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XXVII
EDWARD CASPIAN TO DANIEL WINTERTON THE MANAGER OF A DETECTIVE AGENCY IN NEW YORK

Bretton Woods.

Sir:

I have received your letter and telegram, and am glad to find that you have a better opinion of my deductions than was held by your confrère, Mr. Moyle. The longer I dwell on the idea the more does it appear that circumstantial evidence all points one way. Why should this unimportant and poor young man have an influence so extraordinary over Marcel Moncourt? More than one millionaire would have given a fortune to Moncourt for less work than he is doing at Kidd's Pines practically for nothing. It is known that he spoiled his son and brought him up with the airs of a prince who might succeed to a throne. It is known also that the son went abroad directly after old Stanislaws' sudden death. The story is a family scandal; but I have woven together a few of the threads and can put them into your hands, which may help you to speed along your inquiries.

At that time I was not on intimate terms with my relatives. My sphere, in fact, did not touch theirs. I never saw Moncourt's son, but I have heard him described as dark, tall, and somewhat distinguished looking. This might also be a flattered description of the man in question.

I think I had better mention, in the same connection, an event which has just occurred. I cannot say I am able to find that it has any concern with the affair on which you are engaged, but you may see deeper than I do. At all events, I will bring it to your attention for what it may be worth.

You have no doubt heard of the very fine mansion on Long Island, tentatively called "the Stanislaws House?" I hoped that when I became heir to the property it would be mine, with the rest. Unfortunately this was not the case. It had been left to a friend of the late heir, as was indubitably proved by Mr. James Strickland, who legally represented the Stanislaws family, father and son. Now, through Strickland, the place has been offered to me, if I wish to buy it. I should be inclined to do so if I did not suspect something underhand in the business, though what, I cannot define.

The somewhat extended motor trip which has taken me away from Kidd's Pines is now nearly over; but you might wire anything important to Great Barrington, Mass., where I shall be stopping for a night after leaving here.

Yours truly,

E. Caspian.

XXVIII
PATRICIA MOORE TO ADRIENNE DE MONCOURT

Bretton Woods.

Chére Petite:

I must write to tell you I am happy again, though I ought not to be, and have no right. Oh, it is like a miracle coming to pass, to be suddenly happy when you have thought all was at an end.

Suppose that it has poured down rain on your poor head for many days, and you are wet and cold, oh, but cold through and through to your heart, and you have forgotten the feel of sunshine. Then, of a sudden, a stream of light breaks out and dazzles in your eyes. You are warm, you sing for joy. In the back of your mind a voice may say, "The clouds will shut up again, this is not to last." For the moment you are happy and do not care for what will come. You just hold out your arms to the warm ray of light.

It was like that with me to-day, and in all senses of speaking, for I was in a great rain, alone and very sad and soaked – but I will tell you. There is none else I may tell, not even Molly; for if I said this to her, she would again offer and insist to lend us money that the ring of Mr. Caspian could be got from the Mont de Pieté and given back to him. She would think that was the only thing needed to end the engagement which makes me miserable; and so it would have been at first, or almost the only thing. Now there is more, for Mrs. Shuster begged dear Larry to borrow some money from her the other night, when he had played poker in the hotel at Boston with some men he met. Larry has such luck at the games of chance, nearly always, he did not stop to think, "What will happen if I lose?" He played with all the eager fire that it is his nature to put into everything he does, and these men were high punters, as reckless as Larry and much more rich. So it was five thousand dollars my poor boy had to borrow, and we cannot take the money which our wonderful Monsieur Moncourt makes for us from Kidd's Pines, because of the bankruption, if that is the word, and so much always owing to creditors. It is as if we held out a sieve for our great Marcel to pour gold dust into, and it nearly all goes before we can touch it.

Naturally I cannot fail Larry when it is in my power to save him, no matter what the consequences to me. But listen, ma chérie!

It is yesterday we came to Bretton Woods, after a drive of the highest 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!"

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.

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.

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 MERCÉDES LANE

Awepesha, Long Island.

Dearest Mercédes:

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 Mercédes 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, café-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.

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.

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 Cæsar. 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.

We both felt that we were being cruelly torn away when we had to "move on" again next morning, but we are always pretty soon resigned to being in a car again, you know! I feel so deliciously irresponsible the minute I start off, like a parcel being sent to some nice destination by post. I can't understand any one not feeling that a motor is as companionable as a horse, can you? It has so many interesting moods, and one's relation with the dear thing – if it belongs to one – gets to be so perfect!

Besides the joy of the car, we found the Green Mountains particularly lovable, not large, but of endearing shapes. We should have liked to have them for pets. Yet the pet aspect is only one of many. They have grand aspects, too. They've inspired poets, and given courage to soldiers. Yesterday we had thought Vermont all made of gardens. To-day it was made of mountains, mountains everywhere the eyes turned. And wherever there was a place to nestle an exquisite farmhouse did nestle. I used to think that England had the monopoly of beautiful farmhouses, but these Vermont ones, though as different as a birch from an oak, are just as perfect. Even Jack, whose every drop of blood is English and Scottish, admitted this.