Kitabı oku: «The Lightning Conductor Discovers America», sayfa 11
XIV
PETER STORM TO JAMES STRICKLAND
The Day before the Battle.
Many thanks for your letter, my dear fellow. It's less pessimistic than I expected, and gives me the impression that I may regard you as a Prop. I shall follow your advice rigidly, though I must juggle some of the details, as Caspian has taken advantage of the poor little girl's love for her father, and practically (from what I understand) blackmailed her into promising to marry him. Mrs. Winston is in her confidence, though both she and I think there are unexplored depths. Patricia confesses that, rather than Larry should give her Mrs. Shuster for a step-mamma, she took the line of least resistance to obtain money. But I have a horrible instinctive idea that the trouble began at Piping Rock, and that she really sacrificed herself to shield me. This makes me feel positively hydrophobic toward Caspian; but all the same I'll remember what you say, and not be "precipitate" – one of your favourite words: follows you about like a dog!
Before doing anything drastic, I'm hoping that my dear girl may see for herself that Caspian is impossible. Or, if her devotion to Larry is like the Rock of Gibraltar on which waves of contrary emotions dash themselves in vain, it may be that Larry will do a little mining and sapping on his own account. Captain and Mrs. Winston and I have formed an alliance offensive and defensive, particularly the former, against the coalesced forces of Caspian and Shuster. There has been no talk of my private feelings —bien entendu– but the small nations are to be protected by our united diplomacy. We're starting off on another expedition planned with a certain bold audacity. Moore and his fat fiancée are to travel together in Caspian's Wilmot, conducted by his chauffeur, accompanied by the prettiest, most coquettish Miss Goodrich, and one of Mrs. Shuster's Peace League Confrères, ex-Senator Collinge, a violently intelligent man who looks (Mrs. Winston says) like a moth-eaten lion with false teeth.
We hope and expect that Mrs. Shuster will get on Larry's sensitive nerves when at such close quarters; that desperation combined with natural inclination will drive him to flirt with Idonia Goodrich, who will enthusiastically respond; that Mrs. Shuster's mortification may drive her to such vulgar vengeance as will disgust Larry beyond repair; that the lion may not be too moth-eaten to seize his chance and the lady, and that Pat may then scramble down from the pyre of self-sacrifice.
This seems a good deal to expect from a three or four days' motoring trip, doesn't it? But almost anything can happen in automobiles. And I haven't told you yet the rest of our programme.
"Tom, Dick, and Harry" don't count. They're simply "on in the scene," and like the poor, always with us! They pound through the landscape as before, with their Hippopotamus; and Captain and Mrs. Winston, who are to be of the party, will take our bride and bridegroom again, a very appropriate arrangement. But everything hangs upon the Grayles-Grice. After a council of war with the Winstons, I advised Miss Moore that it would be comparatively safe to have Caspian conduct. You see, the two engagements are announced (Caspian and Mrs. Shuster saw to that, without letting a blade of grass grow under their feet!), and so it was easy for me to take it for granted that Patricia would wish to give the wheel of her car to C. "Of course you'll want to sit in front," I said humbly. "But if you would still care to have any help I can give, I'd gladly offer my services. I can perch on one of the fold-up chairs," I went on, "which will leave plenty of room for any others you like to take, no matter how large (I thought of the Goodriches). I've had more experience as a mechanic than Mr. Caspian, perhaps, and I might be useful in emergencies – "
"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 passengers. 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 shipboard, and, by Jingo, it's appropriate now!)
XV
MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCÉDES LANE
Just Back at Awepesha.
Dearest Mercédes:
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 nobody 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 assemblage of gunpowder pearls and dynamite diamonds on the bosoms of the Ammunition Aristocracy – a wondrous new class 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 "fagging 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 Essex 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.
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 Washington being the place of the fight that caused General Washington 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 ships 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 skyscraping 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 sunshine 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 peacocks, 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 Triassic 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 manuscript 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 shores 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 noble 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 sunshine 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 Washington 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 Saturday 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 dashing through with an admiring glance at the jolly modern houses, more conspicuous than the old.
We had a full day before us, what with worshipping at Washington Irving's shrine, and sighing over Sing Sing, and arriving at West Point in time for dress parade and to hear the sunset gun. So we flew fast through lovely Hastings-on-Hudson, and Irvington, over a silk-smooth surface, under an adorable avenue of trees which perhaps remembered the Revolution; past exquisite places where only exquisite people ought to live, to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. It seems sacrilege to arrive in autos and a hurry at a town with a name so deliciously lazy, to say nothing of its associations. But one can't help being modern!
I wonder if the comfortable Dutch settlers who pottered along this old Albany Post Road ever dreamed nightmare dreams of creatures like us, tearing in strange machines over surfaces magnificently bricked or oiled, and covering in one day distances to which they would prayerfully have devoted weeks? Probably they would have pitied and despised rather than envied us; and maybe they'd have been right: for does the extra ozone and the thrill of speed quite make up for things missed or half seen? Still, impressions are wonderful; and I shan't forget the bluebell colour of distant hills, the silver-gray of rocks, and the diamond-dazzle of water glimpsed between feathery tree branches, or the jewelled gleam of wild flowers scattered by the roadside, and the pale flame of mulleins straight and tall as lighted candles in the grass.
Isn't it a sweet thing for the world that there should have been men who loved making the rock-bound fields of history blossom with delicate flowers, just as monks of ancient days illumined quite dull texts? – men like Washington Irving, for instance.
I always loved Washington Irving, and so I'm glad to say did Jack; but he came back to life and actually walked with us that day. Perhaps it sounds impudent and conceited to say this, but I don't mean it so, and if he knew how humble and happy we felt as we came under his spell, I do think he wouldn't have snubbed us. No, he would never have snubbed any one! He was much too human, and understanding. He wouldn't scornfully have called us "tourists," but would have realized that we were worshippers at a shrine. Of course I don't include Ed Caspian or Mrs. Shuster! C., when the time came to leave our cars outside the with-difficulty-found gates of Sunnyside, put on the airs of a grand seigneur who knows all that is to be known already. He said (so Peter told us later): "It's not much of a place; quite a small house, not worth getting out for." And he actually proposed that Patty should sit in the car with him while the others explored! Pat wasn't "taking any." She jumped out, and rather than see her walk away with Peter, C. had to follow. As for Mrs. Shuster, she can't bear to walk if there's a chance of sitting still, especially since she's taken to these fearfully tall-heeled, new-fashioned, high-necked boots which make our feet look like the hoofs of rather chic cows: incredible heels like the Venetian beauties used to wear. She, like Caspian, reminded her beloved of the blessing for those who only stand (sit!) and wait. But Larry said he'd something important to tell Pat; then strolled with Idonia Goodrich and never went near his daughter. Mrs. Shuster was reduced to her peace partner; and, oh, you can't think what she looks like when she pouts!
We had to thank Larry for an open sesame to the doors of Sunnyside, however; for he has some distant acquaintance with the grand-nephew of Washington Irving who has inherited the quaint, delightful house with its red gables and extraordinarily intelligent-looking windows. Anybody is allowed to peep inside the gates of the old place, but of course the house is only for friends or acquaintances, or it would be overrun and the family would have to take to the cellar. Pat had somehow forced Larry to write and ask permission, for he never puts pen to paper if he can help it!
Sometimes it's a blow to see where your favourite authors lived, but Washington Irving's dear old Dutch house is just right. It is like a beautiful living body with his memory for its soul: yes, a charming body with all his quaintnesses and unexpectednesses and dainty mysteries. It looks at least as old as the seventeenth century, but only a nucleus of the rambling, many-windowed, creeper-clad mansion is really old. There's a romance about that part, by the way, but perhaps you know it better than I do.
Once upon a time, when Washington Irving was very young, he visited the Pauldings in a house swept away now. He used to take a boat and row all alone, to think thoughts and dream dreams under the willow trees that even then roofed the brook in Sunnyside glen. He could see a tiny house called "Wolfert's Roost," and said to himself, "If I could live here and have that for mine I should be perfectly happy."
It didn't seem then as if his wish could possibly come true, but he always kept it in his heart, and years later, after he had lived in London and been American Minister in Madrid, he came back to his first love, with money he had been saving up, to make it his own. He added and added again to the house, but contrived to give it the lovely look of having just grown up anyhow, as trees and flowers grow. That's partly because of its cloaks and muffs and boas of trumpet-creeper and ivy. It has the look, too, even now, of being miles from anywhere – except the river and the creek, which sing the same song they sang long ago, under the trees. The trees of Sunnyside are somehow curiously individual, Jack and I thought, as if they knew the historic reputation they had to live up to, and were gently proud of it. There are trees graceful as ladies dancing a minuet, spreading out their green brocade skirts for a deep curtsey; trees as spicily perfumed as the pouncet boxes of those same ladies; thoughtful trees whose one mission in life is to give deep shade under showering branches, and gay trees like sieves for sunshine. Jack and I wandered among them and then gazed out upon them, as Washington Irving must often have gazed (in search of new inspiration), through the small square panes of his study windows.
His descendants have changed nothing there, in that dear little modest nest for a genius! It's close to the front door, as you go in from the deep porch, at the right-hand side of a fascinating corridor. Looking down that corridor you see a vista of rooms, delightful as rooms in dreams. They are furnished, but not crowded, with old and exquisite things – things which must have been intimate friends of the family for generations; and, oh, how much more attractive are the rooms than any royal suites I've seen in palaces!
In the study (I feel sure he called it that, not library) the master of long ago might have walked a moment ago, out into the garden, so entirely does the room seem impressed with his personality. There are his books, his manuscripts, his pens; his desk, and his writing-chair drawn up to it; his little table; the charming old prints he loved, given to him and signed by friends whose names are famous; pictures of the house when it was "Wolfert's Roost," and when it had grown larger. The green and golden light streaming through the windows, front and side, seems just the sort of light that Washington Irving would have loved to write in. He made it greener and more inspiring by bringing from Melrose Abbey slips of the ivy which now curtains the windows; and in the green-gold light he wrote his "Life of Washington" and many other things which we all love.
Coming out of the study when we were ready to go away, I looked through the open door of a beautiful room across the corridor, straight into an old-fashioned mirror. Never was a mirror so becoming. I felt as if I were seeing my own portrait painted by Romney; and behind me for an instant I seemed to catch a fleeting glimpse of another face, as though a man stood on the study threshold, smiling to me a kind good-bye. I adore my own imagination. After Jack, it is my best and dearest chum!
I think even if one didn't know that thrilling things had happened in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow (heavenly names!) in old days, one would somehow feel it. What's the use of one's subconscious self if it doesn't nudge one's subjective self and whisper that it was born knowing? Why, I could see Sir Vredryck Flypse and his family streaming out of the old Dutch church, as gorgeous in their Sunday best as the church was simple; the ladies' stomachers embroidered with silver and seed pearls, their short, stiff brocade skirts swinging to show their silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, much as ours do now; the men taking a sly pinch of snuff, and brushing it hastily off their blue or gray coats; tie-wigs, silver buttons, and knee breeches glittering in the sunshine of such a day as this, away back in sixteen hundred and something. I can see neat, consciously aristocratic and good Dominie Mutzelius or Dominie Ritzema in irreproachable black, with a touch of white, going as guest to Sunday dinner at Philipsburg Manor, after the "great people" had listened to his eloquence, seated in their cushioned "boxes" in the seven-windowed church. There are only six windows now; but in those days you had to keep your window and weather eye open, even during the dominie's discourse, for Indians might take a fancy to scalp the congregation if it could be taken unawares. Luckily the lord of the manor, and his friends, and the sturdy farmers with their families, were not to be caught napping, even if the sermon were dull and the weather hot. Besides, in case of emergency, they could turn their church into a fort at a few minutes' notice. The walls were nearly three feet thick; the seven windows were barred with iron, and so high up that, if the Indians wanted to peep, they had to climb on each other's shoulders. As for the doors, they could hardly be knocked in with a battering ram; so you had no excuse to stop at home on Sunday, even in "Indian Summer." Of course we went to see the grave where all that is mortal of Washington Irving lies in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery; and the famous bridge – or, rather, the new edition of it built by William Rockefeller.
Do you remember that Major Andre was taken on the Albany Post Road at Tarrytown on his way to New York, with dispatches from the traitor Benedict Arnold hidden in his stockings? I've always had a sneaking sympathy with Andre, because he was gallant and young and good looking, but Tarrytown isn't the place, I find, in which to express any such sentimental feeling. He is still the villain of the piece there, a mere spy, travelling in disguise, a treacherous wretch who long and stealthily worked to corrupt a hitherto honourable general. He is the villain, and David Williams, John Paulding, and Isaac Van Waart, the scouting militiamen who took and searched him, are the heroes of that drama of 1780. Tarrytown people are delighted to this day that Andre was hanged, and they love the monument to his captors who wouldn't be bribed by horse, or watch, or money. I suppose if Andre hadn't offered those bribes, or said he belonged to the "Southern party," they might never have thought of his stockings, he would have got safely to the waiting ship, and on to New York; and Benedict Arnold would have surrendered West Point to the British!
Heaps of other exciting things helped to make Tarrytown historic: an Indian massacre, a big battle in the Revolution, Major Hunt's "bag of British soldiers at Van Tassel's Tavern when he won fame by his shout, 'Gentlemen, clubs are trumps!'" and so on. But we took even more interest in the old legends of Spook Rock, and Andre's ghost and Cuffy's Prophecy and the Flying Dutchman, who of course tacks back and forth across the Tappan Zee. Such things are so much more real than facts! Besides, we had to "get on – get on!" that war cry of motoring men.
We did get on, along the smooth brick road to Ossining, which is really Sing Sing, you know (or ought to, if you don't), only Ossining is the old Indian name, so they took it back to escape the blight. It's such a pretty town that it would have been a shame to associate it only with the state prison, whose high gray walls are the only grim thing in the landscape. It was for the sake of staring at them, though, and shivering down our spines that we took the detour to Ossining. When we had shivered enough we turned back to Tarrytown and drove our motors like docile cattle on board a steam ferryboat which took us across the river to Nyack, the dearest, quaintest of little Dutch towns. It looks as lazy as, and more obstinately old-fashioned than, Tarrytown, though Tarrytown is far more important and impressive.
There's a colony of frame houses in Nyack which makes you feel you've suddenly tripped and stumbled out of the twentieth century back into the early nineteenth; and we lunched in a charming little hotel that gave us things to eat equal to any restaurant in New York.
We had a divine run from Nyack, through a fairy forest, with Hook Mountain in sight and the Ramapo Hills on the horizon. Hook Mountain glowed a bright rose colour wherever its green cloak was torn; and when we came into sudden sight of the river there was a magical effect: a veil of silver mist, with boats big and little moving behind it, like white swans. We had woods all the way to Rockland Lake, where the great icehouses loomed like queer castles, until we ran down to lake-level and lost the illusion. Then we turned in the direction of Haverstraw, going through the nice old-fashioned village of Congers. The hills and tiny valleys were as gay and pretty as the summer day! We could hardly realize that we weren't very far from New York, it all seemed such lovely lost country, private and purposely hidden, as if strangers had no right to be there.
Soon the gay little hills were playing they were mountains, and almost making us believe that they really were. The roadsides were like rock gardens, spangled pink and gold and blue. Far below lay the river, but it looked vast enough to be a wide lake; and always the "surface" was so perfect we had the sensations of flying. At Haverstraw we were by the river, and even the brick-fields contrived to take on a gorgeous, glittering colour in the afternoon sun. Stony Point, a high rocky promontory just above, is the place where "Mad Anthony Wayne" stormed the fortress thought to be impregnable. The British called it "Little Gibraltar." Jack had been looking out for that and the ruins of the old fort, because daredevil Wayne is quite one of his heroes. The whole peninsula here is a public park, so no wonder everything is beautifully kept!
