Where We Are Guests.
Mignonne:
You cannot figure to yourself how the life is wonderful, just after one has thought, "Crack! the sky tumbles!" But yes, you can figure it, because of your adventure at Easter.
I am almost too happy. I live in a story of fairies, and I ask myself, is it too good to last?
You know, chérie, how I loved always to read the books of romance, when we could hide them from our kind Sisters, who think it wrong for the young girls to fill their heads with such thoughts till after the marriage. Since I have left the dear convent, I have read earnestly in journals the writings of critics who live by having opinions about other people. I see by them that romance is not truth. It is only the dull things which are real. Yet for you and me, life is now running like the stories at which these critics laugh the most. That is why I ask myself, "Can such things go on?" For it seems that critics must know better than me (or should I say "I?"). Perhaps they have reason. Perhaps we shall end in a monotony of grayness like the books these wise men and women praise for "the realism." Or we shall fall down, down, in tragedy?—for that, it seems, can also be true to life; only just the happy things are not true. Yet at present let us live joyously for a little while as in one of those dear books we read in secret at school: books of romance and even of mystery.
For instance, look at what you write me of your family, which mixes itself so strangely with my experience. But no, surely it cannot be that the handsome new American cousin with much money, who visited your mother's château in your vacance of Easter, is anything to our Monsieur Moncourt. It is only a coincidence that his name shall be Marcel, and that Marcel is a name existing with the de Moncourt men since the centuries. I regret almost that I have written you of our Marcel Moncourt just at the moment when this marvellous cousin has jumped into your life; but, even if there is a connection, you must not comprehend it badly. Do not for an instant picture that our Monsieur Moncourt is a cook. But, what a word for him! He is a real Personage. He is a Celebrity. All the world is proud to speak with him, and he can have as much money as he wants. That is why it is so curious he should come to us for a little nothing at all, just through the influence of Mr. Storm, which also I do not understand. But, as I tell you, if there is a cousinhood or an unclehood, it is not a thing for shame. The young Marcel will of course tell Madame la Marquise everything the moment he passes so far as to ask for you. And then, if he is so rich and so beau, and has the blood of the de Moncourts in his veins, what does the rest matter? If I were in your place, dear Adrienne, I would not worry on the idea that our Moncourt may be this mauvais sujet of a Paul Jean Honoré Marcel de Moncourt you mention, who vanished in his youth, and has so long been counted as dead. Probably that one is quite altogether dead, and our Moncourt has no lines with the de Moncourts of France. He perhaps took the name because it has a noble sound. That is one of the things one doesn't ask a man, is it not? But if it is important for your happiness, my Adrienne, I can perhaps arrive at it through Mr. Storm, who must know all, and learn, too, if there is a son of our Moncourt we have not heard of yet.
And now for myself again!
It is so gay and such an amusement to have a whole band of young men paying attentions to me, little me, who but the other day did not even raise the eyes to a man in taking promenades, without a bad mark on my conduct! Larry does not object at all. He laughs. Girls are born to love the flirt, he says, and indeed, dear Adrienne, he loves it himself! He makes it with all the ladies, even the fat Mrs. Shuster of whom I have written. But that is his manner. I do not inquiet myself for him, not more than he does for me.
At present he is at home, because, though he is a great boy, he has you can't think what a sense of duty. It is for this he stays at Kidd's Pines to welcome new visitors while I am away en automobile with some of our guests, and chaperoned by dear Molly Winston.
Apropos, it is Molly Winston who gives me courage that life can after all be full of pleasant things and good endings, for she and Jack go on having romance and grand adventures. She believes that if "you want things enough," they come to you sooner or later. She is a very nice chaperon to have.