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!"