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Ebook has 484 lines and 66114 words, and 10 pages
THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR DISCOVERS AMERICA
C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON
Illustrated
Published by Doubleday Page & Company Garden City New York
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
PAGE
Long Island
"There's absolutely nothing like it on the other side of the water, not even in Devonshire or Dorset" 87
Easthampton
"You enter beside the Great Pond, which is so charming in itself and in its flat frame of village green" 95
Long Island--South shore
"Artists would find a paradise of queer, cozy gables, and corners of gardens crowded with old-fashioned flowers" 102
"Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of memories of Indians" 122
Sunnyside
"Washington Irving's dear old Dutch house is like a beautiful living body with his memory for its soul" 190
"The old Dutch Church at Tarrytown" 197
The Hudson River
"When we came into sudden sight of the river there was a magical effect" 207
Delaware Water Gap "Winding and wonderful it was in beauty" 213
"The mountains seem cleft in twain. It's a marvellous effect--startling" 216
York A bit of the rock-bound Maine coast 303
"The air is spiced with the fragrance of balsam fir...on the way to Crawford Notch" 310
"The young, slender birches of the mountain wayside" 319
Crawford's Notch, White Mountains 324
"I shall always think of Vermont as the State of wild lawns and gardens" 330
"We found the Green Mountains particularly lovable" 336
Captain Winston's maps pages 90, 114, 132, 209, 216, 239, 258, 295, 311, 325, 331, and 339
THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR DISCOVERS AMERICA
THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON TO HER FRIEND, THE COUNTESS OF LANE
DEAREST MERC?DES:
That's all about us, I think. So, speaking of girls, I'll tell you about the one I mentioned. I want to tell you, because Jack and I are both passionately interested and perhaps a little curious. Consequently I expect her fate and ours, as the palmists say, will be mixed together while we live on Long Island. In that case, she's sure to be served up to you toasted, iced, sugared, and spiced, in future letters, so she may as well be introduced to you now: "The Countess of Lane--Miss Patricia Moore." Nice name, isn't it? Almost as nice as yours before you were married to Monty. She has informed me, however, that she hates the Patricia part because it sounds as if she turned up her nose in pride of birth, whereas God turned it up when He made her--or else her nurse let her lie on it when she was asleep. Anyhow, it's tilted just right, to make her look like one of those wonderful girls on American magazine covers, with darling little profiles that show the long curve of lashes on their off, as well as their near, eyelid. You know that engaging effect?
Not that she calls him "father," or even "papa," or "dad." She calls him "Larry," his name being Laurence. She worships the ground he walks on, she says, which is sweet of her, as very little of it has been walked on in her neighbourhood for the last nine years.
When Pat was ten, Mamma twenty-eight, and Father thirty-one, the trio went to Europe, which I think mostly meant Paris. Mamma was taken with pneumonia after an Embassy ball, at which she was the prettiest woman, and died of her triumph. Larry didn't know what to do with the child. But some sympathetic soul who wanted to save the dear boy trouble advised him to plant his little flower in the soil of France, where he could come once in a while to see how she grew. He took the advice, and Patty was planted in a convent school, where she has stayed till now, as he never seemed ready to dig her up.
Besides the car and the maid, Mademoiselle Patsey is bringing with her to America a regular trousseau for her d?but, which is to take place in the grand manner. She won't let me see Larry's photograph because it doesn't do him justice, and because she wants him to burst upon me as a brilliant surprise; but she has shown me as much of the trousseau as her stateroom and Ang?le's can contain. The rest's in the hold, and forms quite a respectable cargo. If everything comes off as Patsey expects it to do I do think that she and her charm and her clothes are likely to dazzle New York. Nothing prettier can have happened there or anywhere for a long time.
We haven't many young men on board. Most of the young men who travel are going the other way just now; and that makes our Ship's Mystery more conspicuous. One reason he's so conspicuous is because he's travelling third class. Maybe you'll say that travelling third class doesn't usually make people mysterious: it makes them smell of disinfectants. Also it puts them Beyond the Pale. Not that I or any other nice woman can tell precisely what a Pale is. But anyhow, if you go third class you have to show your tongue if the least important person demands a sight of it. And if that doesn't put you beyond Pales and everything else, I don't know what does.
To my mind, Mr. Storm hasn't at all the look of a man opposed to fighting. I believe he would love it. The odd thing to me is, where there's such wide opportunity on one side or the other, that he isn't doing it. And Jack thinks so, too. I do hope he isn't a spy or an anarchist, or a person who takes passage on ships to blow them up or signal to submarines or something.
Of course I haven't suggested such horrors to Mrs. Shuster; and yesterday she made up an exploring party for the steerage, so as to open communications with the desired prot?g?. The first officer had promised to take her, and she asked me to join them. I happened to be talking to Patsey Moore at the time, and saw by the way her eyes lighted that she was dying to go, too. So I got her included in the invitation.
Actually the man blushed! He rose up politely; and as he is very tall and straight, rather thin, and extremely dark, he reminded me of a cedar towering beside one of those squat Dutch trees cut into the shape of some domestic animal.
At that it was Patsey's and my turn to blush! It was such an awful thing to say to the man, though the poor woman meant so blunderingly well. P. and I were in the background--an easy place to be, because there's so much of Mrs. Shuster. We weren't even a chorus, because we hadn't made a sound or a gesture, and didn't intend to make one. But the colour effect was unrehearsed and unavoidable. I felt a regular blush of red to the head, as I used to say when I was small, and Pat grew scarlet as if she'd been suddenly slapped. I expected to see the forked lightning of scorn dart from those immense dark eyes of Storm's: but instead they crinkled up in an engaging smile. One glance the man gave Pat and me, against his own will I think: but it was a spontaneous combustion of his sense of humour. It struck a spark to ours, and I dared to smile also. Pat didn't quite dare, but looked relieved, though still evidently scared about what might come next, and intensely, painfully interested.
"Thank you very much," said Mr. Storm. "I'm afraid you flatter me, madam. I make no such pretension. It's kind of you to think of promoting me, but this is my place. I shouldn't feel at home going first class, I assure you. I haven't either the manners or the clothes to make me comfortable there."
"We'll all risk that, if you'll come and entertain us with stories of your adventures. As for clothes, I can take up a collection for you from among the gentlemen of the first class. A shirt here, a coat there. They'd be delighted."
"Thank you again," responded the victim, still smiling. "But I should be--a misfit. And I haven't a story worth telling. I'm no Scherezad?. I'm very grateful for your interest, madam, but my best way of showing it is to stay where I am--and where I belong."
"You're ever so much too modest," the unfortunate lady persisted. "Isn't he, Mrs. Winston?"
I prickled all over like a cactus. "I think Mr. Petrel--I mean Mr. Storm--can decide for himself better than we can," I stammered.
Even Mrs. Shuster understood that the rare plant preferred to remain in the kitchen garden with the vegetables, and that she could not uproot it.
"Quite true, madam," he answered coolly. "Do I speak like a foreigner?"
"I've been here and there," he admitted. "I had the craze for travel in my blood as a boy." As he spoke, he smiled again, as if at some odd memory.
"I dare say you know several languages?" suggested Mrs. Shuster.
"Oh, I've picked up Russian--and a little French, and Italian, and Spanish."
"You ought to get quite a good position, then."
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