Part 16 (1/2)
”Oh you _would!_” broke in the darling, with adorable alacrity. And as far as she was concerned, the matter was settled. You would have thought, however, that Caspian would be the rock I'd split on, now that he has a ”say” in the affairs of Patricia. But the Winstons and I hadn't forgotten this chance in our calculations. We expected C. to take a fiendish joy in the prospect of kicking me when I was down: ”putting me into my place” and making love to Miss Moore before my starting eyes--a great triumph for him after the very different Long Island trip in the same car with some of the same pa.s.sengers. Well, we were as right as rain. The yellow dog snapped at the attractive morsel, which we _hope_ we have poisoned. How will _she_ stand the situation he is exulting in?
Next time I write I shall know how our strategy works out. I talk of it lightly, but honestly, Strickland, I'm not laughing on the right side of my mouth. And if it weren't for your advice, and Molly Winston's conviction that Pat would stick to C. if he were ruined, I shouldn't be playing about with any such piffling policy as I've just outlined.
There'd be a cataclysm for somebody! I might get involved in it myself--but I'd risk that. It may have to come, anyhow, of course, so hold yourself prepared, as I do. And meanwhile we mustn't forget where the _two Marcels_ come in.
Yours ever, THE STORMY PETREL.
(That's what they named me on s.h.i.+pboard, and, by Jingo, it's appropriate now!)
XV
MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCeDES LANE
_Just Back at Awepesha._
DEAREST MERCeDES:
Jack says he would be having _the_ time of his life lightning conducting over here (I'm not sure he expressed it as Americanly as that) if only people would be sensible enough to do what we want them to do. They do seem so obstinate when they won't! Even dear Patsey, not to speak of Larry and the Two Unspeakables--but no, I won't let myself go on that subject now: I might say too much. I'll cool my feelings by telling you about the lovely--or ought-to-have-been-lovely--trip we have just had.
Scenery is far more restful than human nature--other people's human nature I mean, not Jack's and mine. And Jack says that American country scenery is the _most_ restful in the world, just as the cities are the most exciting. Clever adjustment of the Law of Contrast! I'm not sure he isn't right, are you? Surely there aren't such exquisite, laughing, dryad-haunted woods in Europe, so young and gay and unspoiled looking, as if you had just discovered them yourself, and n.o.body else had ever seen them before. I'm falling in love with my own country all over again, and appreciating it proudly because my much-travelled Jack is so ingenuously astonished every minute at its striking individuality, its difference from any other part of the globe he has ever ”infested” (his own word!).
Oh yes, every prospect pleases, and only Ed Caspian is vile--though Mrs.
Shuster is a good second, and Pat--but I said I wouldn't mention them, anyhow at first. I'm sure Jack and I were _never_ so irritating, except perhaps to Aunt Mary. But she was _different_. One somehow wanted to irritate her. She was born to be irritated.
Dearest, I'm going to write you a straightforward account of three divine days which would have been all spotless brightness if it hadn't been for--but no matter!
We (quite a large party in four cars: the Grayles-Grice, the Wilmot, ours, and the Hippopotamus) started early on a warm morning, not from Long Island but from a New York hotel. We'd been invited by Mrs. Shuster to a roof-garden dinner in (or on) it the night before, where we'd been dazzled by an incredible a.s.semblage of gunpowder pearls and dynamite diamonds on the bosoms of the Ammunition Aristocracy--a wondrous new cla.s.s of Americans sprung up since the war. Not _one_ of us wore a jewel, I must tell you, except Mrs. Shuster, who flaunted an ancestral ring she'd cozened out of poor Larry. (Pat had ”forgotten” her searchlight which Caspian made a special expedition to New York to buy her as a badge of slavery.)
Jack was quite excited about beginning the Hudson River trip in this way, because he's been so busy discovering Long Island, and it's been so warm, that he kept New York up his sleeve (sleeves are worn large) until later. He hadn't even seen Riverside Drive I'd boasted of so much; but he wouldn't be Jack Winston if he didn't know rather more about it than the average American, including me.
If it were any other Englishman, I couldn't stand his airs of historic erudition about my native land, but Jack is _so_ human and boyish in his joy of ”f.a.gging up things,” and so broad-mindedly pleased that we beat his wrong-headed ancestors in our Revolution, that I don't grudge him the crumbs he's gathered. Of course, I pretend to have crumbs in my cupboard, too, even when it's really bare as bone. I say, ”Oh, yes, now I _remember_!” and intelligent-sounding things like that.
Did you, for instance, ever know that the source of the Hudson--the most important source--is a little lake in Ess.e.x County, with an Indian name which translates into ”Tear of the Clouds?” I didn't, and I'm not certain people ought to probe rivers' pasts any more than they ought women's. It's their own fault if they find out insignificant beginnings.
Fancy saying, ”Who _was_ she?” about a beautiful body of water like the Hudson! Jack is naturally glad that Henry Hudson was English, not Dutch, as so many people think from his being spelt Hendrik as a rule. I suppose the Dutch hoped that would be thought, from their tacking on the ”k,” for they were so jealous of each other, the Hollanders and the Puritans, in the days of the early un-settlers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SUNNYSIDE ”Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's dear old Dutch house is like a beautiful living body with his memory for its soul”]
Frightfully geologic things seem to have happened and subsided under the Hudson, making it navigable all the way; otherwise New York City wouldn't be the greatest on the American continent. Jack was talking to me about this all along Riverside Drive, not that it would have mattered much, because New Yorkers could have said it was the greatest to Chicago people just the same. I didn't dare make this remark to Jack, however, because he was being thrilled with thoughts of the Revolution and I wanted to encourage him in those. I hoped he wouldn't know about Fort Was.h.i.+ngton being the place of the fight that caused General Was.h.i.+ngton to give up Manhattan Island to his--Jack's--horrid ancestors; but he did know, and about the sloops and brigs and other things which we foxy little Americans had sunk there to keep the British s.h.i.+ps from getting farther up the river. You can get tremendously excited about this Revolution business when you're on the spot, you see, though you and I have lived so much in England where most people treat it as a ”brush” less important than the Boer War. And when you are here, surrounded with all the noisy progress and skysc.r.a.ping greatness of our country, it is wonderful to think how a few brave men, determined to have their rights, in spite of desperate odds, made this vast difference in the world.
I was secretly longing to know what Jack would think of the dear Palisades, which seem so wonderful to us, and give us more of a feeling, somehow, than the highest mountains of Europe, Africa, or Asia. But he was most satisfactory about them. He didn't say much. He just gazed, which was better; and they were looking their grandest that day, like the walls of castles turned into mountains. And there were strange lights and shadows in the water which gave a magical, enchanted effect.
There were thunderous violet clouds in the sky, with shafts of suns.h.i.+ne pouring through; and Jack and I discovered, deep down in the river, marvellous treasures of the enchanted castles: white marble seats and statues, and golden vases, and drowned peac.o.c.ks, with spread purple tails floating under the crystal roof which _we_ call the surface of the river.
It does annoy me when Europeans patronize us about being a new country, doesn't it you? The Palisades, it seems, boiled up and took shape as a wall of cliff thirty million years ago, or maybe more, in the Tria.s.sic period. What can you get anywhere older than that? And Europe would give a cathedral or two out of her jewel-box to look young as long as America does!
We've got a queer old ma.n.u.script at Awepesha, which Jack has ferreted out of obscurity, telling the Indian legends of the Hudson River. They are as beautiful as anything from the ancient Sanscrit, and the Indians who lived on the Palisades' green tops, or along the sh.o.r.es beneath--the Hackensack, and Tappan Indians and others who have given their names to river places--had some of the best legends of all. I love the Woman of the Mountains (young and lovely, not old, as some people say) who had done n.o.ble service for the Great Spirit: as reward she had the privilege of cutting out a new silver moon every month with her magic shears, and when it was shrinking into uselessness, to snip what was left into little stars--as Juliet wanted done with Romeo! She lived in a wonderful purple cave, not in the Palisades, but hidden in the Catskills; and from its door, which no one could find, she sent forth Day and Night alternately. Also, in immense jars of porphyry and gold, she kept suns.h.i.+ne and storm, to let out when she thought best. Perhaps those purple splashes and golden gleams we saw under the water were her storm and sun jars, which floated out of the cave and buried themselves in the sand poured down by Sandy Hook!
To jump from the Indian legends to the Dutch, I do trust the story of Spuyten Duyvil is true. It must be, because it's too good _not_ to be true. Do you remember it's told in dear Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's ”Knickerbocker History of New York?”--the most amusing history book ever written, I should think. The man--one of Peter Stuyvesant's men, I fancy--was hurrying to warn the farmers that the Beastly British were coming, and when there was no bridge by which he could cross the stream he vowed he'd do the trick ”in spuyt den duyvil.” The history says he was drowned in the fierce waters, but I _can't_ believe that part. I think his jealous rival--of course he had one--put _that_ tale about. Of course he got across and warned the farmers, as he deserved to do for defying the devil.
I remember when I used to be at boarding-school in New York, and in spring we were taken little Sat.u.r.day trips when we were good, the very name of ”Yonkers” meant deadly suburban dullness to me. I only wanted to get past the place. But to motor through with Jack makes all the difference, even though by the time we reached there I was bristling with rage at sight of the doings of Caspian in the Grayles-Grice. We were trailing in the rear, so the troublous events and turbid emotions of the cars ahead were visible to us, as if they had been uncovered saucepans boiling over on a redhot stove. Fancy that Caspian creature practically ordering Storm out to buy newspapers, as if he were a chauffeur! But Jack consoled me: ”Before you explode, stop and think what would have been the effect on you if Jimmy Payne had done that with poor old Brown.”
Of course, I should have ached to box Jimmy's ears, and all my loyalty would have flowed out in waves to Brown; so perhaps Pat--but to go back to Yonkers. It makes the name sound less unsympathetic and like a frog's croak to recall that it was given when the Yonk Heer Vredryck Flypse, or Philipse (he who called New York ”a barren island”), the richest and most important man of his day, from New York to Tarrytown, built one of his manor houses there. It's still there, by the way, and lots of other historic things, if one bothers to stop and dig them up, instead of das.h.i.+ng through with an admiring glance at the jolly modern houses, more conspicuous than the old.