Part 10 (1/2)
For instance, look at what you write me of your family, which mixes itself so strangely with my experience. But no, surely it _cannot_ be that the handsome new American cousin with much money, who visited your mother's chateau in your vacance of Easter, is anything to _our_ Monsieur Moncourt. It is only a coincidence that his name shall be Marcel, and that Marcel is a name existing with the de Moncourt men since the centuries. I regret almost that I have written you of our Marcel Moncourt just at the moment when this marvellous cousin has jumped into your life; but, even if there is a connection, you must not comprehend it badly. Do not for an instant picture that our Monsieur Moncourt is a _cook_. But, what a _word_ for him! He is a real Personage. He is a Celebrity. All the world is proud to speak with him, and he can have as much money as he wants. That is why it is so curious he should come to _us_ for a little nothing at all, just through the influence of Mr. Storm, which also I do not understand. But, as I tell you, if there is a cousinhood or an unclehood, it is not a thing for shame. The young Marcel will of course tell Madame la Marquise everything the moment he pa.s.ses so far as to ask for you. And then, if he is so rich and so beau, and has the blood of the de Moncourts in his veins, what does the rest matter? If I were in your place, dear Adrienne, I would not worry on the idea that _our_ Moncourt may be this _mauvais sujet_ of a Paul Jean Honore Marcel de Moncourt you mention, who vanished in his youth, and has so long been counted as dead.
Probably that one is quite altogether dead, and our Moncourt has no lines with the de Moncourts of France. He perhaps took the name because it has a n.o.ble sound. That is one of the things one doesn't ask a man, is it not? But if it is important for your happiness, my Adrienne, I can perhaps arrive at it through Mr. Storm, who must know all, and learn, too, if there is a son of our Moncourt we have not heard of yet.
And now for myself again!
It is so gay and such an amus.e.m.e.nt to have a whole band of young men paying attentions to me, little _me_, who but the other day did not even raise the eyes to a man in taking promenades, without a bad mark on my conduct! Larry does not object at all. He laughs. Girls are born to love the flirt, he says, and indeed, dear Adrienne, he loves it himself! He makes it with all the ladies, even the fat Mrs. Shuster of whom I have written. But that is his manner. I do not inquiet myself for him, not more than he does for me.
At present he is at home, because, though he is a great boy, he has you can't think what a sense of duty. It is for this he stays at Kidd's Pines to welcome new visitors while I am away _en automobile_ with some of our guests, and chaperoned by dear Molly Winston.
Apropos, it is Molly Winston who gives me courage that life can after all be full of pleasant things and good endings, for she and Jack go on having romance and grand adventures. She believes that if ”_you want things enough_,” they come to you sooner or later. She is a very nice chaperon to have.
Three dear boys are in love with me, not enough to hurt them, but enough to make me pleasure and themselves, too, all fighting together and pretending to be angry if I am more kind to one than another. Also there is always Mr. Caspian. He has now asked me what we used to call ”_The_ question”; and in America it is done to the girl herself, as we so often read, not to the father or mother. But, it seems, he spoke first to Larry, almost in the French way. When I have answered no, I was too young (that is the best to say when you are caught by surprise and wish not to offend). He told me that Larry wished me to think of him, because they had made up a big friends.h.i.+p, they two, and there were deep reasons why I should engage myself. I went to Larry to inquire of this, and he said he did not go so far as Mr. Caspian thought. However, it would be good for me to be nice to Mr. C. and not make him sorrow, for a time, until some things were settled. So I am being nice, but sometimes it is difficult, because Mr. Caspian and Mr. Storm are not sympathetic. Still, don't you find the little difficulties in the life are like the cloves and cinnamon in the rice pudding which we at school asked for in a ”Round Robin?” (Oh, that nice word! We found it, you remember, in an English book!)
Mr. Storm drives my darling car, with which we make many dollars from our visitors who love to go on tour. I am considered too small, though I can do it quite well and have no fear. In smooth places without turns Mr. Storm lets me take the wheel. I cannot talk when I drive. I am too happy and have a thousand emotions, like a beehive filled with bees that keep flying home with honey. But he can talk, no matter what happens, and he says things I remember. They seem to paint my brain with pictures which he gives me to keep. So his words are like his eyes, not to be forgotten. You know in our garden at the convent there were flowers which would not be banished, though the gardener pulled them up by the roots again and still again: poppies for instance. Some thoughts which come to one from other people's minds are like these. They persist, and they plant their seeds in a deep place where they cannot be pulled out.
Mr. Caspian is like the gardener at the convent. He tries to stamp out these thoughts, to plant others in me. But the roots have gone down where he cannot find them.
He has come into our automobile, because his own is broken and being mended at Easthampton, where we stayed a night, and I danced with Peter Storm. I let Mr. Caspian come, instead of saying he had better go with the boys in their car, the Hippopotamus, because of Larry asking me to be nice. But I do not let him drive ever--except to-day when I am not in the car, as you shall hear. It is too pleasant having Peter by me when I have to cry, ”Oh, what a lovely place!” or, ”See the wonderful view!”
or, ”Here is a funny sight!” He has a mood which matches mine, and it would not be so with Mr. Caspian. I do not know why, but Mr. Caspian reminds me of an iron fence. You could drape him with pretty flowers, but underneath there would always be the iron fence. Perhaps Peter Storm may be a stone wall under the ivy and blossoming things. But stone is part of nature, and has beautiful colours deep in it, soaked in from sunsets and sunrises and rainbows through thousands of centuries.
All the things I see as we travel in the car--fast as a glorious strong wind which blows past the beauties of earth--all the things I see are more _emphasized_ when I have Peter sitting by me, seeing them, too.
That is why life is so wonderful. I feel things in _double_, as with two souls. Yet of course I am not in love. Do not think that, or you will be wrong. It is my intellect which is waking up, after it was kept in pink cotton by the Sisters; for you know learning school lessons does not wake up our intellect. It only puts on a bright polish, so by and by it can reflect the world when it's out of the cotton. And, oh, it is a sweet world, here in the country that is my home!
By and by I will tell you about the house where we are now, and a kind of mystery which gives the fairy-story effect. But you would not know what these days have been if I left out the tale of our travelling. I sent you a fat envelope of postcards, as I promised, with pictures of Easthampton: the windmills and the old houses, and the big waves. You will like the one of the long fierce wave like a white cat's paw. They call it the ”sea puss.” I hoped it meant that really: a giant cat that seized bathers, and people far up the beach as if they were mice running away. But Captain Winston, who loves the history as we love the bonbons, says no, they have only _stolen_ that name for a great tidal wave which sweeps in from the sea on this side of our island. It was in Indian days but a meek little word: ”seepus,” small river.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of memories of Indians”]
The postcards of Southampton are all pictures of beautiful new houses which rich people have built among the dunes. I could not get old ones, though Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of memories of Indians and early English settlers who were jealous of the Dutch. Now it is a colony of ”cottages” bigger than many of our French chateaux, and of the most unexpected, charming shapes, covered with flowers. Girls and boys who like to dance and have fun all summer like it better than Easthampton, so their mothers have to like it better, too. You will not believe when you look at the pictures that not three hundred years ago, if there had been postcards then, you would have seen only forty rough log-houses built behind palisades for fear of Indians; maybe the watch-house was where the Country Club is now! Instead of dances and parties the only pleasure was to go to church, where you were called by the roll of a drum. A stern man named Thomas Sayres beat on the drum and you had to go whether you liked or not, because Abraham Pierson, the first minister, governed the state as well as church.
I am not sure even the Indians weren't nicer to live with, because they liked beads and bright things, as we do, especially mirrors. Why, they sold anything they _had_ for mirrors! And they were kind and pleasant till the Dutch and English spoilt their dispositions. _Their_ parties--yes, they _had_ parties!--were in their cornfields--oh, miles of beautiful cornfields that are covered with dark mysterious cedars now, like sad thoughts of the sunny past. The Indian families came to help each other in the cornfields, and the young men fell in love with the maidens and proposed as they do at our dances. If you said ”no,”
perhaps they knocked you hard on your head, and took you anyhow! I am pleased it is not so now. I should not like Mr. Caspian to do it.
He was very nice, though, at Southampton, and asked to have the Grayles-Grice stop at one of the shops (the most _fascinating_ shops, like at Vichy and Aix where your dear mother took us the summer before the war). There he bought wonderful bonbons--candies. I ate only one, and the Goodrich girls the rest.
You will like the picture I send of the cottage which has been built on to a windmill. I should love to have that. There are lots more windmills, soft and gray and fluffy-looking, like Persian p.u.s.s.y cats sitting up in the dunes; so maybe I shall have one some of these days.
We saw some lovely roads in France when we motored with Madame la Marquise, but we were never on any road quite so sweet (I have to say sweet, it is a right word!) as the road of the s.h.i.+nnec.o.c.k Hills. We curved so much among the dunes, I was not allowed to drive, though it was easy as flying in a dream; and the dunes were the colour dunes would be in dreams: gold and silver mingled with warm blue shadows. They had a look of gold and blue flame in fires made of driftwood, because the sun was so bright on them that day, and if you screwed up your eyes to peer through your eyelashes, there was a rose tint with the gold and purple splashes in the sea, like tails of drowned peac.o.c.ks. You know it is like putting on magic spectacles to peep at the world that way. Peter Storm told me how to do it.
He tells me many things, queer little things and queer big ones, because he has ”knocked about the world” and learned them for himself. He does not think he will ever settle down to be happy in one place; but he likes Long Island to rest in while he takes a long breath. He says what I call its ”sweetness” comes from having two Ice Ages that have given it a ”legacy” of small soft hills and harbours made before men were born or thought of.
I suppose the Ice Ages made the s.h.i.+nnec.o.c.k Hills, though they look as young as I do, and as happy. Captain Winston, who loves Indian names, says ”s.h.i.+nnec.o.c.k” really means ”plain, or flat place.” But never mind, there has been time enough since the hills were named to mix things up!
And most people care more about talking ”golf” in this part of the world than of Indian times; for there is a wonderful golf club close by. Mr.
Storm will teach me to play, and already we begin; but I have not come to that part of my news yet.
I cannot think the Ice Ages had much to do with one of the things most charming which make the character of Long Island: I mean duck ponds. Oh, but the most enchanting duck ponds you could sit for days to watch! And the ducks are not looking like the dull ducks of every day, in other places of the world. They are most elaborate ducks, and their ponds are full of sky and clouds you'd think they would stumble over when they swim: bright, laughing ponds like eyes in the landscape.
Now, would you believe a village called ”Quogue” could be pretty? It is as if croaked by a frog. But there was a fairy story I remember, where every time the frog croaked (he was a prince cursed into a frog's skin by a bad G.o.dmother) jewels fell out of his mouth. So one could imagine it had been with Quogue: and the jewels turned into beautiful houses.
The houses are very old now; that is, old for America, which makes them more beautiful. It is only the middle-aged houses that are not beautiful here, and that is true all over the world perhaps; for people had a terrible cramp in their sense of beauty fifty years ago.
Quogue is on one of those lovely inlets the Ice Ages kindly made.
Quantock Bay has not a sound of romance, but when you know that it means ”long tidal stream” you hear it differently ever after. And it is fun to find out that ”Quogue” is all the years haven't nibbled off the word ”quohaug,” a name the Indians gave to a great, round, purple-sh.e.l.led clam they loved.