Part 20 (1/2)

Caspian tries to be like that, but it seems an imitation. With the real ones it is true, and not for effect.

It seems that our family must be very old, because everybody, even these grandest ones, are kind to us, and think it is great fun that we keep a hotel. Molly and Jack they like of course, because M. and J. are ”great swells.”

Now, cherie, I must stop, and go for a walk with them. Molly calls it a ”potter.” But you will not know what that word means!

A hundred wishes and loves! Your

PATRICE.

XX

NIGHT LETTER TELEGRAM FROM PETER STORM TO JAMES STRICKLAND

_New London._

Just missed getting into sc.r.a.pe here. Saved by presence of mind. You have heard me speak of Ipanoff. Met him accidentally. He has relatives seeing America, awaiting them New London; found me instead. Shall stay to-morrow, letting my party go on. Meet Fall River by train. Couldn't stand Newport. Writing you on business.

P. S.

XXI

MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCeDES LANE

_A Gorgeous Hotel in dear old Boston._

BEST MERCeDES:

I am thrilled with New England! It has got into my blood, which is of the south. Why do we--you and I and the rest of us--dash over to Europe before we're old enough to see much of and appreciate our own country?

Still, I'm thankful we did, or we shouldn't have met Jack or Monty.

Are you tired of travelling with me and my Lightning Conductor? You said you couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't be; so if you've changed your mind, you've brought this on yourself.

I didn't quite realize, even with my first warm glow of admiration, all that New England meant, in a _concrete_ way. I realized the beauty, the individual charm, the historic interest, but now I'm beginning to put them together in a bouquet where one flower sets off another. Oh, dear, I wish that not _quite_ so many things had happened before our day! It would have been easier to sort them about a hundred and fifty years ago.

Yet, a hundred and fifty years ago there wouldn't have been an Emerson, a Th.o.r.eau, a Hawthorne, a Longfellow, a Whittier, a Bryant, a Lowell, or an Oliver Wendell Holmes, to say nothing of half a dozen others I'm too excited to recall at the moment. It would have been sad to come here before they lived and embroidered the tapestry of life with their lovely thoughts--almost the difference between travelling on a gray day and in clear suns.h.i.+ne. For New England belongs to these philosophers and poets just as much as it belongs to the Indians and Puritans and Soldiers of the Revolution.

Now you see what my mood is! I think Jack has inspired it, for he can quote most of the New England writers, if not by the yard at least by the _inch_. He says he used to learn their wit and wisdom to repeat ”at his mother's knee.” I shouldn't have supposed Lady Brightelmston's knee capable of it; but one never knows!

The last time I wrote you was at New London. I posted the letter at Groton, I remember, because I was thinking so hard of ”The Peter Storm Mystery” that everything else went out of my head. My dear, _he stayed behind_, with his Russian friend, leaving Pat to the mercy of Caspian!

You have to cross by ferry to get to Groton--old Fort Griswold--and the 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 grat.i.tude 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sed 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.