beauty, with famous points of view. I had to see them with Mr. Caspian
at my side--all but the view of Crawford Notch, as it is named, which is
of a surprising splendidness, and where we stopped to get down from our
automobiles and walk about. When that happens--the getting down, I
mean--I often find myself with the Winstons, and Mr. Caspian does not
care much to come where they are. Then, when I am with them, often Mr.
Storm is there, too. So the Crawford Notch was the best as it was the
most beautiful of my moments in the White Mountains till this
afternoon. And now I have come to what I wish to tell.
When we waked in the morning of to-day it was to see rain coming down in
the cataracts. This spoiled our plan of taking some walks and seeing the
golf course, which Captain Winston loves to do. But also, the rain made
it not good to travel. Shut up, one misses the beauty of the ways.
Somehow it arranged itself through the influence of Molly and Jack that
we stay long enough to have a fine day. Not to be with Mr. Caspian too
much, I stayed a good deal in my room. I tried to read a novel I bought
in the hotel--a hotel splendid enough for a big city, though it stands
among wild mountains, so far away from the world it is--Molly says--as
if Diogenes had had his tub enlarged and fitted up by Ritz. But this
novel had a sad ending, I found when I looked ahead, so I could not bear
to go on. By that time it was afternoon. I went downstairs. Most of our
people were playing bridge, among them Larry and Mrs. Shuster, and Mr.
Caspian. Molly and Jack were not there. Neither was Mr. Storm. When he
saw me Mr. Caspian got up, and told his table they must make a dummy. I
wished then I had stayed in my room, but it was too late. The best I
could do was to walk out on the veranda--an immense veranda where the
most fierce rain could not follow you to the chairs against the wall.
Molly and Jack love fresh air, so I thought perhaps to find them sitting
out there. But they were not to be seen; and when Mr. Caspian came on
and on after me, though he hates what they love, I took a most desperate
resolution. I went straight ahead as if I had come downstairs to do it,
and walked right off the veranda into the pouring rain. I had no
umbrella, and my head was bare and I had on a dress of white shantung
silk. I knew he wouldn't follow me into the rain, and he didn't. He
stood at the top of the steps and called after me that I was a crazy
girl. "Come back!" he said, as if he had the right to order me about.
"You will get soaked to your skin and catch your death of cold!"
[Illustration: "The young, slender birches of the mountain waysides"]
I looked back just long enough to answer that I _loved_ to be soaked to
my skin, and I was not afraid of catching the cold. All I wanted was
that he did not catch me. But I did not say this part aloud. He called
out something more, but I had got too far away to hear, for I was
walking fast, and the rain made a loud, sweet sound, pattering on
leaves. When I had looked back, I had seen something more than the
figure of Mr. Caspian standing on the steps in his nice white flannel
clothes: I had seen Molly and Jack and Mr. Storm. They were not on the
side of the veranda I had come out on, but just round the corner,
talking together in great earnest. I did not think they saw me; but you
shall know by and by!
I must have seemed like a mad one walking along with my head up in all
that rain, as if I were out for my pleasure. But I did not care. I felt
not to care for anything. It did not seem to matter what happened to me;
I wished that I could take cold and die. I found a path under trees,
winding up a beautiful high hill. On one side was rock, and I wished a
large piece would fall on my head so I should never have to go back to
the hotel. But that was selfish to Larry, for I could not bring him any
money if I were dead!
I walked on and on, and the rain made my hair go in little corkscrew
curls over my eyes, and my thin dress stuck to my neck and arms like a
skin, and I must have looked an object to scare the crows. I was cold,
too, for there was a chill in the rain as if it had once been ice on
some mountain-top, but I would not turn back. I was determined to wait a
long time and be sure Mr. Caspian had gone in to his bridge. Then, I
thought, I would find some side way into the hotel where I should not be
seen.
As I walked up the path, I heard suddenly steps coming behind. I was
afraid that after all Mr. Caspian had decided himself to follow. I
thought he had perhaps put on a coat for the rain, and brought an
umbrella to take me back, with my hand on his arm. Quick, I hurried to
climb up to a terrace-place there was above that place in the path, with
a lovely tree on it, almost like a tent. I think it is named the weeping
ash. I sat very still underneath, and I hoped the man might not look up;
but I did not remember about my footprints in the wet earth stopping
just there. I did not think of the footprints at all.
From where I sat, crouched down under the low tent of the little tree, I
could see the head of a person coming. It was not the head of Mr.
Caspian! It was a much higher head, and it wore the hat of Peter Storm.
When I knew it was he, I wanted, oh, so much, to call out his name and
tell him I was there. But I said to myself, "No, that would not be nice,
my girl. He will guess you hid from Mr. Caspian, but that you did not
wish to hide from _him_!" So I did not move. But he stopped and called
my name. Then it was no harm to answer. Even the Sisters would say it
would be rude if I did not! I looked out from under the tree, and
explained that I had come there to wait till the rain was not so much.
On his part he explained that he had seen my footmarks come to an end on
the path.
"I have brought you Mrs. Winston's umbrella," he said. "We saw you go
away without one, so she sent me with hers. May I come up and help you
down? The grass is slippery."
I did not need the help, but I said, "Yes, come." And as he came, the
rain, which had not been so bad for some minutes, began to pour down in
a torrent. Instead of falling in drops, it was like thick crystal rods.
"We had better wait," he said. "The umbrella won't be much good in this
deluge." It would have been cruel not to ask him into my shelter, so I
did; and it was too low for him to stand up. He had to sit down by my
side. The rain came in a little, though the tree made a thick roof, and
he put up the umbrella over my head. I told him he must come under it,
too. We were close to each other, more close than we had been on the
front seat of the car in the days when he drove with me by his
side--closer than I had ever been with him except when we danced.
I looked up at him, and he looked down at me. "Poor little girl!" he
said. "You are drenched!"
They were such simple words. Any one might have said them. But it was as
if his eyes spoke quite different things. A light shone out of them into
mine. And though I did not mean to do it, my eyes answered. I knew the
most wonderful thing! I knew that he loved me, not like a friend, but
with a great, immense, fiery love. And I think he must have known that I
loved him, for I couldn't help my eyes telling.
Oh, Adrienne, now the secret is out to you. I have loved him a long
time, loved him _dreadfully_. I have felt as if he were _me_--as if I
wasn't _there_ till he had come. Do you understand? If you do not, you
have not yet loved your cousin Marcel de Moncourt!
It seemed to me that never in my life before had I felt; and suddenly I
was crying, as his eyes held mine to his. The next instant I was in his
arms. It was not till then I thought of my promise to another man. And
to tell the truth, as I wish to do to you, it was two or three minutes
or maybe more that I did not think.
Then I took my arms down from his neck (yes, I had put them there, as if
I were in a dream, when his arms went round my waist and he kissed my
cheek, all wet with cold rain and hot tears). It was only my cheek,
because I turned my lips away, not out of goodness or because of being
loyal to somebody else, I am afraid, but just because it seemed so great
and wonderful to be in his arms I could bear no more.
"I forgot!" I said. "I forgot that I have given my word."
"I forgot, too," he said. "But now it is irrevocable. Your word can't
stand. You love me, and nothing shall make me let you go. Don't you know
that?"
I told him that if he loved me, I did not want to go. I was in the midst
of saying that--though I did not want to--I _must_; but he interrupted
to tell how he loved me. And, Adrienne, if I had never been happy for
one single hour in my life till then, and could never be happy after,
still I should have been glad I was born--yes, glad even if I lived to
be an old, old woman with nothing of joy to remember but that. If this
is wicked, it cannot be helped.
I had to listen while he explained that he knew I couldn't care for Ed
Caspian, and it was only to help Larry I had said yes. He went on, that
he understood there must be money, for Larry's sake, and if he could get
money, quite a good deal, would I marry him? Even if I wouldn't (he
flashed out in a sudden, almost fierce way) he would never let Ed
Caspian have me, because he was not worthy and it would be sacrilege. I
said, if I were alone in the world I would marry for love if there was
not a cent. But I must think for Larry, as Larry was like a boy, and by
comparison I felt an old woman. That made Peter laugh, for the first
time, but he did not laugh long. He begged me to trust him: that he knew
how to get all Larry would need, and we would both look after him
together as if we were old people and Larry our child. He said there
were reasons why he could not have this money at once; at least, he
_could_ have it, but there were things to be done first. All he asked
for himself, till the hour came, was my trust. But he wanted me to break
off my engagement at once. After what had happened between us, he could
not any longer bear it to go on.
If it had been that I could give Mr. Caspian back his ring, I would have
agreed to do as Peter asked. Yet how could I say, "I will not marry you.
But your ring you cannot have till I am married to another man and his
money gets it from the Uncle?" Even less could I tell Peter about the
Uncle, because he would blame poor Larry. It was dreadful to refuse
Peter what he asked, but I had to refuse. I was afraid he would be angry
and despise me because I could not even explain why I would not break.
But there he was wonderful. When he had thought for a moment, and looked
at me as if he would read my soul, he said: "You must have some reason
which seems to you very strong. I asked you to trust me, and now I'm
going to trust _you_, though it hurts a good deal. It will be all the
more of an incentive to me to make the way clear as soon as possible;
and meanwhile I'm not going to spoil the best hour I have ever known."
I was a little afraid, when he said this, that he might think we could
lose ourselves in love again; and he must have guessed what troubled me,
for he spoke at once: "Don't worry. I know now you love me. That's all I
want. Till you give me the right to something more, I'll stand where I
stood half an hour ago, down on the ladder of friendship. But give me
the rest of the hour here--if you trust me as I trust you."
I was only too glad to consent. But the moment I agreed, he remembered
that I was drenched, and said he would take me home. I had to give him
my hot hand before he would believe I was warm as if sitting by a stove.
[Illustration: CRAWFORD'S NOTCH, WHITE MOUNTAINS]
Oh, the glorious half-hour that followed! I cannot express to you,
Adrienne, the joy of it. We spoke no more of love. We did not touch each
other. But we _knew_. And the rain, which had come down for a few
minutes in that great flood, stopped, to let the sun shine out. I never
saw the world so marvellous as then. The lovely things sparkling bright
all around where we looked put ideas of beauty in our heads, so we spoke
about them, not about ourselves. Just to be there together, that was
all. You cannot think what a pleasure only to talk of _trees_! And
it seemed they were listening. They laughed and clapped their little
hands.
[Illustration: map]*
It is Molly who says always that trees are alive, like us. These woods
of the White Mountains she calls the woods of Fairies. Now we saw well
it was the truth. They looked quite different woods from others. Even
the sunshine was a different colour, and shades of colour. You see, the
woods are not old, but young: baby birches, and baby maples, and their
big brothers not yet turning darker green. In the sun all was gold of
many tints. Peter and I could see a flickering light, like a net of
pale, pale gold, trail across the amber-coloured leaves of spring. Peter
said, "The spirit of the woods has bare shoulders, sunburned brown, and
her gold hair blows over them." I said, "The trunks of the littlest
birches are sticks of her broken ivory fan she has planted in the
ground, and the tall ones are masts of buried ships, bleached white in
the moonlight." We were a chorus to praise the Nature; but if our tree
had been a cell of prison, we should have said, "the bars are
beautiful."
It was such a dear, kind tree, my Adrienne! Peter made us both pretend
that we could remember when we had been trees, live creatures, living in
lovely houses--the houses which were ourselves. We had our concert rooms
where the birds sang to us. We had our menageries of trained squirrels.
We lived very long, and always we were young and of great beauty. We
slept in the time of winter to dream of the summer days, and then we
remembered the history of birds and men we had seen making--all the
things that, now we are people, we have to read in books. No words of
the love did we speak after those first minutes of surprise, but we
could have sat forever, not tiring of our talk.
At last I had to say, "Now we _must_ go!" And Peter did not keep me. We
shook hands like the friends. And then the divine hour was over, except
in memory. There it will always live for me. I can always call it back,
with every word and look, even if things do not come right for us, as
Peter thinks they will.
I wish, oh, _how_ I wish, I could be as sure as he seems to be! But I
cannot help telling myself that perhaps, as he is used to being poor, he
does not realize how much money Larry needs.
It has done me good to write to you of this, my Adrienne, for love is
coming to you, too, even if it has not yet come as it has to me.
YOUR PATRICE.
XXIX
MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCEDES LANE
_Awepesha, Long Island._
DEAREST MERCEDES:
I haven't written to you since Bretton Woods, because the little details
of our travels might have seemed an aggravation while I kept the
_Secret_ up my sleeve, and had no particular personal news with which to
embroider the story of the days. Now, it's different. I can't tell you
the Secret yet, it's true; but there's some rather big news--news which
brought us all back to Long Island in a hurry after Great Barrington.
I'm debating with myself whether to blurt it out now, or to lead up to
it gradually. I'll ask Jack's advice!
* * * * *
I have asked, and Jack says, "I think Monty and Mercedes would rather
finish our travels with us, and see the things that happened as we saw
them, instead of being made to play Providence and reach the end before
it arrives."
So I'll take his word for it, and begin where I left off at Bretton
Woods, only hurrying on, perhaps, a little faster than I should if there
were no bombshell to explode later.
We didn't hurry our journey, however. No presentiment warned us of what
was to come. We stayed two days at Bretton Woods, and adored the place.
Fancy drinking water from a spring at Mount Echo! The name turned water
into champagne. And fancy having nice college boys disguised as waiters,
to serve us, and earn enough for next winter's course! It rained one
day, but the downpour was a blessing in disguise for it drew Peter and
Pat nearer together and wove a spun-glass barrier between the girl and
Caspian. She ran out in a torrent to get rid of the inevitable Ed, who
discreetly retired in fear of a drenching; then, when his back was
safely turned, I sent Peter Storm after her with an umbrella. Jack and I
were still on the veranda when the two came back an hour and a half
later. The rain had stopped. Danae's shower of gold had been scattered
over the woods in a sunburst. But even the joyousness of nature was
hardly enough to account for the look on their faces. I hoped to hear
that night or next day that the unnatural engagement with Ed Caspian was
"off." There I was disappointed. Not a word was said either by the girl
or the man; yet _something_ happened during that walk in the rain, I was
still sure. Both were different afterward, in a way too subtle to
define. But _nothing_ is too subtle to feel!
The night after starting on again we stopped at Lake Sunapee in New
Hampshire, and the day's run getting there was just as astonishing as
the run which brought us to Bretton Woods. We saw the glories of
Franconia Notch. We saw the Great Stone Profile, which influenced
Hawthorne's life. I heard people speaking of it as the profile of an
"_old_ man," but to Jack's eyes and mine it was young with eternal
youth, the youth of the gods. It gave us the same mysterious thrill that
the Sphinx gives; and its gaze, reading what sky and mountains,
cathedral forests and rushing rivers have to tell, holds the same Secret
that's in the stone eyes looking over the desert.
There are some charming Indian legends in these mountains where the
Profile reigns as king. One is the story of an immense carbuncle, the
biggest jewel in the world, which hangs suspended from a rock over a
hidden pool that reflects its fire. It's guarded by an evil spirit, but
when the day comes for it to be found, the god of the Profile will put
the knowledge of its whereabouts into the mind of a man. At the same
time strength will come to that man to overcome the wicked guardian, and
win the jewel. How I wish the Profile had taken a fancy to Jack! I'm
sure there couldn't be a better modern St. George. Alas, however, no
flash of divination came to him, and the only supernatural adventure we
had in these faun and fairy haunted woods was to catch a glimpse of the
White Doe of the mountains which appears to travellers now and then,
bringing them good luck. Of course _some_ people would say it was just
an ordinary, _cafe-au-lait_-coloured deer, with the sun shining on it to
make it look white; because there are still deer in the mountains: but
you and Monty wouldn't be so banal!
We saw lakes and forests, dark, impenetrable pines, and baby woods of
white and gold and palest green; rivers and brooks that are cousins to
the brooks and rivers of Scotland; rocks like enchanted elephants lying
down fast asleep in surging foam, and green pools clear as glass to
their pearl-stored depths. The Flume, in its different way, was as
memorable as the Great Stone Face. So flashing white was the swift water
it seemed to send out troops of flying spirits which vanished as we
looked, or else crossed on a bridge of rainbow to the blue mountains
that walled the distance.
Sunapee has a river and a lake, and our hotel was great fun, with a
dining-room which pretends to be a glorified log cabin. Next day we had
lost the superlative beauty of the mountains. It was just very pretty
country, where the mountains sent the baby foothills to play and sun
themselves. By and by, however, the Green Mountains began to float
before us, not in the least green, but darkly blue against the pale-blue
sky, like background mountains in Stained-Glass-Window Land; and Vermont
opened adorably. The door of the State was set in a wall of beautiful
forests, wild forests which might have been discovered by us for the
first time if a great suspension bridge hadn't given away the story of
civilization. The mountains pretended to be wild also, though they were
low and softly wooded. But along our roadside lay piles of
good-smelling, newly sawn wood, which we feared that men, not brownies,
had placed there; and now and then we passed, in the midst of apparent
wildness, a mild-looking elderly farmhouse.
[Illustration: "I shall always think of Vermont as the State of wild
lawns and gardens"]
Towns had a way of appearing where we least expected to see them;
Chester, for instance, which had nothing to lead up to it. (But there
was a delicious luncheon in it!) And the instant we had passed out from
its street of stately trees we were deep in the country again. I don't
know why Vermont should have the greenest grass and trees in the world,
and more varieties of wild flowers growing in thick borders by
brooks and roadsides. Yet really it does seem to be so! I shall always
think of Vermont as the State of wild lawns and gardens.
[Illustration: map]*
Did you ever see what they call the "jewel flower?" I saw it for the
first time in Vermont: a delicate little yellow bell of a thing; but its
stem is a magician. Dip it in water, and in a few minutes it will have
collected enough solid-looking pearls for a necklace. It was Peter who
knew this, and told Pat, whereupon she had the Grayles-Grice stopped for
an experiment, and the whole procession halted. The brook proved the
truth of Peter's statement. It's extraordinary the country as well as
town lore Peter has! At least I wondered at it, until I heard something
of what his adventurous life has been.
If we discovered one new flower that day, we discovered dozens; new to
Jack and me, I mean: tall, rose-red ones like geraniums, of which the
country people couldn't tell the names; purple ones like plumes; white
ones like blond bluebells; and others that looked like nothing but
themselves. All the old friends were there, too: wild roses,
honeysuckle, convolvulus, growing in the midst of feathery ferns and
young-gold bracken. Never did any earthly gardener plant with such an
eye to colour as the planting of what Vermont farmers call their "wild
lots." There were apple trees, very big and of strange, dancing shapes,
almost like the olives of Italy; and after we had left the garden
country for a country of hills with steep gradients, we came to
"maple-sugar country." (I shall send you a box of that maple sugar,
which we bought at a pretty little place named Peru. But I'm afraid it's
last year's.)
Despite their steepness the roads were well made, humping themselves up
very high, and then sinking comfortably down into what they call "water
breaks" or "thank you, ma'ams!" I'd often heard that last expression;
but being English, Jack had to have it explained to him that the horse
was supposed to rest there a minute and give thanks for the respite from
pulling.
It will make you feel as if I'd rubbed a file across your front teeth,
my dear, when I tell you that we shot out of maple-sugar country into
marble country. But isn't that better than mixing them up together? The
marble's very pretty, and you don't have to eat it. You walk on it, when
you come to Manchester-in-the-Mountains. Before you get there, though,
you see many other mountains, which don't belong to Manchester. They are
bold and big enough to be named Ben Something or Other if they were in
Scotland; but this is such a country of mountains you know--White, Blue,
and Green--that they don't get grand titles conferred on them unless
they're beyond the average.
Manchester-in-the-Mountains is called the "City of Marble Pavements,"
which makes you feel, before you see it, as if you were coming to Rome
after it was improved by Augustus Caesar. But it is really a perfectly
beautiful village, whose highroad is the main street, and at the same
time a cathedral-aisle of elms. They paved it with marble only because
there's so much marble about they don't know what to do with it
all--unless they give it away with a pound of tea. We stayed all night
in the nicest country hotel Jack and I ever saw in our lives. It's named
after a neighbouring mountain; and I think it must have been made by
throwing several colonial houses together and building bits in between.
The rooms give circumstantial evidence for this theory, too, for there
are labyrinths of drawing-rooms and parlours and boudoirs and libraries,
with a step or two up, or a step or two down, to get in. It's chintzy
and cozy and old-fashioned looking, yet really it's up to or ahead of
date. As for the people who stay there, GOLF is written all over them,
for the great attraction of the place is one of the best golf courses in
the United States.