GOLDEN FLEECE
OTHER BOOKS BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
[Illustration]
_The Great God Success_, _Her Serene Highness_, _A Woman Ventures_
[Illustration: _The three descended the grand stairway rapidly_]
_GOLDEN FLEECE_
_The American Adventures of a
Fortune Hunting Earl_
_By_
_David Graham Phillips_
[Illustration]
_Illustrations by Harrison Fisher_
[Illustration]
_McClure, Phillips & Co._
_New York_
_1903_
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.
Published, April, 1903, R
ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing
page
The three descended the grand stairway rapidly _Frontispiece_
A strongly-built, fairish young man of perhaps six and thirty 4
“My name is Longview” 16
Barney half a dozen chairs away glowering at Longview 26
He liked the very first glimpse of her 46
“As if we were a pair of new chimpanzees in a zoo” 70
“Just my rotten luck,” he muttered 90
“Then you’re not a Buddhist or a Spiritualist?” 130
“Forgive me--it was all my fault--yet not mine--good-bye--” 164
Cosimo, Prince di Rontivogli 200
“I can imagine many extenuating circumstances” 224
“I’ll give the guinea one more chance” 230
Found Nelly alone in the front parlour 258
“You may _ask_, sir, but I’ll not answer” 284
As soon as her father and mother were out of the way 296
“I take to it like a duck to water” 314
GOLDEN FLEECE
I
Two hours after Surrey’s letter came his sister Gwen rode over to
Beauvais House eager to tell Evelyn the news of his luck in America.
It was almost five o’clock in the beautiful autumn afternoon, and she
found Evelyn at tea on the porch that looks out upon the Italian garden.
“It’s settled,” she said. “They’re to be married on the 5th of
November--only two months! And George says she is sweet and lovely--not
at all like the Americans we know. And her dot is a million and a
half--he calls it seven and a half, but he means in their money, which
sounds bigger, but counts smaller, than ours. She’ll get twice that
when her father dies--and he’s nearly seventy and not strong. And I’m
so glad and so sorry that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
“What’s her name? You told me, but I forget.” Evelyn’s hand was
trembling just a little as she gave Gwendoline a cup of tea. She spoke
slowly, in the clear, monotonous, but agreeable, English tone. Her
voice, always calm, seemed stagnant.
“Dowie--Helen Dowie. He sent me a proof of a photograph they had taken
together.” Gwendoline took a letter from the bosom of her shirtwaist,
drew from it the proof, and handed it to Evelyn. She took it, lowered
her head so that Gwen could not see her face. She looked long and
intently, and, if Gwen had seen, she would have wondered how eyes could
be so full of tears without shedding a single one.
“Quite aristocratic,” she said at last, giving it back. “How much style
those American girls have!”
“But don’t you think her rather pert-looking?” asked Gwen
discontentedly. “She looks ill-tempered, too. I’m sure we sha’n’t get
on. Mother and I are making ready to go to Houghton Abbey at once. We’d
have a jolly uncomfortable time of it, I wager, if she were to catch us
at the Hall.”
Evelyn was gazing into her tea and stirring it absently.
“It seems a shame to have an American nobody come in,” continued Gwen,
“and throw us out neck and crop from a house where we’ve always lived.
Now, if it were an English girl of our own class,--you, Evelyn,--we
shouldn’t mind--at least, not so much, or in the same way.”
Evelyn paled, and her lips contracted slightly.
“But it’s of no use to think of that. We need her money--everything is
in tatters at the Hall, and poor George is down to the last seventy
pounds.” Gwen laughed. “Do you remember what a time there was getting
the five hundred for his expenses out of Aunt Betty? We’ve got to cable
him another five hundred--he can’t begin on her money the very minute
he’s married, can he now?”
“Arthur must go over,” said Evelyn suddenly, with conviction.
“We’re worse off than you are. Old Bagley was down yesterday. He
and Arthur were shut in for two hours, and Arthur’s been off his
feed--horribly--ever since.”
Gwen, two years younger than Evelyn, could not conceal her feelings so
well. She winced, and a look of terror came into her big blue eyes.
“We can’t hold on another year,” continued Evelyn. “And it’s quite
impossible for Arthur to take Miss Cadbrough. She’s too hideous, and
too hideously, hopelessly middle-class. She could never, never learn
not to speak to ladies and gentlemen as if she were a servant.”
Evelyn pretended not to notice Gwen’s unhappiness. She glanced in
at the great drawing room, with splendid furniture, and ceiling
wonderfully carved by a seventeenth-century Italian. Then her eyes
wandered away to the left, to the majestic wing showing there, then on
to the brilliant gardens, the fountains and statuary. Her expression
became bitter. “And we’ve been undisturbed for nine centuries!” she
exclaimed.
Gwen, in spite of her inward tumult, remembered that this boast was
rather “tall,” that the Beauvais family had, in fact, been changed
radically several times, and only the name had been undisturbed. Her
mind paused with a certain satisfaction on these little genealogical
discrepancies, because, though she was the sister and the daughter of a
duke, she was the granddaughter of a brewer, who had begun life as an
apprentice.
“George wishes Arthur to go over to the wedding,” she said reluctantly,
after a silence.
[Illustration: _A strongly-built, fairish young man of perhaps six and
thirty_]
A servant appeared--his gaudy livery was almost shabby, but his manners
were most dignified, and his hair was impressively--or ridiculously,
if you please--plastered and streaked with powder. “His Lordship says
he will have tea in his study, Your Ladyship.”
“Please tell him that Lady Gwendoline Ridley is here,” said Evelyn.
A few minutes later, a strongly-built, fairish young man of perhaps six
and thirty came lounging out upon the porch. He had pleasing, but far
from handsome, features--a chin that was too long, and hung weakly,
instead of strongly, forward; uncertain blue eyes, with a network
of the wrinkles of dissipation at the corners. A large, frameless,
stringless monocle was wedged, apparently permanently, into the angle
of his right eye-socket. He was dressed in shabby light grey flannels,
and he looked as seedy as his clothes. He shook hands with Gwen.
“Thanks. No tea. I’m taking whiskey,” he said to Evelyn. And he seated
himself sprawlingly. The servant brought his whiskey and a note for his
sister.
“Is the man waiting for an answer?” she asked, when she had read it.
“Yes, your ladyship.” She left her brother and Gwen alone.
“George is marrying the heiress,” Gwen began.
“So he wrote me,” replied Frothingham sullenly.
“Evelyn says you must go and do likewise.”
He scowled. “But I’d rather stay here and marry you.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Gwen, with a shrug of her athletic young
shoulders. “You’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing. So--you must do your
duty.”
“Duty go hang!” said Frothingham fretfully. “Sometimes, do you know,
Gwen, I come jolly near envying those beggars that live in cottages,
and keep shops, and all that.”
“Now, you’re slopping, Arthur. You know you don’t envy them; no more do
I.”
“Did Eve tell you old Bagley was down?”
“Yes. Ghastly--wasn’t it?”
Frothingham sighed. “I shouldn’t be so cut up if I’d had the fun of
spending it.”
“You did spend a lot of it.” She was thinking what a great figure
the young Earl had cut in her girlhood days; she had always listened
greedily when her brother, with admiring envy, or Evelyn, with sisterly
pride, talked of his exploits on the turf, and let us say elsewhere, to
shorten a long story.
“Only a few thousands that weren’t worth the keeping,” said
Frothingham, a faint gleam of satisfaction appearing in the eye that
was shielded by the monocle--he liked to remember his “career,” and
he liked the women to remind him of it in this flattering way. “All I
really got was the bill for the governor’s larks, and his governor’s,
and his governor’s governor’s. It’s what I call rotten unfair--jolly
rotten unfair. The fiddling for them--the bill for me.”
“Buck up, Artie,” said Gwen, stroking him gently with her riding whip.
“See how Georgie has faced it. And perhaps you won’t draw such a bad
one, either. She couldn’t be worse than Cadbrough.”
“But I want _you_, Gwen. I’m used to you, you know--and that’s
everything in a wife. I hate surprises, and these American beggars are
full of ’em.”
Evelyn came back. “Go away somewhere, both of you,” she said. “Charley
Sidney’s just driving up. I wish to talk with him about the States.”
Gwen paled and flushed; Frothingham grunted and scowled. They rose,
made a short cut across the garden, and were hidden by the left wing
of the house. Almost immediately the servant announced “Mr. Sidney,”
and stood deferentially aside for a tall, thin American, elaborately
Anglicised in look and dress, and, as it soon appeared, in accent. He
had a narrow, vain face, browned and wrinkled by hard riding in hard
weather in those early morning hours that should be spent in bed if one
has lingered in the billiard room with the drinks and smokes until past
midnight.
“Ah, Lady Evelyn!” He shook hands with her, and bowed and smirked. “I’m
positively perishing for tea.”
“You mean whiskey?”
“Ah, yes--to be sure. I see there is whiskey.”
Evelyn’s manner, which had been frank and equal before her friend and
her brother, had frozen for Sidney into a shy stiffness not without a
faint suggestion of superior addressing inferior. She had known Sidney
for the ten years he had lived within two miles of Beauvais House,
but--well, he wasn’t “one of us” exactly; he had a way of bowing and of
pronouncing titles that discouraged equality. The conversation dragged
in dreary, rural fashion through gossip of people, dogs, and horses,
until she said:
“Have you heard the news of Surrey?”
“No--is His Grace coming home?”
“He’s marrying--a Miss Dowie, of New York. Do you know her?”
“I’ve heard of her. You know, I’ve not been there longer than a week at
a time for fifteen years.” Sidney put on his extreme imitation-English
air. “I loathe the place. They don’t know how to treat a gentleman.
And the lower classes!” He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. He
was at his most energetic when, in running down his native land to his
English acquaintances, he reached the American “lower classes.”
Evelyn concealed the satire which longed to express itself in her
face. She despised Sidney and all the Anglicised Americans; and,
behind their backs, she and her friends derided them--perhaps to repay
themselves for the humiliation of accepting hospitalities and even
more concrete favours from “those American bounders.” The story among
Sidney’s upper-class English tolerators was that his father had kept
a low public house in New York or San Francisco, or “somewhere over
there”--they were as ignorant of the geography of the United States as
they were of the geography of Patagonia.
“So he’s to marry Dowie’s daughter?” continued Sidney. “He was
brakeman on a railway thirty years ago.”
“How you Americans do jump about!” said Evelyn, forgetting that Sidney
prided himself on no longer being an American. “He must be clever.”
“A clever rascal, probably,” replied Sidney spitefully. “Over here he’d
have been put into jail for what they honour him for over there.”
“We’ve many of the same sort, no doubt,” said Evelyn, thinking it
tactful to hold aloof when a son was abusing his mother.
“Yes, but usually they’re gentlemen and do things in a gentlemanly way.”
“Mr. Dowie is rich?”
“Just now he is--they say.” Sidney had the rich man’s weakness for
denying, or at least casting doubt upon, the riches of other rich men.
He knew that his was the finest and most valuable wealth in the world,
and he would have liked to believe that it was the only wealth in the
world. “I trust the Duke has looked sharp to the settlements.”
“Why?” asked Evelyn, preparing to make mental notes.
“He may never get anything but what’s settled on him and her now.
Dowie is more or less of a speculator and may go broke. But that’s
not the only danger in marrying an American heiress. You see, Lady
Evelyn, over there they have the vulgarest possible notions of rank
and titles. And often, if there isn’t a cash settlement when they ‘buy
the title,’ as they describe it, they refuse to give up anything. Many
of their rich men have the craze for founding colleges and asylums
and libraries. They reason that they’ve got the title in the family,
therefore it isn’t necessary to pay for it; and so they leave all their
money to build themselves a monument. Dishonourable, isn’t it? But they
stop at nothing.”
“Then,” said Evelyn, “an American heiress isn’t an heiress so long as
her father is alive?”
“Exactly. It’s misleading to call her an heiress. She simply has hopes.”
“I hope Surrey knows this.”
“If he doesn’t it’s his own fault. I cautioned His Grace before he
sailed.”
“That reminds me, Mr. Sidney. Arthur may be going over to the wedding.
Could you----”
“I’d be delighted,” interrupted Sidney. “Anything I could do for Lord
Frothingham it would be a pleasure to do. I can give him some useful
letters, I think. Will he travel?”
“Possibly--I don’t know. He has no plans as yet.”
“I shall give him--if he will do me the honour of accepting them--only
a few letters. The wisest plan is a proper introduction to the very
best people. Then all doors will be open to him.”
“The Americans are hospitable to everyone, are they not?”
“Not to younger sons any more. And not to unaccredited foreigners.
They’ve had their fingers jolly well burned. I knew of one case--a
girl--quite a ladylike person, though of a new family from the
interior. She married a French valet masquerading as a duke.”
“Poor creature,” said Evelyn, smiling with amused contempt.
“Yes, and another girl married--or thought she married--a German royal
prince. And when she got to Germany she found that she’d bought a place
as mere morganatic wife, with no standing at all.”
“Fancy! What a facer!”
“And she never got her money back--not a penny,” continued Sidney.
“But, like you, I don’t sympathise with these upstart people who try to
thrust themselves out of their proper station. The old families over
there--and there are a few gentlefolk, Lady Evelyn, though they’re
almost lost in the crowd of noisy upstarts--never have such humiliating
experiences in their international marriages.”
“Naturally not,” said Evelyn.
“But, as I was about to say, a foreigner with a genuine title, the
head of a house of gentle people, is received with open arms. Lord
Frothingham would be overwhelmed with hospitalities. My friends would
see to that.”
After a few minutes, without any impoliteness on Evelyn’s part, Sidney
began to feel that it was time for him to go. As he disappeared Gwen
and Arthur came strolling back.
“What a noisome creature Sidney is!” said Evelyn. “But he’ll be of use
to you, Arthur.”
“Did he talk about the old families of America and the gentle birth?”
asked Gwen. Her eyes were curiously bright, and her manner and tone
were agitated.
“All that again.”
“He’s an ass--a regular tomtit,” growled Frothingham.
“I should think he’d learn,” said Evelyn, “that we don’t take him and
his countrymen up because they’re well born--we know they aren’t.”
“If those that are sensible enough to fly from that beastly country are
like Sidney,” said Gwen, “what a rowdy lot there must be at home.” She
spoke so nervously that Evelyn, abstracted though she was, glanced at
her and noticed how pale and peaked she was. When she had ridden away
Evelyn looked at her brother severely--she was only three and twenty,
but she managed him, taking the place of both their parents, who were
long dead.
“You’ve been making love to Gwen,” she exclaimed reproachfully. “You
should be ashamed of yourself.”
Frothingham removed his monocle, wiped it carefully in a brilliant
plaid silk handkerchief, and slowly fitted it in place. Then he sent
a mocking, cynical gleam through it at his sister. “You forget,” he
drawled, “that I caught you and Georgie kissing each other and crying
over each other the day he went off to the States.”
Evelyn flushed. “How does that excuse you?” she demanded, undismayed.
He was silent for a moment, then with tears in his eyes and a break in
his habitual cynical drawl, “I can’t go, Eve. I can’t give her up.”
Evelyn’s heart ached, but she did not show it. She simply asked in her
usual tone of almost icy calm, “Where’s the cash to come from?”
He collapsed helplessly into a chair. There was no alternative--he must
go; he must marry money. He owed it to his family and position; also,
he wanted it himself--what is a “gentleman” without money? And--why,
if he did not bestir himself he might actually have to go to work! And
“what the devil could I work at? I might go out to service--I’d shine
as a gentleman’s gentleman--or I might do something as a billiard
marker----”
With such dangers and degradations imminent, to think of love was sheer
madness. Frothingham sighed and stared miserably through his monocle at
the peacocks squawking their nerve-jarring predictions of rain.
II
On the second day out, in the morning, Frothingham was at the rail,
his back to the sea, his glassed gaze roaming aimlessly up and down
the row of passengers stretched at full length in steamer chairs. He
became conscious of the manœuvrings of a little man in a little grey
cap and little grey suit, with little grey side-whiskers that stood
out like fins on either side of his little grey face. Each time this
little person passed it was with a nervous smile at Frothingham, and
a nervous wiping of the lips with the tip of his tongue. When he saw
that Frothingham, or, rather, Frothingham’s monocle, was noting him, he
halted in front of him. He was too painfully self-conscious to see that
the Englishman’s look was about as cordial as that of a bald-headed man
watching the circlings of a bluebottle fly.
“The Earl of Frothingham, is it not?” said he in a thin, small voice,
his American overlaid with the most un-English of English accents.
[Illustration: “_My name is Longview_”]
Frothingham moved his head without relaxing from his stolid, vacant
look.
“My name is Longview. I had the honour of meeting you at the hunt at
Market Harboro two years ago--my daughter and I.”
Frothingham stared vaguely into space, little Longview looking up at
him with an expression of ludicrously alarmed anxiety. “Oh, yes,”
he drawled finally. And he extended his hand with condescending
graciousness. “I remember.”
Longview expelled a big breath of relief. He was used to being
forgotten, was not unused to remaining forgotten. “You may recall,” he
hastened on, eager to clinch himself in an earl’s memory, “we had your
cousin, Lord Ramsay’s place, Cedric Hall, that year.”
Frothingham remembered perfectly--the rich, Anglicised American who fed
his neighbours well, was generous in lending mounts and traps, and was,
altogether, a useful and not unamusing nuisance. Rich, but--how rich?
“And your daughter?” said Frothingham--he recalled her indistinctly as
young, hoydenish, and a daring jumper.
“She is with me,” said Longview, delighted to be convinced that he was
remembered, and remembered distinctly--and by a Gordon-Beauvais! “It
would give me great pleasure to present you.”
As they went down the deck the little man peered at everyone with a
nervous little smile--“as if he were saying, ‘Don’t kick me, please. I
mean well,’” thought Frothingham. In fact, back of the peering and the
smile was the desire that all should see that he had captured the Earl.
They entered the library and advanced toward a young woman swathed in a
huge blue cape, her eyes idly upon a book.
“Honoria, my dear,” said Longview, as uneasy as if he were speaking to
the young woman without having been introduced to her, “you remember
Lord Frothingham?”
Honoria slowly raised her eyelids from a pair of melancholy,
indifferent grey eyes, and slightly inclined her head. The men seated
themselves on either side of her; Longview rattled on in his almost
hysterical way for a few minutes, then fluttered away. Honoria and
Frothingham sat silent, she looking at her book, he looking at her.
“You are going home?” he said when he saw that she would not “lead,”
no matter how long the silence might continue.
“No,” she replied. “We are English--at least, my father is.”
“And you?”
She just moved her shoulders, and there was the faintest sneer at the
corner of her decidedly pretty mouth. “I don’t know--what does it
matter about a woman? I’ve lived in England and France since I was
five, except a year and a half in America. Father detests the country
and the people. He was naturalised in England last year. I believe he
decided that his social position, won through his being an American,
was sufficiently established to make it safe for him to change.”
Frothingham smiled. As he was used to the freest and frankest
criticisms of parents and other near relatives by fellow-countrymen
of his own class, it did not impress him as unfilial that a daughter
should thus deride a father. Honoria became silent, and apparently
oblivious of his presence.
“I’ve never been to America,” he said, hoping to resurrect the dead
conversation. “I’m looking forward to it with much pleasure. We have
many Americans in our neighbourhood--such jolly people.”
“I know few Americans.” Honoria looked disdainful. “And they are
like us, the most of them--expatriated. They say their country is a
good place to make money in, but a horrible place to live--crude and
ill-mannered, full of vulgar people that push in everywhere, and the
servants fancying they’re ladies and gentlemen.”
“I hope it’s no worse to live in than England,” said Frothingham. “You
know we’re always flying to the Continent to escape the climate and the
dulness. And our middle-classes are very uppish nowadays, don’t you
think?”
“I detest England.” Honoria put the first emphasis into her voice, but
it was slight.
“Beastly hole, except for a few weeks in the spring, ain’t it? If it
wasn’t for the hunting it would be deserted.”
He saw her cold, regular features light up. “I love hunting,” she said.
“It’s the one thing that can make me forget myself, and everything
except just being alive and well.” Then her face shadowed and chilled,
and she looked at her book so significantly that Frothingham was
forced to rise and leave.
At luncheon the man in the chair next him--Barney, who had told him in
the first half-hour of their acquaintance all about his big dry-goods
shop in Chicago--said: “I saw you talking to Longview on deck. Is he a
friend of yours?”
“An acquaintance,” replied Frothingham. He rather liked Barney because
he was shrewd and humourous, and treated him in an offhand fashion that
was amusing in a “tradesman”--from America.
“He’s a low-down snob,” said Barney, encouraged by Frothingham’s
disclaimer. “One of those fellows that think their own country ain’t
good enough for them. I was glad when he got himself naturalised over
in your country. You’re welcome to him. What kind of people does he
herd with in England?”
“We like him very well, I believe. He seems to be an agreeable chap.”
“I suppose he kowtows and blows himself, and so they let him hang
onto the tailboard--he ain’t heavy and don’t take up much room. His
grandfather stole with both hands, and put it in real estate. Then his
father made quite a bunch in the early railroad days. And now this
fellow’s posing as an aristocrat. If he wasn’t rich who’d notice him?”
“Then he’s rich?” inquired Frothingham.
“Yes and no,” replied Barney, his rich man’s jealousy visibly roused.
“There was a big family of them. He’s got maybe a couple of millions or
three. That ain’t much in these days. You heard about his knockout?”
“Has he lost part of his money?”
“I thought everybody knew that story--it was in all the papers.
No, it wasn’t money--worse than that, from his point of view. His
daughter--she’s with him on the ship--fell in love with the second
son of some marquis or other. But he didn’t have anything, and
I believe you titled people ain’t allowed to work. Longview was
red-headed--wouldn’t give his daughter a cent unless she married a big
title. And then the young man’s older brother died.”
“Was it the Marquis of Dullingford?”
“Yes, that was it. And right on top of it his elder brother’s two sons
were drowned, and he came into the title and estates. And what does he
do but up and marry an English girl that he’d been struck on all the
time, but couldn’t marry because he was so poor. Longview nearly went
crazy at missing the chance. And his daughter--it must have made her
mighty sour to find out that the fellow had been only pretending to be
in love with her, and was really out for her cash, and didn’t care a
rap about her. A low pup, wasn’t he?”
Frothingham began to detest Barney--“an impudent, malicious beggar,” he
thought. He gave him his monocle’s coldest stare.
“No,” went on Barney, unchilled, “Longview’s not so rich. I could buy
him twice over, and not take a cent of it out of my business. But I
want to see any scamp, foreign or domestic, hanging round my daughter
for her money. She’ll get nary a red till I shuffle off. And she’ll get
mighty little then if she don’t marry to suit me. That’s _our_ way.”
Frothingham changed his mind about dropping Barney. He had begun
to modify the low view of him as soon as he heard that he had a
daughter, and “could buy Longview twice over,” and leave the big
business--“seventy stores under one roof”--intact. “Miss Barney may
be worth looking at,” he reflected. “And her papa might relent about
settlements. I suspect he isn’t above loving a lord--he’s too good an
American for that.”
What Barney had told gave him the key to Honoria. He felt genuine
sympathy for her--their sorrows were similar. “Poor creature,” he
thought. “No wonder she’s so down in the mouth.” After luncheon he met
her father on deck, and did not repel his advances. “But,” he said to
himself, “it don’t do to be too friendly with these beggars. It’s like
shaking hands with your tailor. He don’t think you’ve pulled him up,
but that you’ve let yourself down.”
To the “beggar” he said:
“I looked all round the dining room, but I didn’t see you and your
daughter.”
Longview smiled proudly. “We have our meals in our sitting room,” he
replied. “We dislike being stared at, and mixed in with a crowd of
eating people. We like privacy. We’d be glad to have you join us.”
Frothingham’s first impulse was to accept. It would cost him
nothing--probably he’d get his wine and mineral water and cigars free.
And he’d have a rare chance at Honoria. But her face came before his
mind. He decided that he would do well to wait until he could learn
whether she was really part of the inviting “we.”
Although he was not welcomed, but merely tolerated, he seated himself
on the extension of a vacant chair beside her and talked--hunting,
which, as she had shown him, was her weakness. She was soon interested,
and she unbent toward him so far that, when her father came and renewed
his invitation, she joined in it. Just as Frothingham accepted he saw
Barney half a dozen chairs away glowering at Longview. “I’ll offend
Barney, no doubt,” he said to himself. “But I’ll risk it. I must play
the cards I have in my hand.”
Barney came into the smoke-room late in the evening as he was sitting
there, having a final whiskey and water before going to bed. “Won’t
you have a high ball or something?” he asked, making room for Barney’s
broad form.
“No, I never touch liquor. Don’t allow it in my house. It’s no good--no
business man ought to touch it.”
“I suppose not,” replied Frothingham, feeling that here was new
evidence of the essentially degrading nature of business.
“I missed you at dinner,” Barney went on.
“The Longviews invited me to feed with them,” replied Frothingham
carelessly. “They eat in their sitting room. Sorry to leave you, but
the service is much better.”
Barney’s maxillary muscles expanded and contracted with anger. He
half snorted, half laughed. “You might know,” he said, “that that
shark-faced snob would invent a new way of making himself ridiculous.
So, the general dining room ain’t good enough for him, eh? He _is_ a
swell, ain’t he? I should think he and his--no, leave the young lady
out of it--I should think he’d be ashamed to fish for you so openly.”
Barney’s tone softened apologetically, greatly to Frothingham’s
surprise, as he added: “I don’t blame you, Mr. Frothingham. I
understand how it is with you titled people in your country. I don’t
blame anybody for walking round on human necks if their owners’ll allow
it. But _we_ feel differently about all those kind of things.”
Frothingham smiled conciliatingly. “Oh, I say, now! I don’t see
anything to make a row over. The beggar’s a right to eat where he
pleases, hasn’t he?”
[Illustration: _Barney half a dozen chairs away glowering at Longview_]
“Of course he has, and to stick his tongue out at all the rest of us,
as he does it. You don’t understand. It ain’t _what_ he does. It’s
_why_ he does it. We Americans can’t stand those kind of airs.”
“It seems very mysterious to me,” confessed Frothingham. “I admit I
don’t understand your country.”
“Oh, you’re all right,” reassured Barney, slapping Frothingham’s leg
cordially. “I never thought I’d like one of you titled fellows. I
despised you all for a useless set of nobodies and nincompoops. And
whenever my womenfolks got to talking about that kind of thing I always
sat on ’em, and sat hard--I’m a hard sitter when I want to be. But I
like you, young man. You’re more an American than an Englishman, just
as Longview’s more English than American--he ain’t American at all. You
talk like an American. You behave like an American. And when you’ve
been in America long enough to wear your clothes out, and get some that
fit you, you’ll look like an American.”
“Thanks,” said Frothingham drily.
“You don’t like it?” Barney laughed good-humouredly. “Well, I don’t
blame you. You’re judging America by Longview and me. That ain’t
fair. I’m a rough one--never had a chance--first thing I remember is
carrying the swill buckets out to feed the hogs before sun-up when I
still wore slips. But I mean right. And I’ve got a son and a daughter
that are a real gentleman and a real lady, and don’t you forget it.”
“Oh, you’re all right,” said Frothingham, slapping Barney on the
leg--Frothingham was a sentimental dog where his pocket and his
pleasure were not concerned, and he liked Barney’s look as he spoke of
himself and the hogs, and his children.
“You don’t want to go back to that little old island of yours,”
continued Barney, “without seeing Chicago. _There’s_ a town! And I’ll
give you the time of your life. I want you to meet my family.”
“I hope I shall,” said Frothingham. He was smiling to
himself--evidently Barney wasn’t above a weakness for a lord. “It was
a good stroke any way you look at it, my going with the Longviews,” he
reflected. “It’s made Barney jealous, and he thinks more of me than
ever.”
He divided his time unevenly between the Longviews and Barney. He
wished to introduce Barney to them, but Longview hysterically refused.
“It’s all right for you, Frothingham,” he explained. “But we can’t
afford to do it. How’d you like to be introduced to middle-class
English?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind. I’d just forget ’em the next time we met. The
beggars ’d expect it and wouldn’t think of annoying me.”
“Precisely--precisely,” said Longview. “But our--that is--the American
middle-classes are different. They don’t understand differences
of social position, or pretend not to. If this Barney person were
presented to us, he probably wouldn’t take the cut when we met again,
but would come straight up to us. You’ve no idea how impudent they are.”
“But why do you call him middle-class? Ain’t he rich?” asked
Frothingham.
Longview looked at him tragically. “Birth and breeding count with us
just as--I mean count in America just as in England.”
“Gad, they don’t count in England any more, except against one. But we
can’t get it out of our heads that you Americans go in for equality and
all that sort of thing.”
“Not at all. Not at all,” Longview protested. “The lines are the more
closely drawn because there are no official lines.”
“But what’s the matter with Barney? He seems right enough. I’ve got
uncles that are worse. Gad, there’s one of ’em I could get rich on if I
could cage him and show him at a shilling a look.”
“My dear Frothingham, this Barney keeps a retail shop. Even in New York
they draw the line at retail shops.”
“It’s very mysterious.” Frothingham shook his head. “I fear I shall
never learn. Why don’t they put it all in a book, as we do? Then we
could take it at the university instead of Greek.”
He looked at Honoria. She was giving her plate a scornful smile. Her
father looked at her also, and reddened as he noted her expression,
and shifted the conversation abruptly to the day’s run. Frothingham
was becoming interested in Honoria, now that he had assured
himself of her eligibility. She was not beautiful, not especially
distinguished-looking. But she had as little interest in him as in the
rest of her surroundings, and that piqued him. Then, too, her figure
was graceful and strong; and when her face did light up it showed
strength of character, and either what she said or the way she said it
created a vivid impression of personality. He soon felt that she liked
him. Her manner toward him was friendlier far than her manner toward
her father, her lack of respect for whom was scantily concealed.
The night before they landed she and Frothingham sat on deck late,
her father dozing in a chair at a discreet distance. Both were
depressed--the sense that they were once more about to plunge into the
whirlpool of life made each sad. Honoria was remembering the past;
Frothingham was brooding over the future. If he had dared he would have
proposed to her. “She’d make a satisfactory wife,” he said to himself.
“She’s just enough English to understand me and to make my people like
her. She wouldn’t get on their nerves. And she doesn’t talk through her
nose except when she’s excited. She’s a little too clever--but a steady
goer, once the harness is on. If I could get her it would be good
business, good swift business.”
“You’re a queer sort,” he said to her suddenly. “Most girls are full of
getting married. But I don’t believe you give it a thought.”
“I sha’n’t ever marry,” she replied.
He laughed. “Oh, I say, that’s nonsense. Every girl must marry. You may
as well make up your mind to it, close your eyes, shut your teeth, and
dash in.”
“You might not think it,” she said after a pause, “but I am like you
English--I’m horribly, incurably sentimental. I know it’s foreign to my
bringing up, but----” Her jaw set, and her eyes fixed upon something
visible only to her in the blackness beyond the rail. “My bringing up
was all wrong and rotten,” she went on presently. “I don’t know just
how or where, but I know it’s so. I began to feel it dimly when I
visited my aunt in America four years ago. My mother died when I was
a baby, and I was trained by my father and governesses--governesses
that suited him. My father---- But I needn’t tell you, and you probably
don’t sympathise with me. His one idea in life is social position. It
seems to me a contemptible ambition for a man. With women--there’s some
excuse for it. We’re naturally petty. And, so far as I can see it, as
the world is made up, if we haven’t got that we haven’t got anything.
We can’t have any other ambition--it’s the only one open to us. Well, I
haven’t got even ambition. I want--that is, I wanted----”
She paused again, resisting the mood that was urging her on to
confidence. “By Jove,” thought Frothingham, “it wouldn’t be hard for a
man to like her.”
“No matter what it was I wanted,” she went on, “I didn’t get it--and
sha’n’t, ever.” She turned her face toward him. “You may misunderstand
me--may think I am in love and hopelessly disappointed--there’s a story
of that kind going round. But I’m not in love. I was--but I’m not now.”
“Do you think one ever gets over it?” he asked absently.
She did not answer.
“I’m afraid not--at least, not thoroughly,” he answered himself. There
were two faces out there in the blackness into which they were staring,
but each was seeing only one.
“One ought to get over it--one _must_,” she said slowly, “when one
finds that the person one cared for is a bad lot. But”--she sighed
under her breath--“I might marry, yes, would, if I needed a home or
money. But I don’t. So I shall be much better contented alone. I’ll
never believe deeply in any human being again.”
“You mustn’t take life so seriously,” he said gently. “You’ll change
before----”
“So my father thinks.” She looked at Frothingham with a mischievous,
audacious smile. “He thinks I shall change immediately--and marry--you!”
Frothingham gasped.
“How funny and fishlike you look,” she said, laughing at him. “You are
in no danger. Do you suppose I’d have said that if I’d had you on my
list? No, I like you, _but--but_!”
“You may change your mind,” he recovered himself sufficiently to say.
“No--you’re safe. I spoke out because I wish to be friends with you. I
don’t especially admire your purpose in going to America. But at least
you’re frank about it.”
“I? Why, Miss Longview--I----” Frothingham began to protest, pushing at
his dislodging eyeglass.
“Don’t prevaricate. You wouldn’t do it well. As I was about to say, I
wish to be friends with you. And it’s impossible for a woman and a man
to be friends when either is harbouring matrimonial designs against the
other, or fancies the other is harbouring them.”
“I certainly have to marry somebody,” said Frothingham mournfully.
“Yes--I know. Father explained about you. He’s up on every titled
family in England above the baronets. And he’s determined that I
shall be a countess at the very least. He says he has the money to
buy it--and possibly he has. But”--she was intent upon the blackness
again--“I shall never go back to England. I shall stay in America--with
a visit to Paris and the Riviera now and then.”
“That’ll cheer your father when he hears it,” drawled Frothingham. He
coughed and stammered, and added in an embarrassed, apologetic tone,
“And I don’t like to hear a girl as young and attractive as you are
talk in that ghastly way.”
She looked at him with a teasing smile.
“You’ll make some woman a good husband,” she said. “Selfish and
flighty, perhaps, but on the whole good. I’ll be glad to help you--with
some other girl. In fact, I’ve one in mind--an acquaintance in New
York--we call each the other friend, and I’m fond of her, as that sort
of thing goes with women.”
He began to stammer again, and she saw that he was still hanging
hopefully over her father’s plan. “If I were a marrying woman and
ambitious,” she went on, “I’d think seriously of having a cast at you.
But I’m neither, so I can appreciate your assets quite impartially.”
“I’ve got nothing,” he said, “nothing but debts.”
“Debts are an asset--if contracted in a way that would seem romantic to
a girl. Then, there’s your title. That’s a big asset either in England
or America. And you’ve got a fairly good disposition and nice manners,
and you pretend indifference charmingly, assisted by your eyeglass. And
your character is not too bad. Not too good, either. I’ve heard one or
two rather thick stories of you. If I were your wife I’d keep an eye
on the money--you _will_ gamble. But your character is well up to the
average for our kind of people.”
“I’ve been rather bad, I’m afraid,” he said, in the shallowly penitent
tone in which human beings glory in the sins they are proud of. “I’ve
been as bad as I knew how to be.”
“All of us are that, I fancy,” replied Honoria, rising. “I sha’n’t
trouble you to confess to me. Save it for--her. Good-night.” She put
out her hand friendlily. “I think we shall be friends.”
Frothingham looked after her as she went with her father down the deck
toward the main companion-way. “She _is_ a queer lot,” he muttered. “I
suppose that’s American. Well, if it’s a fair specimen, I certainly
sha’n’t be bored in America.”
III
NEW YORK, 6 November.
_My Dear Eve_:
I’m just sending you off the newspapers with the accounts of George’s
wedding. Don’t show them about, please, as he’s frightfully cut up over
them. He swears he’ll never set foot in this country again, or let his
Duchess come. You’ll be tremendously amused as you read. You’ll never
have seen anything so frank and personal. And the illustrations! We’ve
done nothing but dodge cameras when we weren’t dodging reporters. I
don’t agree with George--I think it’s great fun.
They let me off easy, as you’ll see, and some of the pictures of me are
not half bad. But I don’t wonder that George is furious. Just read the
descriptions of his looks--and really he’s looking horribly seedy. And
don’t neglect the accounts of the new Duchess’ papa, and how he came by
his cash. He must be a gory old vulture--though really he doesn’t look
it, and except when he gets to going it hard his English is fairly
good, of the nosey, Yankee kind.
George came down to the dock to meet me. He was in a _blue fury_. It
seems the newspapers had been making a fearful row over him from the
moment he left the other side. And then by illustrated accounts of his
houses, his property, his family, and himself, not to speak of what
they printed about the Dowies’ past and present, they set the crowds to
collecting at his hotel, and to following him round the streets. They
published even what he ate and drank, and the size of the tips he gave
the servants. And after the engagement was announced the excitement
became something incredible. He couldn’t poke his nose out of his
rooms that somebody didn’t collect the crowd by shouting, “There’s his
Dooklets, there’s the little fellow”--and you know Georgie is a _bit_
sensitive about his size.
Well, the newspapers published everything--his height and weight, the
tooth he has out on the left side, every rag in his boxes, pictures of
them, everything in Miss Dowie’s trousseau--columns and columns. And
how he _did_ hop round when he found that the Dowies had actually hired
a fellow and a woman to give out facts to the press! What do you think
of that for a Yankee notion?
You can’t imagine the presents. You’d have thought the crown princess
was marrying. The newspapers say they alone were worth a million and
a half, American money. I and Cleggett went over them, and we decided
they’d fetch more. You know, Cleggett--he’s Georgie’s solicitor--is
over here looking after the settlements. He simply had to put the
screws onto old Dowie. I got a good many hints from him on how to deal
with these beggars in money matters. Dowie’s a shrewd chap. He and
Cleggett did all the money talk. Georgie was supposed to know nothing
about it. But maybe he wasn’t in a funk when it began to look as if the
whole business were off at the last minute. I had to work hard to keep
him up to the mark. Cleggett won out, though--got a hundred thousand
pounds more than Georgie expected.
To go back to the presents, her uncle--one of the ha’penny rags here
said he’s been in the penitentiary, but I hear it’s not true--he gave
her a yacht, a regular ocean steamer. You’ll admire the necklace her
aunt sent her--it can’t have cost less than fifty thousand, our money.
It makes me ill to see these beggars wading and wallowing in money. By
the way, I notice that while they talk of spending money, they talk of
making it as much as they talk of spending it, if not more.
Wallingford, a fellow I’ve met here, said to me at dinner the other
night, a few minutes after the women had gone: “Shall we stay here with
the men and discuss making money, or shall we go up to the women and
discuss spending it?”
But to go back to Georgie and his coming down to meet me. I saw him on
the pier, his face like a sunset and his arms going like mad. He was
haranguing a crowd in which there were several cameras. I shouted to
him--I and Miss Longview and her father were at the rail together. As
I shouted the crowd looked, and the cameras were pointed at us. Miss
Longview darted away, and her father pulled at me.
“Come, come!” he said, all in a flurry and a sweat. “They’ll take your
picture if you stay.”
“Who?” said I. “And why should they take my picture?”
“The reporters,” he answered, dragging at me. “You don’t understand
about American newspapers.” I let him drag me away, and then he
explained. “They know you are coming to the wedding,” he said, “and
they’ll photograph you and interview you and print everything about
you--insulting, impudent things. There’s no such thing as privacy in
this horrible country. Didn’t I tell you they haven’t the faintest
notion what a gentleman is, or what is due a gentleman?”
Barney,--I’m sure I told you about him in the letter I wrote you on
the way over,--Barney was sitting near us. He burst in with, “I think
your friend is unduly alarmed, Earl.” (He always calls me Earl. He says
he’ll be blanked if he’ll call any man lord.) “_You_ haven’t committed
a crime, or done what you’d be ashamed to see in print. No _honest_ man
objects to having his face published, or anything else about him that’s
true.” And he glared at Longview, who sniffed and walked away. Barney
sent a jeering laugh after him, and said, “The scrawny little chipmunk!”
“What’s a chipmunk?” said I.
“A kind of squirrel,” said he, “only littler, and even easier to scare.”
We went to the rail, and there was George, with his crowd pushing and
jostling him. As soon as the gangway was let down he rushed aboard, the
crowd with the cameras on his heels. At the top he turned like Marius,
or whoever it was, at the bridge. And he shouted to the officers, in
a funny, shrill voice, “Drive those ruffians back!” But the officers
were smiling at him, and only pretended to restrain the reporters
and photographers. On they came, reaching us about as soon as George
did. They poured round and between us, and began to ask me questions.
I must admit they were polite, in the Yankee way, and friendly, and
good-natured.
I said to one of ’em: “I say, my good fellow, can’t you give me time to
get my breath?”
“No, I can’t, Lord Frothingham,” he said, laughing. “What would you do
if you were I, and your paper were going to press in ten minutes and
you were five minutes from a telephone?”
I got on famously with them. I didn’t in the least mind. They must have
liked me, as you’ll read. But Georgie! _How_ they have been dishing him!
It wasn’t until we got into the carriage that I and he had chance at
each other. “Did you ever see or hear of anything like it?” he said.
His hands were shaking, and the sweat was rolling down his cheeks.
“They act like a lot of South Sea savages when a whale comes ashore.
They _are_ savages. I had heard it was a beastly country, but----” And
he actually ground his teeth.
You know George is very touchy on his dignity, and has old-fashioned
ideas of what’s due a Duke from his inferiors. It seems he got into a
huff when he first came because they treated him in offhand fashion,
as they treat everybody. And he tried to snub them. And when they
snubbed back, only they had illustrated newspapers to do it in, he went
wild, and has been making matters worse and worse for himself. Some of
the papers have had leaders pitying Miss Dowie, and predicting that
she’ll have him in the divorce court for brutality shortly--think of
it--Georgie, quiet Georgie! Everyone is hating him, for he assumed that
even Miss Dowie’s friends were like the newspapers that had slated him,
and he snubbed right and left.
He took me to his hotel. He had an apartment that costs him fifteen
pounds a day--ain’t that cruel? But he said he didn’t propose that
these savages should sneer at his poverty--they’re doing it, anyhow,
and they hint that the Dowies are paying his hotel bill, or will have
to pay it. However, I think he did well to spread himself. There’s
something about this country that makes you ashamed to seem poor. You
spend money and pretend you’ve got plenty of it. They call it “throwing
a bluff,” or “making a front.”