, after the Payne house, to undertake an adventure. Not that
we knew it was going to be an adventure when we started. Jack was
responsible for it, he having inflamed his mind by reading overmuch
about Montauk Indians and their virtues. Their great stronghold used to
be at Montauk Point, a kind of peninsula at the far eastern end of the
Island, and Jack wanted to see it. The people at the hotel told us we
should find a bad road for motors, but what was that to us, who call
ourselves pioneers in the motor world? Bad roads were not in the bright
lexicon of our youth, and of course the rest of the party wouldn't back
out when that was our attitude. Besides, Mr. Goodrich, the Garden of the
Gods giant, put money in an enterprise which expects that ocean liners
will some day dock at Montauk Point and so save many hours. He was as
keen in his way as Jack was in _his_, though he cared not that brave
Montauk Indians had built their places of refuge there in palisaded
inclosures.
Well, we set forth gaily, none of us knowing what we were in for, unless
it was Peter Storm. I began to think, after certain events, that he must
have pushed his inquiries farther than we did, or else, in that lurid
past of his, one of the purplest patches was a secret expedition to the
end of Montauk Point. I thought at first it was remarkable of him not
only to consent but to applaud the idea that Ed Caspian should lead the
way. Earlier, he had seemed to do all he could to spurn and outdistance
the Wilmot with the Grayles-Grice. Mr. Caspian is very proud of the
Wilmot (though I hear a rumour that he's been taking mysterious lessons
how to drive a G.-G.), so proud that he suspected nothing when, without
dissent from any quarter, he was allowed to head our procession.
At the start everything was beautiful. Jack was quite entertaining and
instructive to the honeymooners and me about the meaning and derivation
of the word Montauk which used to be spelled in any old way you liked,
from Meantauket (which meant "fortified town") to Muttaag (pillar or
ensign), or Manatuck (high land). It seemed that one of the Indians'
inclosures, called the New Fort, was still standing in 1662, when Long
Island was beginning to think itself quite smart and civilized. That was
nice to learn, practically on the spot. We were chatting about the few
Indians who exist to this day on Long Island (rather mixed up with
negroes) and admiring the gorgeous golden dunes, and gorgeouser goldener
gorse when suddenly bump! bump! The moderately bad road became
immoderately awful. At this spot some disillusioned motorist had
revengefully printed on a proud sign-post the classic words: "Damn Bad
Road." We were forced to believe him. And at that instant, as if to
emphasize the description, millions of mosquitoes the size of
humming-birds attacked us. How the Indians stood them, goodness knows,
but perhaps they put up with the pests because they helped keep off the
enemy.
All the females of our party uttered uncensored cries, demanding retreat
at any price; but Ed Caspian, hearing these wails, turned upon us with
taunts. Close behind him came the Grayles-Grice, Peter Storm at the
wheel. "Let the ladies come into my car, Mr. Storm," said he, "and they
won't notice the jolts."
"Certainly, if they like," Peter consented.
"We _don't_ like, thanks!" replied all the Goodrich giantesses as one.
Pat didn't answer, but had the air of a captain intending to sink with
the ship.
"Oh, very well, _I_ shall see this through," remarked our noble leader.
"One can go anywhere with a Wilmot, even to--the devil!"
That wasn't the way he meant to end his sentence, _bien entendu_. But
just then he plumped into a rut like the back door to China or--to the
home of that over-painted gentleman inadvertently mentioned.
We've all learned in Latin how easy is the descent to the _second_
abode, but if we hadn't had it sufficiently impressed on our young minds
how difficult it is to get out again, we should have had an object
lesson watching the Wilmot. Will-_not_ would have been a better name, if
you don't mind a pun, for it simply wouldn't and--_didn't_. There it
was, stuck in ruts of sand worse than Jack and I ever said bad words
about in the Sahara. Ed Caspian and his chauffeur did what the German
Kaiser used to say he'd do to win a Cowes yacht race--his damnedest. The
engine groaned and snorted. You could almost see sweat starting from
every valve. Nothing doing but noise! Naturally we were all delighted,
because pride and falls go so well together when they're other
people's; while as for the poor Hippopotamus, it looked _weeks_
younger, in a minute!
Finally, in the midst of a roar that would have turned an elephant green
with envy, the Wilmot's teeth were torn from their sockets--I mean the
gears were stripped. That was the end; and all our men, looking
hypercritically helpful, ran to the rescue. But there wasn't any rescue.
When everything good had been tried and everything bad said, we had to
leave. The Wilmot was left to the mercy of the mosquitoes. Ed Caspian
was taken aboard the good ship Grayles-Grice, and Jack and I adopted the
chauffeur. Our cars backed out of the worst ruts, and it was a long time
before we could turn. There, on the way to Montauk Point, the Wilmot
remains to this hour, for it was too late to do anything when we got
home to the hotel. I wouldn't "put it past" those mosquitoes to suck off
all the paint in the night!
Just here in my budget I was interrupted. Pat tiptoed into the
sitting-room, spying my rose-light on the balcony, and whispering my
name like a password.
I told you, didn't I, that there was pretty sure to be news at half-past
midnight? There _is_--such funny news, entirely different from what I
expected!