The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

It was then that the snub flew home, with a strong impetus from the exasperated Pat.

"I don't want to know about Bunker Hill Monument being built," she turned round to snap. "I want to think it built itself. And I don't want to know where Presidents are buried. I only want to know where they had their golden weddings, and where they lived happily. Besides, it gives me a crick in my neck to be always listening to some one behind. If I can't talk to Mr. Stor-r-rm for fear of upsetting him, I won't talk to anybody, please!"

There was one in the eye for Caspian; and it gave me my opportunity to murmur with mere perfunctory politeness (?) that it didn't "upset" me in the least to talk or be talked to while I "chauffed."

After that we did converse a little, about Captain John Smith and Miles Standish, without Caspian venturing to butt in; but I must say he got revenge through my losing myself in Hingham. You remember that wonderful street of lawns and trees with a perfect specimen of an old church? I believe it's the oldest church, still in use, in the United States, but I dared not state this lest C. should seize the chance to snap me up and say I was mistaken. Well, anyhow, I shared so recklessly in Pat's admiration of the said church and the quaint, pleasant houses with flag-staffs sticking out over their doors, that I fulfilled Caspian's prophecy and got lost. The first thing I knew we were bumping over an appalling road, and had to turn back.

"I told you so!" I heard C. muttering like distant thunder, and asked him mildly if he preferred to take the wheel; but his finger was even more painful than his temper. I felt his glare like a gimlet in the back; but Pat more loudly than needful expressed her delight in seeing Hingham a second time. "It is exactly like Cranford," she said. "New England seems to be full of Cranfords, but Hingham is the most Cranfordy of all. And I don't believe even the Old England Cranford could have such elms in such a wonderful street. They are like tall, transparent green wine glasses set for a dinner party of Titans."

"You get these exaggerated ideas from Mrs. Winston," came another mutter from behind, but no reply was vouchsafed. Speaking of Mrs. Winston, I'd happened to hear her talking with her husband last night, about the day's run to Plymouth, and a word here and there had caught my attention. I remembered that a "sky pilot" named Hobart had come from Hingham in England, and somehow got the new place named after the old. I remembered, too, a romantic story they spoke of: the hiding of "The Nameless Nobleman" between the floors of a South Hingham house, and his marrying the girl who saved him, Molly Wilder. (Jack Winston thinks that all the nicest women since the Christian era have been named Mary.) I hurried to tell Pat about these things, and a few others which I either recalled or made up on the spot. While I talked, in defiance of orders, I somehow contrived to get onto a splendid road to Cohasset: woods for miles and miles; and an idea came into my head – which I passed on – that Abraham Lincoln's ancestors flourished in this region. So, to Scituate, though over a wrong road again (Pat called it "a dear little wrong road"), to Marshfield, where Daniel Webster died and was laid to rest. On the way we "guessed" that a detestable yellow house we saw, with a well and a bucket, were the house, well and bucket of Samuel Woodworth himself, the "Old Oaken Bucket" man. Caspian was sure it wasn't the house, and this seemed to make the darling Pat equally sure it was. (Don't you think from what I tell you that the signs and omens are good?)

I dared to believe that the girl wasn't sorry to have me beside her again. Once in a while I threw a glance at her face as we spun over the perfect road through woods which might never have been touched by the hand of man, and there was a rapt look on it, the sweetest look you ever saw – sweeter than you ever saw, because you haven't seen her yet. But you will – you will! – when you've finished your work and I've finished mine.

Fortunately for me I have a good memory, and luckily I'd kept my ears open while Molly and Jack Winston discussed the route, for I know nothing of this country, which, by the way, I find so beautiful. I reproach myself for thinking too little of my own land, and seeking adventure in others. In Duxbury, you know probably, Miles Standish and John Alden both had houses. John's second house is still standing, and Pat insisted on stopping to see it; though I take courage from her confession that she likes the bold rough Standish best. Queer to remember, in a sleepy little place like Duxbury, that a man who chose to build there had in his mind memories of fierce, wild fighting against the Duke of Alva!

Past a nice-smelling tarry rope factory we sailed into Plymouth and joined forces with the other cars. It's a fine entrance into the old Pilgrim town, isn't it? Bowers of trees, and some of the noblest elms on earth.

"How do things go?" Molly Winston whispered to me, when we had all crowded hungrily into that jolly old-fashioned yellow-painted hotel you're sure to remember, even though you didn't lunch in it with a Patricia Moore.

I knew what she meant, because we three (she, her husband, and I) started out with a secret pact against the firm of Caspian and Shuster. And it gave me a good warm feeling to be asked the question, because the fair Molly hasn't been quite as gracious since I voluntarily fell out of ranks at Boston. I hope I shall be able to explain that defection to her some day. Meanwhile, I was glad of a sign of trust and friendship, and replied that I had an idea "things" were looking up for us. "The little lady is ready to bite his head off," I added. Molly shuddered. "He uses the wrong sort of brilliantine," she mentioned. "But even honey and flowers wouldn't make it a pleasant act."

While Caspian (I could almost have pitied him) saw a doctor about his damaged digit, the rest of us, even my reluctant employeress, wandered about looking at the ancient landmarks and watermarks we pretended to have come to see. Perhaps some of us really had come for the purpose – Jack Winston, for instance, who's as keen as mustard on linking New World with Old World history. But, then, he doesn't have to make excuses to snatch a little of his best girl's society, as I, Tom, Dick, and Harry do. As for Moore, it's the opposite. He spends his time making excuses to get away from his fair lady; and most of those excuses are found in the society of Another! I could almost pity Mrs. Shuster, too, she is so ingenuously miserable. But I harden my heart. Neither of the pair is worthy of a pang. And few neglected loveresses have senators to fall back upon. (She's done that literally, once or twice, and heavily, because she's a champion stumbler.)

None of us feel drawn toward monuments, though we may approve of them on principle, but if ever a monument was called for, at any place in the world, that place is Plymouth. All the same, I'm not sure, if I'd had a voice in the matter, that I shouldn't have let the Rock, with its date, tell the story in its own simple way without any further emphasis. What with that, and the welcoming beauty of the Harbour which no Pilgrim with his eyes open could resist, and the Museum, and the ancient houses, I think Plymouth could have held her own.

Somehow or other that witch of a Molly Winston contrived to gather the clan together round her and Jack, and give me a chance to play guide to Pat. To be sure, Mrs. Shuster, loyal to her absent partner, tried to form a hollow square around us. But she couldn't spare more than half an eye from Larry; and half one of Mrs. Shuster's eyes isn't dangerous.

There are quite a lot of things to be "done" in Plymouth, you know, and if they are being done in couples or trios you can always go and gaze at the old Common House while the others are revering Forefathers' Rock. You can bow and smile as you meet them hurrying to the Museum, and search industriously for the Town Brook which decided the Pilgrims to settle at Plymouth. You can make your companion look up into your eyes by telling her what you know or pretend to know about Priscilla, and pretend that the Puritan maid gathered cowslips for her cowslip wine on the shores of the said "very sweet brook." This, and more chat of the same order, will suffice to hold the dear one's attention until you are pretty sure that if you say, "Shall we walk along to Pilgrim Hall and see the relics?" you and she will be astonished to meet the rest of the party just coming away.

Apropos of Pilgrim Hall, my only failure was there. We did meet the party issuing from the Doric doorway. I'd managed that all right, but Mrs. Shuster turned on the threshold, kindly volunteering to remain and point out objects best worth seeing. I wished her in Halifax, or almost any other place which could be catalogued under the same letter, but short of telling her to go there, I saw no escape.

Whether it was an infliction for Pat or not, I couldn't be sure. I never knew much or wanted to know much, until just lately, about the workings of girls' minds. But I will tell you what she did: she said, "Oh, that is so good of you, Mrs. Shuster! Do come with us. It's nice to have some one really interested to go about with. Now Larry, much as I love him, is a worry in a place like this. He and Idonia will just go comfortably back to the hotel and have tea in some nice nook and wait for you, so we shall know where to find them much better than if they loved sight-seeing as the others do!"

There are lilies and lilies. This Lily of ours looked suddenly like a tiger lily, rather a faded one, badly in need of water, as Pat took hold of her arm and affectionately pulled her into the marble vestibule. She did not break away with a roar and a bound, as I half expected her to do, but meekly let the cruel child lead her on. I knew then, however, that it was a question only of moments. You've seen a cat, caught up against its will into a lap, feign contentment, while with muscles braced it waits its opportunity to take the lap unawares and spring. That is about what happened with Mrs. Shuster. She pointed us out a painting of the "Mayflower on Her First Morning at Sea," all couleur de rose; she indicated the chairs of Elder Brewster and Governor Carroll which were wobbling about on the Mayflower that very morning no doubt; and having brought us to a stand before the Damascus blade of Miles Standish, she considered her duty done.

"I'm tireder than I thought I was," she said. "I believe I shall have to go back to the hotel myself, and rest a bit before we start for Boston. I wouldn't stay long here if I were you. If Mr. Storm buys a guide-book at the hotel, or some postcards, you'll have pictures of everything without standing on your feet."

Pat replied meekly that she would return to the hotel the minute she felt tired, but did want to see John Adams' Bible and a few things like that. Mrs. Shuster mustn't at all mind leaving her.

Mrs. Shuster did mind, but she went nevertheless. I longed to catch Pat's eye, and smile; but she didn't appear to have a smile in her. Such innocent gravity you never saw, and when Mrs. S. had left us, the girl made no reference to the episode.

I did buy some picture postcards, but not until we'd seen everything they represented. I bought also, at the same shop, a pretty little box containing three green candles made of bayberry wax. Both cards and candles I offered to Miss Moore, and she accepted them, sniffing with childlike ecstasy at the candles, which are supposed to give forth, in burning, the perfume which the bayberries pour out in the heat of the sun. Afterward I was told by Molly Winston the sentimental superstition about bayberry candles. I wonder if Miss Moore knew it, and if she thought I knew.

I haven't, as you see, given up hope that the forced association of this motor trip may make the child realize how impossible for her would be a permanent association with that worm C. If she breaks her engagement before anything happens, so much the better; but the thing, in one form or other, will now have to happen, of course.

A letter from you could reach me at Bretton Woods, and I should be glad to hear there just when you think affairs might be settled.

I'm hideously impatient, but I'm not unhappy.

Yours as ever, and a little more,

P. S.

We came back from Plymouth to-night, along the short road, Caspian patched up but sulky as an owl. Luckily I didn't lose the way once.

XXIV

EDWARD CASPIAN TO RICHARD MOYLE, KNOWN PROFESSIONALLY AS "CAMERA-EYED DICK"

Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Dear Mr. Moyle:

The more I think of it, the more I feel that you are keeping back something from me. You say that the face of this man Storm "recalls nothing and nobody" to you. I must accept your word. Yet I got the impression that at least he reminded you of some one. I was watching your face at the moment you met.

Since you left me, refusing to interest yourself further in the affair, I have thought of it unceasingly. A sudden and extremely interesting idea has come into my head. I cannot afford to waste it, though without the aid of a competent detective like yourself I may not be able to put it to good use. If you will not change your mind and take up the matter again on new lines, I shall be glad if you can send me a smart man from your agency, a person in whose discretion as well as intelligence you have implicit confidence.

Kindly wire me to the post-office, Ogunquit, Me.

Yours truly,

E. Caspian.

(Telegram from Richard Moyle to Edward Caspian, Post-office, Ogunquit, Maine):

Sorry have no one can recommend for job mentioned. Nothing in it. Advise you leave it alone.

(Richard Moyle to Peter Storm, Ogunquit, Maine. Try all hotels):

Excuse liberty, but look out for E. C. May make you trouble.

(Peter Storm to Richard Moyle, at New York):

Many thanks. Am looking out.

P. S.

XXV

MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCÉDES LANE

Wenham.

Mercédes Dear:

My first thought as I waked yesterday morning was Aunt Mary. I thought of her in my bath – a cold porcelain bath, rapidly filling up with hot water, and giving me rather the feeling of eating an ice with hot chocolate sauce. I thought of Aunt M. with breakfast and choked her down with my coffee. When we had left our happy home – the Boston hotel – the "chug chug" of our motor sang the song which the West Point cadets have made up for "church call."

"You've got to go, whether you want to or not!You've got to go, so you'd better turn out!Oh, h – ades!"

But after a while the road was so pretty that I succeeded in forgetting her now and then, as you might forget you were on the way to the dentist's when you passed splendid jewellery and hat shops.

We were also on the way to Marblehead and Salem; Aunt Mary wasn't till afterward.

Marblehead, with all its romance of ancient days, is only about sixteen miles from Boston as the automobile flies, but you pass a good many sweet things first. We went through Somerville, got lost there, and were guided in every direction but the right one by a plague of boys not much bigger than the "dimes" they didn't earn. Jack simply won't look at maps when in the car, or inquire; expects to find his way by instinct, and somehow generally does. (Are all men like that?) Crossed the Mystic River, and got on to the velvet surface of the Revere Beach Parkway. But Chelsea came before the Beach: charming old Chelsea, which probably, in its heart, thinks Boston its suburb, and prides itself on almost a century and a half of aristocratic peace since the old fighting days when Israel Putnam won his commission as Major-General there.

There couldn't be a greater contrast than between Chelsea and Revere Beach. It's a good thing that miles of parklike road – fought over once by Independents and British – lie between, or they could never stand each other, those two! Jack and I ought to have come to Revere Beach when we were little boy and girl, for, oh, the joy of it for children! What price the Dragon Gorge, the mountain railway more like the Alps than the Alps are like themselves, the theatres, the shops of every kind, the cottages which are nests for birds rather than commonplace, human habitations?

Opposite, Nahant sat looking delightful and alluring, but we went on to Lynn – Lynn, unattractive at first, and pretty when we got better acquainted, like some of the nicest women I know. It's a great place now for shoes, and was once a great place for pilgrims. What a pity the former are too late for the latter! The Pilgrims must have needed the shoes badly. They could have walked along the Old Pilgrim Road to Swampscott if their feet were equal to it. And perhaps they forgot their feet, as I forgot Aunt Mary, for it is – and must then have been – a lovely road.

Hawthorne used to walk to Swampscott, too, as well as to Marblehead, but he came the other way, from Salem. Do you remember Swampscott was where he found pink and white Susan, who gave him the sugar heart? That was pink, too, with a touch of white perhaps. She sounds so delightful as the "Mermaid!" I'm glad Hawthorne kept the heart for years, and then instead of throwing it away ate it – gave it honourable burial, so to speak – which shows that you can have your heart and eat it, too! (I must, by the by, make a parable of this for Pat, who is eating hers, though she certainly has not got it. She has given it to some one else, though I fancy she thinks she has merely mislaid it.) In apropos of hearts, they make dories in Swampscott; and it's not swampy one bit!

Of course I quoted Whittier's "Skipper Ireson's Ride" to Jack, coming toward Marblehead. It was "up to me" to show my British husband that I, too, had learned things at people's knees.

"Old Flood Ireson for his hard heart,Tarred and feathered, and carried in a cartBy the women of Marblehead."

I wasn't certain I got it just right, but did my best to put a confident ring into my voice, which is half the battle when you're not sure of yourself. What a blow, therefore, to be told that in truth and in deed the women of Marblehead had nothing to do with the job! Jack says the men did it. And worse still, Captain Ireson was supposed to have been a victim rather than a villain, because his sailors mutinied and refused to let him go to the rescue of the sinking ship. I hate having my childish beliefs disturbed! It tears me all up by the roots, and gives me a pain in my spirit's toes. But never mind, there's plenty more romance, which no one can take away from New England, though the very man who wrote about Ireson complained that it had gone:

"Gone like the Indian wizard's yellAnd fire dance round the magic rock.Forgotten like the Druid's spellAt moonrise by his holy oak."

No, no, Whittier, surely you wouldn't say so now if you could see steamboats and trains pouring forth multitudes, and thousands and tens of thousands of motor cars stuffed full of people from all over the world drawn to New England because of its never, never lost halo of romance!

Did I tell you just now that we were coming toward Marblehead? Well, one can do that, and not get to Marblehead. You can keep on seeing Marblehead and expecting to arrive, while in reality you are going all around "Robin Hood's barn." By the way, I never saw a barn exciting enough to belong to Robin Hood till I came with Jack on this tour through New England. Here, barns are as grand as churches, and very much like them, steeples and all.

A lot of things happened to us on the way to will o' the wisp Marblehead —old Marblehead, I mean, for new Marblehead is just a very gay and jolly summer resort, such as I fancy little Susan would, in her pink sugar heart, have loved. We kept on seeing the old town to our left, across a harbour as full of white yachts and sailboats as a New England pond is of water lilies. Jack was loving everything, and utterly oblivious that beyond Salem lay Aunt Mary-ville. His face was perfectly ecstatic as we crossed a river – Whittier's beloved Merrimac – on an ancient covered wooden bridge. He said the sound of the tires on the slightly loose boards was better music than the followers of Richard Strauss could make from the "noises of life." I do love those covered bridges, don't you? They're so richly brown, some of them, that while one slowly travels along under the roof, it's like looking at the sun through a piece of cider-brown glass. Or if they're not brown, they're a soft, velvet gray – gray as shadows at full moon, gray as the light in dreams.

I hardly know how, eventually, we did get into old Marblehead, for Jack and I were both so infatuated with the way we lost sight now and then of the goal. Imagine a road lined on either side with apple trees. If you haven't seen these, you have never seen such orchards in your life, my Mercédes! If there was anything as good in Eden, no wonder Eve ate that apple. I shouldn't wonder if she fixed her eye on it when it was still a bud.

And then, behind the orchards, there were hills, playgrounds for baby cedars. Everything contrived to look at least two hundred years old (except the blossoms and the motor cars), and even the pigeons had such an air of colonial serenity that they simply refused to stir for a new-fangled thing like an automobile. They sat still, pretending not to see us, and never changed their expressions!

At last we did get into old Marblehead, and I'm so happy to tell you it was exactly like finding our way round the corner in a picture. You know that thrilling corner in pictures, leading somewhere you are dying to see and never can? Well, now I have seen it. It's Marblehead. Round the corner of the front of the picture where the new, smart things are, we cleverly slipped in. And there was the background running up the canvas, all over funny labyrinths of streets generally leading nowhere, or, if anywhere, back to the same garden we'd just passed, a darling garden boiling over with grass pinks, cabbage roses, sweet williams, and bleeding hearts. Each house was just a little quainter than the other, and Jack and I thought we were going to like Marblehead better than any that ever lived, until – we came to Salem, after Manchester and Magnolia. Then – we weren't precisely being untrue to Marblehead. No, never that! But Salem – perhaps it's fair after all to keep a larger place in memory-land for the Witch City.

It would have been almost a world tragedy if, when the great fire swept over the town, it hadn't stopped short of the old part, which is American history incarnate. That "old part" consists of "old, older, oldest." The oldest houses of all, built about 1635, are very, very simple, as if the Puritans had prayed over them to be delivered from temptation and craving for beauty. Then, next are the ones not quite so old, when people began to be rich and see that Beauty wasn't after all the unpardonable sin. These houses of the eighteenth century look as if architects might have been commissioned to come from the Old World to build them, bringing traditions of gracious decoration for outside and in. Next, there are the far grander and more stately mansions which grew up after the Revolution, when the good folk of New England knew that their land and their fortunes would be theirs forever, undisputed. Salem had grown into an important place then. Merchants and shipowners had plenty of money to spend. They spent it well, too, for they made their dwellings very beautiful, so beautiful that the witch hunters and Quaker persecutors of the past would have been shocked to the bottom of those hollow places they called their hearts.

What a good thing it is that there wasn't much brick to be had when the first old colonial houses were a-building! To be sure, some of the very best in Salem and Boston and other towns are of brick; but brick had to come in ships from old England, so only those persons with the most money and possibly the most cultivated taste could use it. Consequently the characteristic houses of New England and its borders – the white and yellow houses we think of when we say "New England" – were made of wood; and they are unique in the world.

They say that the oldest buildings of Salem – the Gothic, steep-roofed ones – were meant as copies of gabled cottages on the old home side of the water. But if they were, they were as far off the originals as a child's drawing on a slate is far from a steel engraving; and Jack and I are glad, because these dear things are so ingenuously and deliciously American that they could exist nowhere except on this side.