The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

"If he does, I have enough influence in the club to see that he is asked to go," Mrs. de Silverley assured me. And that was exactly what I wanted. It would be awkward for me, in the circumstances, to have him put out, I said, but if the club did it, understanding that he was not my guest, I should be grateful.

This was the whole of my original plan, and I carried it out as intended. But since beginning to work it up, I found I had Miss Patty to punish as well as P. S. I concentrated my whole mind on my objective while the Goodrich girls admired the scenery, during the afternoon run; and toward evening I thought I saw my way to something big.

You haven't seen the Piping Rock Club yet, I think. Well, it's absolutely it, and only the right people belong. There's fine golf, and tennis of course, and I've heard Englishmen say the lawns are more like the turf "at home" than any they've seen on this side. In fact, Winston said that very thing to-day: called the club an "American Ranelagh." Not that I set much value on his opinion! The clubhouse itself is just like some jolly old country house: white shingles and green blinds, green and white awnings, large open court with brick walks running all around, and a fountain playing in the middle, wicker chairs scattered about the court, and window boxes full of pink flowers, wide verandas or loggias, or whatever you call them, where you can have tea or most anything else you want; a lot of rooms with comfortable chintz-covered furniture, jolly chintz like the old patterns at Kidd's Pines, and a ballroom fit for Buckingham Palace. You'll love the place; but I'm not describing it to make you regret stopping at home. If things have gone right with you, it would take twenty Piping Rocks to do that – and then one! All I'm aiming at is to show you the swell sort of setting I had for my stage last night.

The big dances are in the fall and winter. This one was a special affair, very smart but not big, and that made every one there more conspicuous. Our crowd had about the only strangers in it. Pretty well all the rest knew each other, and most of them belonged to the same clique. I felt good all over, as if I had a chance of coming into my own, when I found Storm in the chauffeur's seat of the Grayles-Grice, ready to drive us to the dance. He was in evening clothes under his big coat: had worn them to dinner of course, pretty weird ones; ready made, I should say. I guessed that he meant to brave the business out, though I wasn't quite easy in my mind up to the last that he wouldn't make some excuse to go home when he'd got us to the clubhouse. But not a word of the sort did he utter. On the contrary, I heard him tell Miss Moore she "wasn't to forget their dance." That made me hot in the collar, and if I'd been inclined to wobble before, I nailed my colours to the mast then. Not only was I egged on by my anger against that fellow, who has deliberately put stumbling-blocks in my way from the first, but by my sincere desire for Miss Moore's welfare. Quite apart from my wishes where she is concerned, nothing could be worse for her than an entanglement with an adventurer like Storm – a man from the dark, you might call him, if you chose to say nothing worse. And already the Goodriches are talking – made jokes in the automobile yesterday about the two who had stayed at home to "write."

How girls manage to squeeze such a lot of clothes into small space, I don't know. Anyhow, Miss Patty and the Goodriches and the two young married women didn't appear in the same dresses they had worn for the dance at Easthampton. I never saw Patty look so pretty, though as a rule I don't like green, and to me it's unlucky. I shall never let her have another green dress when we are married, becoming though the colour may be. Storm was looking after the Grayles-Grice when the rest of us went into the clubhouse, so I knew the dance Patty was to "remember" couldn't be the first. I asked her to sit it out with me, and she hesitated a minute. "Has some one else got ahead of me?" I asked. She said no, but she had been thinking she wouldn't give the first dance to any one; she would "sit with Molly and Jack." It shot into my head that she didn't want Storm to come in and find her with me, knowing he wastes no love on yours truly. I was mad, but I kept cool. "All right, let me sit with you all three," I said. "I've got something important to tell you that can't very well wait."

I saw by her eye what she thought the "something important" was, so I hurried to disabuse her mind. "It's about Storm," I explained. "I don't know whether you'd care to save him serious trouble, but you can do so if we talk the thing over while there's time."

"Of course I would care to!" she said. "He's been very kind to Larry and me."

In my opinion it was the other way round, but I didn't stop to argue. I took her into the ballroom, having previously found out that Mrs. Sam de Silverley hadn't arrived yet. I was counting on her being a bit late. She generally is – for the sake of the effect.

When we were sitting down together, Patty and I (all the rest of our lot dancing, except the Winstons), I didn't waste a second in firing off my first gun. "I want to ask you frankly, Miss Moore," I began, "to tell me if you know whether Storm intends to be present at this dance to-night."

"But yes!" she answered in that funny French way she has, that would be difficult to put on paper if one wanted to. "He will come in a few minutes."

"Oh," said I. "That's a pity."

"Why a pity?" she wanted to know.

"Because he's not invited, and that is going to make it mighty awkward – worse than awkward."

"But, you invited us all," she insisted. "You are a member. You have the right – "

"I have the right, but I didn't exercise it for Storm's benefit. I shouldn't have thought of doing so. The rest of the party are gentlemen and ladies. The club can make no objection to them as guests. Storm is a chauffeur. I should have insulted the club by inviting him, and I certainly didn't do so."

Patty flushed up, and her eyes turned black. She can be a regular little tiger cat, that girl! She must have been spoilt by the nuns in that blessed convent of hers! I believe she'd have liked to box my ears. But I knew I had the whip hand, and I was enjoying myself. "He's not a chauffeur. You know that!" she snapped. "He kindly drives my car these few days, because we couldn't replace the man who went, and because I am not experienced. If it comes to that, you're a chauffeur, too. You drove the Grayles-Grice to-day, and you would to-morrow, if I said yes."

"You are talking sophistry," said I, though I don't suppose she knew what I meant, as I believe she thinks in French. "Storm is a paid employé of Mrs. Shuster. He's been switched off one job on to another to accommodate. And he admits he's had former experience as a chauffeur, driving a Grayles-Grice. Anyhow, the fact remains that's the way his status will be regarded here, and if he comes in, claiming to be my guest, in self-defense I shall have to deny it, otherwise I might be asked to resign. When I've had to give him the lie, he will be kicked out of the place. That's a sure thing."

Patty began to look sick, and her green dress wasn't as becoming as it had been while she was just plain mad. "You said something about my saving him trouble," she reminded me. "What did you mean?"

"Well, you could do one of two things," I began to explain. "You could come out now with me in a hurry before he gets in, to head him off and tell him in your own words what I've just said."

"I would rather die than do such a very insulting thing!" she rapped out, rolling her r's as if she were beating a drum.

"All right then, there's one thing left – that gives you a little more time, but not much, because if the crash isn't to come the question has got to be decided in a few minutes, before the arrival of a certain lady – as a matter of fact, a lady who was on your ship and knows all about Mr. Peter Storm. When she appears on the scene she'll enter a complaint, and the affair will be out of our hands. You will then be too late to save Mrs. Shuster's secretary and your friend the chauffeur from a nasty knock which may leave a black mark for the rest of his life – make it hard for him to get new situations and that sort of thing."

"Tell me quickly what to do and I will do it!" she said.

"Ask me as a favour to you to speak up for Storm. If you do I shall grant the favour, no matter what it may cost me. But as it will most likely cost me my membership when the story comes out later (which it will) why, I sort of feel as if you'd hate to have me give you that favour for nothing."

"I do not ask you to give it for nothing!" said she.

"But you do ask the favour. Is that what I'm to understand?"

"Yes. I do ask that."

"You don't think you'd better wait and hear what I want for my reward before you decide?"

"No. Because whatever you want I will do rather than have Mr. Storm hurt for life, when it was I who persuaded him to come." (I think she said "me," but that's a detail. I adore her little slips!) "He objected, because there were some good reasons he couldn't tell me for him not to go to a big fashionable dance, but I thought that was just because he was modest. I wanted to show him how I felt – how Molly Winston and all of us feel, except you, the Socialist" – (I wish you could have heard how she hissed that word at me!) – "so I begged him to come, to please me. Then he told me he would, and now it seems I bring him to humiliation. It is terrible! Yes, I will do anything to save him. And now what is it you want?"

Poor little tragedy queen, I was almost sorry for her, in spite of her tricks! But I was punishing her for her own future good. Think of the difference for a girl between being Mrs. Edward Caspian and Mrs. Peter Storm!

"Can you guess?" I asked.

"Perhaps I can; perhaps I can't. You had better put it into words, and see how it sounds."

"Well, I only want you to say what your father wants you to say, and what you let me think you might be willing to say, if you weren't so young. I want you to be engaged to me. Once you've promised, I shall feel safe, and won't press you too much or too soon for the rest. We can talk the future over with Mr. Moore when we get back to Kidd's Pines."

"Soit!" said Patty, which sounded like slang for a slap, but I happened to remember it was French for something or other. (I asked Mrs. Sam later, and she thought it meant "So be it.") "Soit! Now go this instant and make everything perfectly right for Mr Storm, because here he comes, and if any one is rude, nothing I have said counts."

I bounded away from her, as if she'd shot me out of a gun, and crossed the room to meet Storm. It was the first time I had ever been cordial, and he let me see he was surprised. Such was his manner that it was all I could do to keep up the show of friendliness, but I knew Patty was in a mood to come down on me like a thousand of brick if the least detail went wrong. My only fear was that Mrs. Sam might have said something to somebody prematurely; but apparently she hadn't. I explained to Storm I must definitely introduce him as my guest, because all the other names had been mentioned, and not his. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he said, "Oh, I'm not your guest. I'm here on the invitation of Mr. James Strickland of New York, and Huntington, Long Island, who is one of the oldest members of this club, as I dare say you know. But he doesn't come to the dances."

For a minute I was weak in the knees. I saw all my work destroyed. But when I'd got my second wind I realized that nothing was changed. Patty would never tell Storm that she'd engaged herself to me to save him from being turned out of the Piping Rock Club. She'd be too proud for such a confession, and, besides, she'd hate to upset his feelings to that extent. When she's not in a temper she's almost absurdly kind, and when she is in a temper, it generally seems to be with me. But I shall change that, later. There was still danger, however, from Mrs. Sam. I had warned her to pull Storm off his perch; now I must warn her to leave him on it, or Patty's promise wouldn't stand. I let Storm go, even though I knew he was going straight to her. She was engaged to marry me, and I could trust her – as far as I could see her anyhow!

Presently Mrs. Sam floated in with a suite consisting of one husband, one daughter, and several satellites of both sexes. She had on the most expensive dress in the room, I should judge, and her hair was done in a way which nobody could help noticing on account of the diamond sign-posts; consequently she was in a good humour. I paid her compliments, and then pretended suddenly to remember our conversation of the afternoon. "Oh, by the by," said I, "that fellow I was telling you about turns out to be better than I thought. He's not a professional chauffeur, and apparently he's a gentleman by birth. Anyhow, he's a protégé of James Strickland the New York lawyer, and is introduced here by him, not by me. He's got the countersign! We'd better consider him a friend and let him pass – what?"

"Oh, certainly, if he's under the protection of Strickland," said Mrs. Sam. "James Strickland is the most successful of the decent lawyers in New York. One never knows when one may want his services, and he's merciless, positively merciless, if he gets down on anybody. We'll let sleeping dogs lie."

Whether she meant that Strickland or Storm was a sleeping dog, or that they'd both lain down together, I don't know, and don't care. I'd got what I wanted!

"I wonder why it is Miss Moore's green dress seemed so becoming the first part of the evening," said the oldest and shortest Miss Goodrich to me when we were sitting out an extra (I'd as soon try to dance with the Statue of Liberty as with her), "and now it doesn't suit her at all."

If she'd known it, that remark was less complimentary to me than to Patty herself; but she didn't know, for the engagement isn't out yet. It won't be till after I arrive at Kidd's Pines with the ring (choosing it is part of my business in New York), and meanwhile I've gone into all these details in my letter to you, so that you'll be "on to" the situation. I've helped you, and if you see any need for a special effort before I get back (or afterward either for that matter) I shall rely on you. Besides, each one of us agreed to report progress to the other. If I hadn't seized upon this happy thought for the dance, I might have had my work cut out to get Patty, once you'd secured the father. I have a vague and not very self-flattering idea that she was keeping me up her sleeve, so to speak, for use in order to "save" her father. Well, she "saved" Storm instead, so her philanthropic instincts haven't been wasted. The question is – though you mayn't think me very gallant to ask it – is there any fear of its working the other way round? I, having permanently promoted the family fortunes, will our friend "Larry" jog on quietly with the bit in his mouth?

You have fair warning, anyhow, and I hope to see you day after to-morrow.

I am a different man from the one who wrote you last time.

Your sympathetic friend,

E. Caspian.

XI

PETER STORM TO JAMES STRICKLAND

Huntersford.

My Simple Life Room. Unearthly Hour; but leading Hen has just laid my breakfast Egg.

Hail, Father Confessor!

When you read what I have to say, if you weren't a model of (several, if not) all the virtues, you'd say, "I told you so!" But you're a cynic at head, not at heart, and you allow yourself to be sarcastic only in the privacy of your own brain-pan as a rule.

I warn you I want to gush, and having stripped myself of all alleged friends and acquaintances (except you) as a tree strips itself of leaves in winter, I've no one else to gush to.

Perhaps it's but fair to myself, though, to explain that it doesn't feel like "gush" to me. I use the word only because I'm a coward and fear to have you think me a sentimental idiot. I'm trying to let myself down, you see, as easily as I can!

It's a queer thing (I don't know whether a punishment or an omen of blessing) that our talk when you prophesied my repentance took place on the same road I travelled last night in a car of the same make and same power. The same moon which gazed coldly on you and me, and maybe eavesdropped, beamed sympathetically on me and some one else a few hours ago, and if it had sense, witnessed your poetic justification.

Now I ask for your advice again, and this time – if it's anything like what I want – I'll take it.

But I find it isn't as easy to get on with my confession as I thought it would be. I'm nervously inclined to put the cart before the horse. Or, I'm hanged if I'm sure which is the cart and which the horse!

The spell of the moon is upon me still. I feel myself two men – the man who argued you down; the man who wishes you had downed him. I wonder if you remember that night – my last on this side of the water – as well as I do? Can you see us two, after our secret visit to the house, getting into the car? The moon a boat tossing a silver prow high into the blue, and the stars small bright points like sequins flung in the air at an Eastern wedding. Away we go, slipping through Cold Spring Harbor; trees pouring past the car like smoke, hills olive gray in the moonshine; old white houses dreaming of their stately past; young houses wide awake and playing bridge or victrolas; carpets of baby bracken; dark, slumbering forests planted by forgotten Indians; stretches of fair country with pools of moonlight ringed in shadow shores; then, your dear old seafaring town of Huntington, where to-night, by the way, I had a glimpse of your own delightful butter-yellow house as we slipped along the road between your lawn and the water. The weeping willows moving in the breeze looked like silver fountains, and the thick blossoms of the apple orchard might have been a million hovering white moths.

You and I had no such fancies in our heads that night, had we? We didn't think that each side road we passed looked as if it led to fairyland – more fools we! But I was always a fool. I see that now, when my brain is suddenly seized with growing pains.

Just about at Northport you suggested the possibility of my wanting to marry. I thought of that last night, as a glimpse of moonlit water flashed under my eyes, and remembered how I laughed you to scorn. All through those gay and vital young woods which wall the road beyond I continued to idiotize, unable to see dryads dancing in the moonlight (as she and I saw them in the same spot to-night), careless that Nature was distilling magic perfume for us from tree and fern and wild flower, our eyes shut to the fact that elves disguised as Indian lilies were using silvered ponds for mirrors.

Do you remember that lonely graveyard in the woods, relic of some community of early settlers? "I'd as soon be dead and lying there as live the life you want me to live!" said I, with a would-be wise nod of the head as I drove past. But now I see too well that you were the wise one. Why didn't Nature make me understand myself as I begin to understand now? There must have been the same heart-searching perfume in the woods that night – a blend of locust bloom with wild roses and the bitter-sweet tang of young fox-grape tendrils swinging high among the tree branches. Yet I could do no better than expound to you my dry-as-dust opinions on marriage. Women, according to me, had only one way of making a man happy, and thirty thousand ways of torturing him. I wanted to have inscribed on my tombstone: "What did he do for the good of womankind? He remained a bachelor." Most husbands and wives, I thought, had the air of being married to foreigners whose mentality they could never quite touch. I believed that I was cut out for a bad husband, a disappointing friend, an irritating acquaintance, and that the ends of the earth were the only happy hunting grounds for a wild spirit like mine – places where I could freely dive far down under the surface of myself and swim at ease. Birds in the hand had no brightness of plumage for me. They were always moulting. I coveted the ones that sang farthest away in the bush. "Why have a mad desire to become an ancestor for people you don't know and may dislike?" I think I remember inquiring of you, as you sagely dilated – at ancient Smithtown – on the notable achievements of a certain Bull Rider Smith for the benefits of his posterity. He was doubtless a smart business man and a good sportsman, to gallop so far and fast on such an animal, when told he could have all the road he could ride round on bull-back in the course of a day. But to me his ambitions seemed futile, and the whole of Long Island less important than a flyspeck on the map of the world. Now, I shouldn't mind spending my life here, even in the house, though I should prefer an old one; and the Smithtown church with its Cyclopian eye of a clock in a tall Puritanical steeple would exactly suit me to be married in.

As we bowled along the Middle Island Country Road she wanted to know if I had ever driven there before. I had to say "yes" (I couldn't lie to her), and then she asked an embarrassing question or two. But she was almost pathetically easy to put off, so afraid she was of being overcurious. I would have given a good deal to burst out with the whole truth, in that mood of mine, a mood of exaltation with my soul flaming up like a beacon. But even if I'd seriously thought of speaking, I couldn't with the back of the car boiling over with handsome giantesses from Colorado – goddesses from the Garden of the Gods. They were pretty good about not interrupting; but now and again they couldn't resist breaking in with "Oh, is it our dear old Peconic River again, that gives the name to Riverhead?" or, "Did they call it Jamesport after King James the Second of England?" or, "Can those beautiful black trees in front of that darling white house be Irish yews?" or, "Don't you think Southold's the most adorable old town we've seen yet?" Of course, if my companion on the front seat had catechized me in this way, I should have been charmed to give her all my feeble fund of information concerning Huguenot and English settlers, dates, etc. (fortunately 1648 will do in most instances!), but it was a little disconcerting to hear these extraneous discords just when my heart was beating well in tune with the oldest song in the world.

You now need no explanation of what has happened to me. Besides, you've been expecting it to happen. I knew that, and expected on my part to disappoint you by its not happening. But this Girl Magic has been too much for me. I've gone under; and I should be a happy man as the moon sets and the sun rises to-day if only I'd listened to you on that moonlight night before it was too late.

Yet is it too late? That's what I want to thrash out. Have I locked the door between myself and happiness with such a girl as Patricia Moore, and is the key lost? Or can I with your help find the key, oil the lock, and open the door?

I used to think a very young girl went about – so to speak – with a love letter in her pocket all ready for post except that it wasn't yet addressed. But this girl isn't like that. She wouldn't write the letter till she knew the address she wanted to send it to. All the same I feel the possibility that I could make her care for me.

I suppose I was falling in love with her when I wrote you that I wasn't. I thought it was just very pleasant and amusing to be on terms of friendship with such a charming and unique girl. But now —friendship! There's as much difference between that and love as there is between a photographic copy of a Tintoretto and the original Tintoret itself. When I think of any other man getting Patricia Moore, a link seems to drop right out of my spine. Yet she's not born for an old maid. Love and a "happy ending" for her story ought to be attached to her like a label. If I can't work to get her, some one else will. Caspian is doing it already, but in spite of the money I don't think she'd ever take him: her instinct finds truth as the needle finds the pole. Three boys are also working; but they're big babies, with young-chicken-coloured hair and merry, heather-mixture eyes. They talk no language but slang. They come to grief in a preposterous automobile about every ten miles and attract their idol's attention and startle horses by giving vent to S. O. S. yells. Whenever they have to enter a room they plunge in as if the door had broken away before them. Their only conception of a "good time" is ragtime. If one of them shows signs for a moment of having been trained to house manners, his chums taunt him. "None of your Pêche Melba airs here!" is the favourite expression. So you'll agree with me I have a fair field, if I'm permitted to enter. Am I?