We crossed the river at Westport, and found the scenery even prettier than before. Then, after Fairfield, we came out on the Post Road again, though it called itself "Fairfield Avenue," and presently we were in a turmoil of life at Bridgeport. There was as much noise as in New York, but a hundred thousand people can make themselves heard in the world, especially if they're Americans! Haven't we read in the papers about immense buildings blowing up at Bridgeport since the war began? But we couldn't see anything that looked blown up, or sensational, except the heroes on posters of "movie" theatres—oh, more movie theatres than I thought there were in the world! We tried to listen through the roar and rumble of a big town for gorgeous distant yells of lions and trumpetings of elephants, but perhaps the dear beasts were off on "tour." Bridgeport is only the winter quarters of Barnum, and now we are on the way to summer. By the by, Bridgeport people ought to enjoy themselves in summer, judging from all the yachts and pleasure boats we saw dancing in their sleep on the water.
After Stratford (a most lovable old town, of charming gray-shingle houses, which, to escape loneliness, crowded close to the edge of the elm-shaded road) we crossed the Housatonic. The shores stretched away into mystery, so broad was the river; and the moment we were out of a town, in the country, the scene was like a dream of Indian days, just interrupted by waking now and then at sight of some houses grouped round a common. There was Milford, for instance, which looked as if nothing could happen in its pretty peacefulness, yet it was the hiding-place of a regicide judge who ran away to America after the head of Charles the First was off!
At New Haven, the "City of Elms," we could have turned toward Boston along a fine road by way of Springfield, but we preferred to keep to the charming coast road, and it goes without saying that we stopped to prowl about among the college buildings; also we lunched. "A village of learning and light" the place is called, but of course its village days are outgrown, though the learning and light will remain forever, while Yale lasts. Washington reviewed the Yale students on the Green, which is the historic centre of New Haven, just as the college is its ever-pulsing heart. (I wonder if the dear boys had already invented that lovely Yale yell, and gave it in Washington's honour?) Benedict Arnold helped also to write the romance of the Green by drawing up his company there. The great elms which look down on it now must have seen him and perhaps read his treacherous mind, for they say the elms of New Haven are the most intelligent and learned anywhere in New England except at Harvard itself; and you know that knot-holes are trees' eyes. They don't tell this to any one save their most intimate friends, but Jack and I know tree language. At home in the park we put our ears against their trunks and listen in the spring, when they are most talkative and don't mind telling their best secrets.
The brown and red Yale buildings, restful and interesting, Jack and I loved, and we insisted on lingering to look at them, though every one was impatient with us except Pat, Peter, and the three dear bareheaded Boys. Peter thought the beautiful white library and its surroundings "like a vista of Washington seen through a diminishing glass"; so evidently he has been to Washington in his mysterious past!
If some of us hadn't suffered from motoritis and speeditis rather badly we should have pottered about half the day, but ours is a hard procession to manage. Besides, Ed Caspian hates to have Pat interested in things, because then he's obliged to get out and look at them with her, or risk her in Peter's society. This danger he runs only when he can't run himself. He is so proud of his well-shaped feet that he has his boots made too small, and if the weather is warm it's a real penance for him to walk far. There's really something pathetic about this, or would be were Caspian only a little less bumptious than he is, for if gossip tells the truth, the millionaire of to-day was once one of those sterling socialists who began their career to fame walking the king's highway with bare feet and their spare clothes tied up in their one handkerchief. (How awkward if they had a cold in the head!)
After all the fuss he made about "wasted time," we arrived early at New London, where we planned to spend the night. Something happened there, but I haven't come to that yet. First, I must tell you just a little about the dazzling beauty of the way! I should like to tell you a lot, and force you to stop at every place en route. Easthaven, with trees and a church steeple which almost succeed in reaching heaven; Branford, where Yale College was founded, and where there are the very nicest seventeenth century houses you ever saw—fighting houses with overhanging upper stories where you could look down through holes in the floor and pot at Indians trying to break in; Guilford, prettiest of all the villages on Jack's list of places where he'd like to live (we almost envied Fitz Greene Halleck, the poet, for being born there); Clinton, with its parklike common which reminded us of the Lichtenthal Allée at Baden-Baden; old Saybrook, worthy of its name, and thrilling for its antique shops; old Lyme, the haunt of artists, glimmering white in a grove of elms; Flanders village—East Lyme—where all the flowers on earth were jumbled sweetly together like happy families in every garden. But if I did delay you thus, your poor mind would become like one of these jumbled gardens, full of sweet things impossible to sort. Mine is like that already; but, after all, it doesn't matter so much for me, because Jack has promised to bring me this way once again before we go back home. Then, if I've mixed one village with another in a kind of mental earthquake, I can rearrange my tout ensemble. Impressions of the country, however, I shall never lose or blur disastrously with those of any other part: it is too individual, and makes too clear a picture.
Much of our way was like a private park bigger than any king or emperor in Europe ever owned. Then, after miles of trees with blue, misty vistas hanging between, like painted gauze curtains, we flashed suddenly out to open spaces purple-red with fireweed, and vast, flat stretches of tawny marshland swept with tides of colour, rainbow streaks of amethyst and rose-topaz. The Sound was within sight and smell. Salt perfume of ocean mingled with spicy fragrance from the sunburnt bayberry flung in thick ruglike masses upon bare gray rock, and azure veinings of the sea, stray among the marshes, made strong-growing water plants give out a tang that was tonic to our nostrils.
You may think that such a picture could be sketched in colour along the coastline of almost any country, but if so, you will be mistaken, for all this as we saw it was extraordinarily individual and American. Why, exactly, I can't define, but you will understand, if Monty doesn't. Though you say you haven't been much in New England you know what the soul of America is. Well, this soul, whose first (remembered) spark came from the Indians, was brightened to living fire by the Puritans from over the sea who called the world they found New England. Somehow, the combination is unique, and the same curious sense of personality runs through everything, linking all together as a golden thread might link many different coloured beads. The cedars crowning the hills could be only American cedars. "Joe Pye weed" (whose Indian name is lost, but whose pinky purple colour is ever present) is so patriotic a plant that it would perish rather than grow in foreign parts. The ponds crusted with water-lily pads and ringed round with young trees like children dancing hand in hand seem to sing "We are of New England!" And even the apple trees—immense domed tents of green and pink brocade—are like colonial ladies dressed in their hoop-skirted best.
New London, on the contrary—when we came to it at last—struck us as being like some town of England, or of Scotland. That was only a first impression, however, and a superficial likeness. We soon began to find out the differences, for New London was our night stop, and we had hours before dark to criticise and admire. It hadn't been a long run, as runs go, from New York, and at New Haven we heard motor fiends at luncheon near us in the hotel talk of "pushing on to Boston." Just such a fiend would Caspian be if he could, because he so hates the stops devoted to sight-seeing; but Jack and Peter are, after all, powers behind the throne, or, rather, behind the engines. They don't drive, yet unostentatiously they direct less determined or less firmly concentrated minds. Nobody except your Molly realized that we were to spend an afternoon and night at New London because Jack Winston and Peter Storm wished it, but so, indeed, it was. Nobody but your Molly guessed that a sight-seeing plot was hatching against Caspian and—incidentally—against Mrs. Shuster. Idonia Goodrich had been carefully incited to keen interest in New London because of the Yale and Harvard boat races, and though nothing was going on, she wanted to see the place where such things did go on. Where Idonia goes, the fickle Larry likes to go just now, for when a good-looking girl flags him with the signal, "I'm ready to flirt if you are!" he simply can't resist, which means that where Idonia and Larry go, thither goeth Lily also. As for Pat, she knows that actively seeing sights is her one hope (if any) of escape from Caspian. Consequently she had listened with almost unnatural interest to Jack's talk, before starting, of the principal "features" to be sought out at our first night's stopping place.
