New London side is _too_ amusing. Practically all the boy population of
America seemed to be there to see us off. They had come on purpose to
tell motorists what to do and whither to proceed, thus extracting dimes
in gratitude or blackmail. Good gracious! If we tried to do half the
things they advised, nay, insisted on, we'd be as busy as bees the rest
of our lives or else go mad! I can tell you we were thankful to escape
on to the charming, peaceful road we found after the ferry had shed us
on the other side. Soon we turned off on to a rough short cut; but it
was fascinating, too, and would have been like scenery on the Crinan
Canal if it hadn't been still more like itself. The hydrangeas growing
in the gardens were marvellous, great trees of them, with different
shaped flowers from ordinary human hydrangeas, flowers like huge bunches
of white grapes seen from a distance. The flat blue and pink kind prefer
to grow close by the shore. There was another darling tree--one on every
lawn nearly--Rose of Sharon. Do you know it? The name alone makes Jack
glad he came to America. And then, the colour of the marshes!--crimson
and orange-gold, with streaks of emerald. Where there weren't marshes,
the meadows were white with Queen Anne's lace. She must have sent a lot
of it to America! Tiger lilies grew wild, dazzling colonies of them, and
from gray rocks ferns spurted and showered. Isn't it charming that a
river called the Mystic should run, or, rather, gently dawdle, through a
world like this? Its mother is the Sound; and perhaps because it's very
historic, it justified its dignity by leading us out of this flowery
fairyland, past stern, faded farmhouses to a wide country of rolling
downs, bathed in silver light--downs whose sides were spread with
forests like dark tracts of shadow.
We passed through Westerly of the granite quarries, and suddenly we
realized that we were in Rhode Island. Don't you like the name "Watch
Hill?" I do. And I liked the place, which "summer people" love. But all
the neighbourhood is enchanting. It doesn't matter _where_ you stay! I
never saw so many flowers, wild and tame: tame hydrangeas, wild grapes,
wild spirea and bayberry, half-tamed, worried-looking sunflowers, with
so much sun they don't know which way to turn. All this within sight of
the Sound, with islands and necks of blue-green land like a door ajar to
the ocean.
It was a fine drive, after Wakefield, along the Narragansett front, the
most countrylike road imaginable, with wild shrubbery on either side,
and then the most ultra-civilized hotels, an army of them on parade,
with the sea for their drill sergeant.
At Saunderstown we took ferry for Newport--a double ferry, but neither
journey was long. A mist floated over the water like the ghost of the
Queen Anne lace we had passed; but we had glimpses of Fort Greble and
Fort Adams. Oh, there's _heaps_ to see at Newport besides the haunts of
the Four Hundred! We landed at last in a dear old town with quaint but
rich-looking houses of retired sea captains and other comfortable folk
who simply don't exist for the eyes of Society, though they no doubt
have a background crowded with brave ancestors. Jack and I meant to stop
at a nice little hotel which exists apologetically; but friends of
Larry's insisted on our staying with them. We should have thought up
some excuse to refuse (not that we'd _fib_: but it's fair to economize
truth at times!) if Pat hadn't begged us to accept. You see, Ed Caspian
was invited as her fiance, and Mrs. Shuster as Larry's, and there was to
be a dinner in honour of the two couples. The poor child, a lamb led to
the slaughter, seemed to think that the altar of sacrifice would be more
tolerable if we were present to scatter rosemary and rue upon it. We
consented, of course. But I felt quite hard toward Peter Storm, who had,
in a way, been appointed by Jack and himself as her unofficial guardian
in the Grayles-Grice, and had apparently _failed_ her by stopping
behind with his Russian.
We were able to relieve the strain a little by taking the girl out for
walks in the old town, a part of Newport most interesting to us, least
interesting to Caspian. Dear Father brought me once to Newport to visit
people in a house which called itself a cottage and looked like a
castle, but that was when I was seventeen, in a summer holiday in the
midst of school life. I had the intense ambition of a flapper to be a
debutante; and because I envied girls who were "out" I did all I could
to usurp their prerogatives by flirting and "dressing up." I didn't care
a rap for anything or anybody over thirty. The Casino, the Yacht Club,
Bellevue Avenue for shopping or driving, Bailey's Beach, that haven for
any modern Venus to rise from the foam if she has a lovely bathing
dress, the twelve-mile Ocean Drive in all its luxury and millionairish
beauty--these represented Newport for me; and I _bet_ they'd have meant
the same for you in your salad days! They're still great fun, and
perfectly delightful and almost unique, it is true, but now I feel, with
Jack, the "call of the past." The Old Stone Mill, with its contradictory
histories, is more fascinating than the Casino. I could get quite hot
and angry arguing with any one who disputes the fact--_fact_, I
say!--that this extraordinary gray-stone tower draped with creepers and
backed with trees is the memorial of a Viking's wife. Longfellow's "The
Skeleton in Armour" was one of those poems which Lady Brighthelmston's
knee taught to Jack. "Speak, speak, thou fearful guest!" I had
forgotten, I'm ashamed to say, but Jack has reminded me about the figure
in "rude armour drest" which appeared when they took away a wall. I
just won't have my Viking Tower torn out of the eleventh century and
stuck into the seventeenth. So there! I don't see why it isn't right to
believe the nicest things in the past of a country instead of the worst,
as you must do with a woman, if you're not a cat!
Pat and I are going to read Fenimore Cooper's "Red Rover" because the
scenes are laid in this neighbourhood; at least I am going to read it,
and Pat will if Caspian gives her a chance to do anything intelligent in
future. He won't if he can help it, I'm sure! You ought to have seen the
boiled codfish look in his eyes when Pat, arriving at Moon Pond after an
excursion with us, tried to entertain him by talking of Matthew Perry
building the first steam vessel in the American Navy and arranging a
treaty that opened the door of Japan to the west! There's a monument to
him in the park, and we'd been looking at it.
Well, in spite of Fate, I think the child enjoyed her Newport days, if
not her Newport evenings, and indeed, she seemed to have the feeling
that they were snatched from the jaws of the said ruthless lady. We
mooned about among the entirely charming and more or less famous houses,
in what ought to be called Oldport, a very, very important place for
more than a hundred years before a tidal wave of fashion swept over it
about the middle of the eighteenth century: great families coming in
their own schooners, with their servants and horses, from Charleston and
Savannah. You can't think of the exciting, historic things we found out
in our "moonings": history on the sea, even before Captain Kidd's
privateers were being chased along the shore, for Rhode Island always
"loved to fight if she could fight on the sea"; history on land, from
the time that the inhabitants were abandoning their houses in fear of
Sir Henry Clinton and the British fleet, up to these brilliant days of
Astors and Belmonts and Vanderbilts. Jack and I got so resigned to
visiting Larry's pleasant friends that we should have been sorry to
leave if it hadn't been for our curiosity to see "what would happen
next" in the Peter affair.
The last thing we did was to get up with the sun and start out for an
excursion to the Forty Steps. But, after all, Jack was too lame to
manage them. He was very cut up, but his sense of humour came to the
rescue as usual, and he was showing a brave face again when we started
off in the motor once more, for Fall River--and beyond. Then, if not
before, we should have realized what a marvellous frame Newport has. I
suppose in some ways no other spot is equal to it. Even Jack says that,
and there are few of the great show places of the world he hasn't seen.
As a send-off, we gave ourselves a detour and said good-bye to the Ocean
Drive. The fleet, which had been visiting for several days, was steaming
off to sea. We looked across walls of blue hydrangeas and "rosa rugosa"
hung with berries like lumps of coral, out to the gray ships speeding
fast through cataracts of sapphire spray. It was a wonderful sight and a
wonderful day! The morning sun seemed to paint the rocks purple and turn
the high spurting surf to fountains of diamonds. It lit the young gold
of maple trees, and the delicate crysophrase green of weeping beeches
that sweep the lawns along the twelve-mile drive (consoled Niobes
weeping only happy tears!) and threw ladders of light down to the
marshes. You will think I am always writing you about marshes. But these
are super-marshes. If there are marshes by the Sea of Glass they must be
like these. They are so full of faded rainbows that their colour seems
to drain into the crystal veins of water which wind into them from
inlets of the sea, and turn the crystal into deep-dyed amethysts.
As we went on along the shore, the tiny waves ruffled under our eyes
like frills of lace on a baby's baptismal dress. The sea became a wide
river with dreamland visioned on the other side. Oh, what a contrast to
all the beauty of the "Peaceful Isle" and its surroundings to dash into
Fall River! Here and there is a house, or a charming name of a street,
to tell that it was once a pleasant old village like other New England
villages, but Commerce has sacked it of all that is beautiful--or, if it
has left anything by mistake, we didn't see it. The ugly, work-marred
town smote us like a blow in the face, and yet we saw that it has its
own fierce, flaunting interest. I shall never again think of a Fall
River boat as a restful thing. A Fall River boat was all I knew of Fall
River before, except that a big Revolutionary battle was fought there.
Now a battle between Labour and Capital is ceaselessly going on. It was
a joy--a selfish joy, perhaps--to spin out of the town limits and come
into Devonshire. Really, it _was_ Devonshire--Devonshire in look and in
the names of places. What of Taunton, for instance? So we flew on to
Boston, through a series of exquisite parks such as surely no other city
in the world can have for a frame.
[Illustration: map]*
There was just one attractive feature about Fall River for us: not
the Picture Palaces, of which there must be about a million; not the
coloured posters of the Azores, put up to please the homesick Portuguese
labourers, but the reappearance of Peter Storm. Frankly, dearest, I had
been afraid in my inmost heart that the Mystery was going to close round
Peter like a dark cloud, hiding him from our sight forever. Caspian had
perhaps hoped that this might be the case. But Peter had said that he
would be found standing at the corner of Elm Street (there wasn't an elm
in it, or any other tree), and there he was, though we were early at the
rendezvous rather than late.
I forgot to tell you that Pat started out from Newport in our car, the
bride and bridegroom squeezing into the Grayles-Grice. I'd accused the
girl of not looking well--a stupidity of which I should never be capable
if I hadn't an object to gain--and she had owned to a slight headache. I
said that I had some wonderful pillules that I could give her; but I
must administer them myself, and they must be taken every half-hour. Of
course there was nothing for it but she must come to us; and she
brightened visibly with every mile, though whether owing to the pillules
or the increasing nearness of Fall River, I can't say, and wouldn't if I
could.
Having disposed of the honeymooners, there was room in our car for
Peter. Jack and I had manoeuvred (by taking a short cut Jack found on
a map) to reach Elm Street first; so we did a sort of Sabine business
reversed: snatched up Peter and dashed on. I could almost _hear_ Ed
Caspian gnashing his teeth in the G.-G. just behind. It was a sound like
something wrong with the gear.
Boston you perhaps know more about than I do, at any rate from books.
But you would like to see Jack here--and Monty with him, of course: two
wounded heroes enjoying a well-earned repose, as many a wounded hero has
enjoyed in other days. He--Jack--wonders if the famous Tea is lying at
the bottom of the harbour still, in hermetically sealed tins, and
whether it improves with age.
I broke it to you with the top of my letter that we're in a perfectly
gorgeous hotel. Jack and I have a suite which would be good enough for a
king and queen. He was determined that we'd "do ourselves well," as we
are to stay several days, running out to Plymouth and so on, and running
back. We've been here now only one night and a morning, but already our
sitting-room looks, in some ways, as if we'd taken it for life. Flowers,
of course! Jack always buys me flowers; and books--books--books:
Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and some
glorified guides in volume form. I said, "Are we to carry all these in
the car? We shall be boiling over with books, swamped with books, buried
under books as Tarpeia was under the shields and bracelets!" But Jack
had made his plans. They will be sent home to Awepesha by the hotel
people when we go, and we are to have the comfort of them here. As
nobody else will have any books, they'll offer Pat an excuse to drop in
on us--Peter, too. Jack ought to give "penny readings," I think!
I haven't, by the way, got any satisfaction out of Peter. We are
partners in the Caspian-Shuster plot, but _his_ plot he keeps to
himself. I wonder what, from all I have told you, Mercedes, _you_ think
of him?
In spite of everything, Jack and I believe that he's _all right_, and
vaguely we look for a Great Surprise, though of what nature we cannot
say. I wish it would come before we get into Aunt Mary-land. I begin to
need something to brace me up!
Love! Ever your MOLLY.
XXII
MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCEDES LANE
_Still Boston._
DEAR ONE:
I was wishing for a surprise, and it came. But it hasn't explained
anything. It has only thickened the plot--thickened it like porridge
made of Boston beans.
I didn't mean to inflict another letter upon you quite so soon; but I'm
so full of the surprise--and "beans," too--heavenly Boston ones, very
brown, and crisp on top--that I can't wait.
My last night's budget was posted to you only this morning early, when
Jack and I were going out to discover what every (other) man and woman
knows about the Hub of the Universe. All day long we were so busy seeing
and doing things in this delightful, intimate personality that I lost my
Stormy Petrel emotion in a crowd of other emotions. Usually when we stop
anywhere, and are not in the car most of the day, Mrs. Shuster finds
work for Peter to do. She and ex-Senator Collinge give him sheafs of
notes to elaborate into letters or articles for the papers which
propagate their ideas. I think--and have thought from the first--that
this plan of campaign is more to please the Ally (Caspian) than from any
pressing need for such work to be done _en route_. Mrs. Shuster
impulsively engaged Storm before Caspian met him, and very likely made
some sort of contract to which he can hold her if he chooses. Besides,
she admires him as much as ever, though she admires Larry more, and in
her silly, blundering way, she plays a double game. All sweetness and
light to Storm when she's with him, and immense pride in him as an
employe--the pride a small, dull comet might feel in attracting
attention to itself by trailing a disproportionately brilliant tail
across the sky. All specious promises and excuses to Caspian when she's
with him and _not_ with Peter. Caspian, you remember, _used_ to be a
protege of hers when he was a rising young socialist, and she was the
widow of a quaint genius who'd made a fortune in some weird patent to
keep your hair from decaying, or your teeth from falling out. Now, he's
a rising young millionaire, accepted by People Who Matter; and he can do
more for her than she for him, socially. So she has to be nice to him,
no matter how she feels, and "keep him sweet," anyhow until she's
_quite_ sure of Larry and his ancestors to back her up. That's the way I
account for Peter's being kept on, though of course there's the fact
that Caspian enjoys bullying him now that he's down.
Anyhow, that's the situation on the surface. When we motor, the Stormy
Petrel submits himself for the present to the boot of the tyrant in the
Grayles-Grice. When we leave the motor, Peter is left, too, and chained
to his duties. But, so long as he gets through his tasks at the
appointed time, no questions can be asked as to how he spends the extra
hours. And the speed with which he does get through those tasks is
miraculous as that of Psyche sorting the grains of wheat at the order of
mother-in-law Venus! Psyche had all the kingdom of ants to help her.
But _who_ helps Peter? One can't suppose that he's rich enough to fling
all his salary to an understudy while he gads. Yet I've seen him going
to his room with a _sheaf_ of papers which would keep the nose of a
common secretary at the grindstone for six or seven hours, whereas P. S.
is free to do as he pleases in less than half that time.
This long preamble explains why Peter Storm didn't start out with us
this morning, though we picked him up at Fall River and brought him on
to Boston, as I told you, and why he was nevertheless able to appear
casually in Cambridge. We came across him in the college yard, just as
we were "processing" through the big gateway, guided by the Boys, proud,
happy Boys, showing off their Alma Mater to their Best Girl and her
satellites!
"If I'd had an education, here's where I should like to have got it,"
Peter remarked, calmly joining our forces, unabashed by Caspian's stare.
"You haven't finished all that stuff the Senator and I gave you!" gasped
Lily, knowing that the eye of Ed had travelled reproachfully to her.
"That's all right, Mrs. Shuster," was Peter's airy reply. "When you get
home, you'll find that everything has been duly posted."
There was nothing more to be said on the subject. And though Peter
referred to himself as a person of no education, he seemed to know more
about Cambridge than the Boys themselves--quite as much as Jack, who has
been studying up the place as if for an exam!
It really is charming, that college yard, you know, Mercedes--just as
charming in its way, Jack admits, as bits of Oxford, or the old
Cambridge for which this darling place was named. Once it was called
Newton, but after the great event in 1636--the granting by the General
Court of Massachusetts Bay of _four hundred pounds_ "towards a schoole
or colledge"--they decided that it ought to be called Cambridge. Nearly
all the buildings contrive to look rather venerable (they cloak
themselves with creepers), but some, like Massachusetts Hall and Harvard
Hall, and several houses, are really old. Tom, Dick, and Harry put on
the air of graybeards returning, after a half-century of adventure, to
their childhood's home, though they left college only last year to go
abroad. It was funny to see the patronizing looks they cast on the
undergrads we saw; but they were the life of the place for us, all the
same, and we felt truly _in_ it, chaperoned by them. Outside college
bounds, however, they lost interest. It was Jack who had to tell us
about "Brattle." As far as the Boys were concerned, it might have been
any ordinary street, instead of _the street_ of the world, as it is to
true hearts of Cambridge. In Cambridge the smart thing is to be rather
dowdy, just as it is at Oxford, and in Cambridge of England; and so, as
we had got ourselves up to dazzle Boston (a difficult task, I must
say!), we were conspicuously, ignominiously tourists as we gazed in
reverence at Washington's Elm, at Longfellow's exquisite old primrose
yellow house, and the other historic incarnations of Cambridge's past.
Only the Boys were not subject to the pitying scorn of Society. They
didn't have on their _worst_ clothes, because they have neither best nor
worst, but what they had on was _it_. And possessing no hats was greatly
in their favour. By the way, did you know that Cambridge is the first
place where a printing press was set up in America? I didn't. It
remained for my English Jack to inform me of the fact.
This Cambridge expedition was in the afternoon I neglected to mention.
Our morning (while Peter doubtless toiled) had been spent in the
wonderful Public Library of Boston itself. We'd meant to do more and
other things, but one could stay a week in that library, which I believe
started with just _ten thousand_ books! Everything is beautiful about
it, from the pale-pink granites and brown Spanish tiles without to the
St. Gauden lions who guard the great marble staircase within. Sargent's
"Religions of the World" is a noble decoration, and Abbey's frieze of
the Holy Grail is beautiful, but the panel paintings of Puvis de
Chavannes--"The Muses Greeting the Genius of Enlightenment"--are worth
while coming from London or Paris to Boston to see.
After we motored back from Cambridge we wandered about here and there,
seeing the "Cradle of American Liberty," the "Sanctuary of Freedom," and
the place "where Independence was born." Unless you have the key, you
won't be able to unlock this saying, so I'll do it for you. Why, they
call Faneuil Hall the "Cradle of Liberty" because they used to hold all
the town meetings there to discuss whether they should revolt against
British rule or no; so Liberty must have rocked to and fro a lot! The
Old South Meeting House is the "Sanctuary of Freedom," for there it was
prayed for and blessed. And of course Independence was born in the Old
State House. I wonder if anything half as epoch-making will ever come to
pass under the great gold dome of the new one? It's very fine, but it
can never be quite so thrilling, I think. And _it_ wasn't built where
the pillory and scaffold used to stand! Jack would see the Bunker Hill
Monument, too, though I think monuments, even the finest, seem to chill
your glorious visions of what really happened on the spot.
Jack, and Pat, and Peter, and I then made a secret pact that we'd devote
part of to-morrow to Hawthorne's Boston; that we'd _pretend_ to find the
house of "The Blythedale Romance" in Tremont Street; that we'd poke
about for the lost site of Hester Prynne's lonely hut on the Back Bay
(huts there are neither cheap nor lonely now), and search for various
other story landmarks. With this happy prospect before us, and having
slyly shaken off all other companions, we went unsuspectingly back to
the hotel, not dreaming of a _guet-apens_, as the French so expressively
say.
Peter doesn't live at our hotel, not being able to afford gorgeousness.
Marble-walled, gilded-ceilinged rotundas and restaurants are not for
humble secretaries, alas, even if they do look like banished princes! We
invited him, however (also Pat), to have tea with us in our own
sitting-room, and he accepted.
If we could, we should have sneaked in; but the magnificent
entrance-hall of our palatial hotel is not adapted to sneaking purposes.
I'll be hanged if there's a single trapdoor under a conveniently placed
Persian rug, or so much as a secret sliding panel, unless you count the
elevators as such! However, we were doing our best to look invisible _en
masse_, when up sprang Edward Caspian and crossed our path as we ought
to have expected the villain of the piece to do.
He was not alone. With him was a man, not young, yet not looking
middle-aged. He had a head rather like Shakespeare's, and eyes like
aquamarines with a light burning behind them.
"Jove!" I heard the Stormy Petrel mutter. "Camera-eyed Dick!"
I knew instantly that Caspian had been as good as his word, and had sent
for a detective. The name "Camera-eyed Dick" was too terribly
expressive, and so was the way Peter pronounced it, even though he spoke
under his breath--to himself, not to me. I felt that here was a man with
a fearsome specialty--a man called "camera-eyed," because his eyes
photographed on his brain stuff a permanent picture of every face he
saw. And Caspian had brought him here, no doubt at large expense, to
recognize the face of Peter Storm, alias Some One Else.
Oh, it was an awful moment, and made worse because I felt this stroke
was partly our fault. If we hadn't done everything we could to aggravate
Caspian and make him more jealous than ever of Storm, just as his
jealousy had been simmering down, probably he wouldn't have bothered to
carry out his old threat. I thought I should faint, I was so frightened
for Peter, and so sick at the idea of having him arrested or something.
"Is there anything I can do?" I stammered out, before I could stop
myself from making a bad _faux pas_ and showing that I suspected his
danger.