miles from Boston as the automobile flies, but you pass a good many
sweet things first. We went through Somerville, got lost there, and were
guided in every direction but the right one by a plague of boys not much
bigger than the "dimes" they didn't earn. Jack simply won't look at maps
when in the car, or inquire; expects to find his way by instinct, and
somehow generally _does_. (Are _all_ men like that?) Crossed the Mystic
River, and got on to the velvet surface of the Revere Beach Parkway. But
Chelsea came before the Beach: charming old Chelsea, which probably, in
its heart, thinks Boston its suburb, and prides itself on almost a
century and a half of aristocratic peace since the old fighting days
when Israel Putnam won his commission as Major-General there.
There couldn't be a greater contrast than between Chelsea and Revere
Beach. It's a good thing that miles of parklike road--fought over once
by Independents and British--lie between, or they could never stand each
other, those two! Jack and I ought to have come to Revere Beach when we
were little boy and girl, for, oh, the joy of it for children! What
price the Dragon Gorge, the mountain railway more like the Alps than the
Alps are like themselves, the theatres, the shops of every kind, the
cottages which are nests for birds rather than commonplace, human
habitations?
Opposite, Nahant sat looking delightful and alluring, but we went on to
Lynn--Lynn, unattractive at first, and pretty when we got better
acquainted, like some of the nicest women I know. It's a great place now
for shoes, and was once a great place for pilgrims. What a pity the
former are too late for the latter! The Pilgrims must have needed the
shoes badly. They could have walked along the Old Pilgrim Road to
Swampscott if their feet were equal to it. And perhaps they forgot their
feet, as I forgot Aunt Mary, for it is--and must then have been--a
lovely road.
Hawthorne used to walk to Swampscott, too, as well as to Marblehead, but
he came the other way, from Salem. Do you remember Swampscott was where
he found pink and white Susan, who gave him the sugar heart? That was
pink, too, with a touch of white perhaps. She sounds so delightful as
the "Mermaid!" I'm glad Hawthorne kept the heart for years, and then
instead of throwing it away ate it--gave it honourable burial, so to
speak--which shows that you _can_ have your heart and eat it, too! (I
must, by the by, make a parable of this for Pat, who is eating hers,
though she certainly has _not_ got it. She has given it to some one
else, though I fancy she _thinks_ she has merely mislaid it.) In apropos
of hearts, they make dories in Swampscott; and it's _not_ swampy one
bit!
Of course I quoted Whittier's "Skipper Ireson's Ride" to Jack, coming
toward Marblehead. It was "up to me" to show my British husband that I,
too, had learned things at people's knees.
_"Old Flood Ireson for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered, and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead."_
I wasn't certain I got it just right, but did my best to put a confident
ring into my voice, which is half the battle when you're not sure of
yourself. What a blow, therefore, to be told that in truth and in deed
the women of Marblehead had nothing to do with the job! Jack says the
_men_ did it. And worse still, Captain Ireson was supposed to have been
a victim rather than a villain, because his sailors mutinied and refused
to let him go to the rescue of the sinking ship. I hate having my
childish beliefs disturbed! It tears me all up by the roots, and gives
me a pain in my spirit's toes. But never mind, there's plenty more
romance, which no one can take away from New England, though the very
man who wrote about Ireson complained that it had gone:
_"Gone like the Indian wizard's yell
And fire dance round the magic rock.
Forgotten like the Druid's spell
At moonrise by his holy oak."_
No, no, Whittier, surely you wouldn't say so now if you could see
steamboats and trains pouring forth multitudes, and thousands and tens
of thousands of motor cars stuffed full of people from all over the
world drawn to New England because of its never, never lost halo of
romance!
Did I tell you just now that we were coming toward Marblehead? Well, one
can do that, and not get to Marblehead. You can keep on seeing
Marblehead and expecting to arrive, while in reality you are going all
around "Robin Hood's barn." By the way, I never saw a barn exciting
enough to belong to Robin Hood till I came with Jack on this tour
through New England. Here, barns are as grand as churches, and very much
like them, steeples and all.
A lot of things happened to us on the way to will o' the wisp
Marblehead--_old_ Marblehead, I mean, for _new_ Marblehead is just a
very gay and jolly summer resort, such as I fancy little Susan would,
in her pink sugar heart, have loved. We kept on seeing the old town to
our left, across a harbour as full of white yachts and sailboats as a
New England pond is of water lilies. Jack was loving everything, and
utterly oblivious that beyond Salem lay Aunt Mary-ville. His face was
perfectly ecstatic as we crossed a river--Whittier's beloved
Merrimac--on an ancient covered wooden bridge. He said the sound of the
tires on the slightly loose boards was better music than the followers
of Richard Strauss could make from the "noises of life." I do love those
covered bridges, don't you? They're so richly brown, some of them, that
while one slowly travels along under the roof, it's like looking at the
sun through a piece of cider-brown glass. Or if they're not brown,
they're a soft, velvet gray--gray as shadows at full moon, gray as the
light in dreams.
I hardly know how, eventually, we did get into old Marblehead, for Jack
and I were both so infatuated with the way we lost sight now and then of
the goal. Imagine a road lined on either side with apple trees. If you
haven't seen these, you have never seen such orchards in your life, my
Mercedes! If there was anything as good in Eden, no wonder Eve ate that
apple. I shouldn't wonder if she fixed her eye on it when it was still a
bud.
And then, behind the orchards, there were hills, playgrounds for baby
cedars. Everything contrived to look at least two hundred years old
(except the blossoms and the motor cars), and even the pigeons had such
an air of colonial serenity that they simply refused to stir for a
new-fangled thing like an automobile. They sat still, pretending not to
see us, and never changed their expressions!
At last we did get into old Marblehead, and I'm so happy to tell you it
was exactly like finding our way round the corner in a picture. You know
that thrilling corner in pictures, leading somewhere you are dying to
see and never can? Well, now I have seen it. It's Marblehead. Round the
corner of the front of the picture where the new, smart things are, we
cleverly slipped in. And there was the background running up the canvas,
all over funny labyrinths of streets generally leading nowhere, or, if
anywhere, back to the same garden we'd just passed, a darling garden
boiling over with grass pinks, cabbage roses, sweet williams, and
bleeding hearts. Each house was just a little quainter than the other,
and Jack and I thought we were going to like Marblehead better than any
that ever lived, until--we came to Salem, after Manchester and Magnolia.
Then--we weren't precisely being _untrue_ to Marblehead. No, never that!
_But_ Salem--perhaps it's fair after all to keep a larger place in
memory-land for the Witch City.
It would have been almost a _world_ tragedy if, when the great fire
swept over the town, it hadn't stopped short of the old part, which is
American history incarnate. That "old part" consists of "old, older,
oldest." The oldest houses of all, built about 1635, are very, very
simple, as if the Puritans had prayed over them to be delivered from
temptation and craving for beauty. Then, next are the ones not quite so
old, when people began to be rich and see that Beauty wasn't after all
the unpardonable sin. These houses of the eighteenth century look as if
architects might have been commissioned to come from the Old World to
build them, bringing traditions of gracious decoration for outside and
in. Next, there are the far grander and more stately mansions which grew
up after the Revolution, when the good folk of New England knew that
their land and their fortunes would be theirs forever, undisputed. Salem
had grown into an important place then. Merchants and shipowners had
plenty of money to spend. They spent it well, too, for they made their
dwellings very beautiful, so beautiful that the witch hunters and Quaker
persecutors of the past would have been shocked to the bottom of those
hollow places they called their hearts.
What a good thing it is that there wasn't much brick to be had when the
first old colonial houses were a-building! To be sure, some of the very
best in Salem and Boston and other towns are of brick; but brick had to
come in ships from old England, so only those persons with the most
money and possibly the most cultivated taste could use it. Consequently
the characteristic houses of New England and its borders--the white and
yellow houses we _think_ of when we say "New England"--were made of
wood; and they are unique in the world.
They say that the oldest buildings of Salem--the Gothic, steep-roofed
ones--were meant as copies of gabled cottages on the old home side of
the water. But if they were, they were as far off the originals as a
child's drawing on a slate is far from a steel engraving; and Jack and I
are glad, because these dear things are so ingenuously and deliciously
American that they could exist nowhere except on this side.
I was only too glad to stay in Salem as long as possible, because it put
off Aunt Mary and Wenham, where Jack and I had promised to stay all
night, letting the others go on to wait for us at Newburyport. Jack had
a map (he doesn't mind having maps of towns, or looking at road maps
when _in_ towns), and we took a regular Hawthorne itinerary. We began at
the house in Union Street where he was born--a rather pathetic, forlorn
house, like the birthplaces of most geniuses; then the next, where the
family lived till they moved to Raymond, in sight of the White
Mountains; and so on, following to the custom-house where the bored
genius weighed and gauged, and not missing a single landmark. All are
picturesque to the imagination, but the landmark most picturesque to the
eye is of course "The House of Seven Gables," and that, some of those
dreadful people who dispute everything nice say, isn't what it pretends
to be.
As if such an adorable and perfectly sincere and high-souled looking
house would pretend anything! Should I hear such heresy uttered I would
stop my ears, but coming on it in print was simple, because all I had to
do was to snap the book shut with a bang. It is the dearest, kindest
little gray house, which all new houses, no matter how big and
distinguished, would be proud to have for their grandmother!
Hawthorne's cousin, Miss Ingersoll, whom he called the "Duchess," lived
in the old Turner Street house, and it _had_ had seven gables before his
day. It's perfectly legitimate to put them back, and even a _duty_,
which has been exquisitely carried out. I should like to kiss the hand
of the lady who honoured Hawthorne's beautiful memory by making the
house as dear as that memory itself. I suppose it was she who had the
brilliant idea of using for a front door an old nailed oak one found in
the attic (there must be a lovely attic!), putting the quaint oven of
ancient times into the kitchen, and retrieving from oblivion the
"Duchess's" toasting fork with which she used to make toast for
Hawthorne. There's a creepy story about the way he thought of the
murder, from seeing, through a tiny window of greenish glass, a cousin
of his fast asleep and looking as if dead. But there's a story just as
fascinating about every house in Salem, connected with Hawthorne.
Romantic and interesting things followed him about in his life, like
tame dogs, though he didn't always realize at the moment that they were
romantic or interesting. Sometimes he thought only that they were tame.
All over the place you feel the thrill of witches and the torturing of
Quakers. That's partly thanks to Longfellow, and Whittier, of course,
but mostly from the _influence_ which such tremendous happenings leave,
I think. It's as if some picture of the past were in the atmosphere, and
now and then, out of a corner of your eye, you caught a glimpse, as you
do of the "ghost" of a rainbow when the rainbow seems to have gone.
The "Witch House," where Judge Corwin lived at the time of the
persecution, is almost hidden away now, as if it were trying to escape
from something, and at last brought to bay like a very small, fierce
animal. Even now I can hardly bear to think of those days, and all those
poor people suffering through a few naughty, hysterical children. I'm
sure the Indian woman Tituba could haunt me in Salem even if I lived in
a perfectly new, perfectly good modern hotel! I should have tried the
experiment, I think, if it hadn't been for Aunt Mary being so nearby,
at Wenham.
Well, quite late in the afternoon (I forgot to tell you we lunched, but
you may take that for granted, with so many men in the party) we said
good-bye to Salem. We said other things, too, all in praise of it; and
Jack felt particularly reverential because Salem sent the first ships
from America to Indian and Russian ports. Wasn't it sporting when you
think of what ships were then? But these seafaring men of the New
England coast were like the men of Devon, the "bravest of the brave."
Aunt Mary had plumped heavily down on my heart again, before we got to
Beverly, and this time I couldn't put her out of my mind though the
grandeur of the north coast was in my eyes. Oliver Wendell Holmes lived
in Beverly and loved it, but then he had no Aunt Mary in the
neighbourhood.
Did you ever read what Thackeray said about Wenham Lake Ice? It seems
every London house of any pretension had it on its dinner table, but I
don't think it travels so far in these days of artificial ice. The
lake's still there, anyhow, in a hollow to the left of the road as you
go, gleaming blue and mysterious as watching eyes between the dark
trunks of a pine forest. Then, after that lake, there was no more excuse
for lingering, unless at the monument. We came into Wenham. Jack was
trying to look brave.
"In a few minutes now," said he, with galvanized cheerfulness, "we shall
be having tea with your Aunt Mary."
At that instant (we had purposely dropped back to bring up the rear of
the procession after Salem, letting even the lumbering Hippopotamus
bumble on ahead) we beheld all our family of cars drawn up under some
skyscraping elms, in front of the most delectable tea-house you ever met
in your life. The Hippo was in front of a very fine old white church,
with "I am one of the pillars of New England" written in every line of
it; but it was certainly the tea-house which had arrested its career.
[Illustration: map]*
There was a large green and white striped umbrella or two protecting
some little tables, and grouped round those little tables were our
friends.
"I'm _hanged_ if we'll be having tea with my Aunt Mary!" said I, with
that firm-jawed look Jack has got to know and fear as characteristic of
the American wife at bay.
So we had tea there, under elms so generously deep and thick that large
populations of robins live in them without ever having seen each other's
faces. They were, to the tree world, what Blenheim is in castle world.
People can come and live there for years, they say, without the duke
ever knowing they've arrived. Well, so could whole families of birds
live in these elms without the leading robin hearing an alien chirp.
We drowned our sorrows in tea and cream, and buried our sinister
premonitions in scones. Also cakes. A wonderful woman had made them--a
lady-woman. She will be the heroine of my great American novel, if I
ever write one. I hope to goodness she won't be gone from Wenham before
it's finished and I can send her a presentation copy! Everything was
green and white in the tea-house, except the dear little things to be
sold there: weather-cocks, and door-stops, and old china. We bought
specimens of these as sops to Cerberus--I mean, as presents for Aunt
Mary--and when there was no longer a pretext for lingering we crept
reluctantly away with the spoils.
It was absolutely _no_ comfort to me, as we crawled through the pretty
square, and approached "Miss Keddison's mansion" (only too easy to find)
that Wenham would be a lovely place to spend not only one but many
nights in. There, on a colonial porch, behind colonial pillars, in a
colonial rocking-chair, sat Aunt Mary on the watch. _She_ looked not
only colonial but Doric!
We had got ahead of the others by this time, and my aunt, rising from
her chair, with a gesture stopped the whole procession. I don't know
whether she meant to do this or not, but no one would have dared pass,
any more than if she had been a railway barrier with "Stop! Look!
Listen!" painted on her high white forehead.
We slowed down: the Grayles-Grice, the Wilmot, the Hippo, and our
Hiawatha, as we have lately named our car.
Aunt Mary descended the steps and came to the gate. Jack jumped out,
forgetting he was lame, and nearly fell. I screamed. Every one scrambled
or leaped or slid to the rescue; and that was the way in which
Providence arranged for Peter Storm and Pat Moore and Larry, to say
nothing of those who mattered less, to become Aunt Mary's guests.
Providence is not too important a word, as you will see when I tell you
as much as I'm allowed to tell, about--what came of the visit.
Aunt Mary has many virtues. They stick out all over her like pins, but
there are some which aren't uncomfortably sharp. Her hospitality, for
instance. This house of hers at Wenham isn't one of the prettiest in the
place, but it is white and dignified, and the over-arching trees give
it charm. Aunt Mary is proud of it, and I think she was really pleased
to welcome the crowd. Besides, when she was in New York on business,
cutting coupons or something, Jack and I talked to her about Larry and
Pat. She was very interested, and said she had been taken to Kidd's
Pines to a garden party, some fifteen years ago, by Cousin John Randolph
Payton, who left me Awepesha, you know. She thought that she still had
some snapshots of the garden which she had taken herself that afternoon.
In those days, it seemed, she had threatened to develop a craze for
photography, but had found that it "interfered too seriously with her
more intellectual pursuits." However, she used to paste her trophies in
scrapbooks, and she said that when she got home from New York she would
look up the volume of that date. It ought to be in the attic, though she
had not seen it for a number of years.
Jack and I thought she would forget about this, and we had indeed
forgotten it ourselves when we arrived at Wenham. Aunt Mary, however,
had not. She greeted Larry warmly (for her) and assured him that, if her
niece had kept her informed of the route, she would have written or
telegraphed asking the whole party to tea. Not knowing our whereabouts,
she could not do this, but was delighted to find the cars stopping at
her door, and hoped that their occupants would all take tea with her.
Every one was simply stuffed with scones and chocolate cake, but such
was the look in Aunt Mary's eye that none dared confess the tea-house
debauch. Her invitation was accepted, and, eighteen strong, we filed
into her parlour. Luckily it's as big as a good-sized country
schoolroom, and there's a mid-Victorian "suite" consisting of two
sofas, a settee, a couple of easy chairs and eight uneasy ones. Aunt
Mary is of those worthy women who upholster themselves and dress their
furniture, so everything in her home is rather fussy, lots of
antimacassars and tidies and scarfs and that sort of thing. Besides, she
thinks flowers are for gardens, not for houses, with the exception of
some wax ones made by herself when a girl and preserved under glass.
Still, there's such a pet of an old Chinese wall paper, and everything
is so exquisitely neat that the effect isn't so bad as you might
suppose.
Aunt Mary has a _flair_ for liking the wrong people, and wronging the
right ones, so of course she took quite a fancy to Ed Caspian, and was
somewhat stiff with Peter, whom Mrs. Shuster introduced as "my
secretary, Mr. Storm." However, she was as nice as she could be to
Larry, and asked if I had mentioned her visit to Kidd's Pines. When she
heard that I had not, she was surprised and grieved at my carelessness.
"My niece was always inclined to be forgetful," said she. "I can't think
where she inherited it from. The first thing I did on my return from New
York was to look in the attic for my old photograph scrapbooks. I have a
place for everything, and everything in its place, in this house; but I
travel a great deal, and occasionally my servants, with the best
intentions, upset my arrangements. I found several of the little volumes
exactly where I expected to lay my hand on them, but I am very sorry to
say the one I wanted was missing. If I had been sure that I should have
the pleasure of seeing you and your daughter, Mr Moore, I would have
looked even more thoroughly, for I'm _sure_ the photographs exist. It
was fifteen years ago this summer that I attended the garden party at
Kidd's Pines, with my cousin, Mr. Payton. I met you and Mrs. Moore for a
moment, I remember quite well. You both looked almost too young to be
married, I thought, but your little girl was about four years old. She
was not at the party officially" (Aunt Mary smiled at her own coy wit),
"but I met her with a boy much older, who was playing with her. I took a
snapshot of them both together, standing by a swing which was in a
retired part of the grounds."
By this time Larry was bored to extinction, but still charming, as he
always is with women, young or old, pretty or plain. He pretended so
pleasantly to be disappointed at the loss of the book (he loathes
looking at photographs) that Aunt Mary was fired to a renewed effort.
"Why, now I come to think of it," said she, "there's another place in
the attic where the book quite well might be. If you will excuse me,
I'll go up and try to find it."
Larry hastened to protest that he wouldn't trouble her for the world,
but Aunt Mary was firm in her desire to please, though sorry to desert
her guests. As the argument went on, Peter Storm abruptly got up and
handed me a plate of cake. "Heavens, no more!" I murmured in an
anguished whisper. "I feel as if I should never be able to look cake in
the face again."
"Don't then, but look me in the face," he mumbled. I did so, surprised.
"Please ask to go and search for that book, and take me with you," I
saw, rather than heard, the words formed by his lips.
Mine not to question why! Mine but to do or die! Instantly I offered,
in a honeyed tone, to save Aunt Mary for her guests, by myself searching
the attic. (Dear Dad and I stayed with her over one melancholy Christmas
when I was a kid. We arrived by train, of course, and saw nothing of the
country. As for Wenham itself, it was feet deep in snow, so I saw
nothing of that either, but I did see the attic. It was my refuge and my
joy. I worship garrets.) Of this episode I reminded my aunt, and assured
her that, though my last visit had been so long ago, I remembered the
topography of the attic. If she would tell me the place to look, I would
guarantee to find the volume if it existed.
Aunt Mary proceeded at once to mention the date of that Christmas visit,
and my age at the time, so now everybody who can be bothered reckoning
up knows just how long I have been twenty-six. Having made this
revelation to those whom it concerned and did not concern, she decided
to accept my offer. I jumped up to go, and at the door, as if on a
sudden thought, exclaimed, "Oh, Mr. Storm, do come along and protect me
from garret ghosts."
He came, and we talked of indifferent things on the way up: of the
house, and the steepness of the attic stairs. At the top of the steps,
however, he changed his tone. Aunt Mary had mentioned a certain oak
secretary-bookcase with glass doors, standing close to the head of the
stairs, and as I steered for it, along a narrow lane between ancient
trunks and packing cases, Peter said: "Mrs. Winston, I've made up my
mind to tell you something, and this is a good place to do it. When I've
told you, you'll understand why I didn't want Miss Keddison to find that
book of photographs, and why I don't even want it to exist in this
house."