have it, as I wouldn’t saddle him with the expense--he hadn’t her money
in hand then. Besides, I knew that as soon as he was gone I’d have
to come down, and that would have looked bad. After I was installed
in a very comfortable little apartment thirteen floors up--think of
that!--at three pounds a day, we drove to Dowie’s. A crowd saw us
off at the hotel, people pointed and stared at us all the way up the
street, and there was a crowd waiting for us at Dowie’s. They live in
a huge greystone castle,--there is no end of smart houses here, but a
queer jumble--samples of everything. I hadn’t known old Dowie an hour
before he told me the house and ground and all cost him six hundred
thousand, our money.
The girl--but you’ll judge her for yourself. I rather fancied her.
Affected, of course, and trying to act a duchess out of one of Ouida’s
novels. Rather fat, too, and her hair is thin, and a _mussy_ shade
of yellow. I think she’ll waddle in about five years. Still, she’s
sensible and quick, and dresses well. All the women here do that. But
the money! It’s heart-rending to see it parade by. And they seem to be
throwing it away, but they don’t. Everything is horribly dear here. I
must look sharp or I sha’n’t last long.
The newspapers will give you all you want to know about the wedding--it
was quite a show--perhaps vulgar and overdone, but really gorgeous. I
like America, and I like the people. They’re jolly good-natured, and
the nice ones here are much the same as nice people anywhere else. The
Longviews have taken a big furnished house, and I’m staying with them.
Next week a friend of Miss Longview--a Miss Hollister, who lives here,
but her people are still in the country--is coming to visit her. Her
(Miss Hollister’s) father owns a lot of railways and mines, and is no
end of a financial swell. I’m too sleepy to write another word, except
ARTHUR.
How is Gwen? Be good to me, Evelyn--with love--
A.
[Illustration: _He liked the very first glimpse of her_]
IV
Honoria took Frothingham to the Grand Central Station to meet
Catherine, and he liked the very first glimpse of her as she came
striding down the platform. She was tall and narrow, and she wore
dresses and wraps that emphasised both these characteristics. She had
a long, thin neck and a small, delicately coloured face, which she
knew how to frame most fascinatingly in her hair, with or without the
aid of her hat. She had dreamy young eyes, long and narrow, and her
red lips and her slender, nervous fingers made it clear that she lived
in her senses rather than in her intellect--that she would neither
say nor think anything brilliant, but would feel intensely, and could
be powerfully appealed to through her imagination. She was wearing a
light brown, brightly lined coat that trailed to her heels; and she was
holding up from the dust and close about her many folds of soft, fine
materials, cloth and silk and linen and lace. In her wake came a maid
and a porter, each laden with her belongings, an attractive array of
comforts and luxuries of travel.
“I’m glad you brought a closed carriage,” she said, with a shiver, as
they started for home. “It’s raw, and the sky seems to weigh upon one’s
shoulders and head. This is a day to hide in the house, close by an
open fire.”
Frothingham was surprised by this fairy-princess delicateness in so
robust a creature. He thought the day mild, and as for the sky, why
bother about anything that far away, so long as it sent nothing down to
bother one?
“You forget we are English,” said Honoria. “We call this good weather.
I must confess the closed carriage was a happy accident.”
“So like you, Honoria! Isn’t it, Lord Frothingham?” Catherine gave him
a sweet smile. “She never permits one to keep agreeable illusions. Now,
I was loving her for being so thoughtful for me.”
As Frothingham only stared, shy and stolid, through his eyeglass, the
two girls began to talk each to the other--they had not met in two
years, not since Catherine and her mother visited Honoria at Longview’s
place in Bucks.
“What a beautiful place it was!” said Catherine. “I often dream of it.
But then, I love England. It is of such a wonderful, vivid shade of
green, and everything is so cultivated, and refined, and--and--like a
fairy garden. Don’t you find the contrast very great, Lord Frothingham?
We are very new and wild.”
“I’ve seen only people since I’ve been here. I must say the people--at
least, those I’ve met--remind me of home, except that they speak the
language differently. As for the city, it’s not at all as I fancied.
It’s much like Paris--more attractive than London, not so gloomy.”
“Paris!” Catherine smiled, with gently reproachful satire. “Oh, you
flatter us.”
“I like it better,” insisted Frothingham. “It’s Paris with English in
the streets--I hate Frenchmen.”
“No, they’re not nice to look at--the men,” admitted Catherine. “But I
adore what they’ve done. What would the world be without France?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Frothingham, with his cynical,
enthusiasm-discouraging drawl. “They’re hysterical beggars, always
exploding for no reason. It makes me nervous. I like quiet and comfort.”
“Lord Frothingham isn’t so sensible as he pretends,” put in Honoria.
“He’s really almost as sentimental and emotional as you are, Catherine.”
“Oh, but I’m neither,” replied Catherine. “I don’t dare to be. If I
find myself the least bit enthusiastic I catch myself up and look
round, frightened lest somebody may have noticed. I’m such a liar--we
all are over here. Don’t you like sincerity, Lord Frothingham?”
“I--I suppose so.” Frothingham looked vague. “What do you mean?”
Catherine’s “intensity” confused him.
“I mean being true to one’s self, and not ashamed to show one’s self as
one is, and never afraid to tell the truth.”
“But all of us do that, don’t we?” said Frothingham. There was a
twinkle in his eye--or was it only the reflection of light from his
glass?
Honoria gave him her “candid friend” look. “Nobody does,” said she.
“That is, nobody who has temperament enough to lead any sort of life
above an oyster’s.”
“But I can see at a glance that Lord Frothingham has temperament.”
Catherine looked at him with intensely sympathetic appreciation. “Yes,
men can be sincere and truthful. But women must always repress their
real selves.”
Frothingham looked stolid and hopeless. Whenever conversation turned
on abstractions he felt like a man fumbling and stumbling about in a
London fog. “Really?” he said. “Really, now?”
“I don’t know why women fancy they must be liars,” said Honoria. “Do
you mind dining at Sherry’s to-night?” Catherine in her psychological
moods bored her. She sometimes ventured on aërial flights, but had no
fancy for aërial flounderings.
“Sherry’s? That will be delightful! I like dining at restaurants--I’m
very American in that respect.”
“But so do I,” said Frothingham. “That is, in your restaurants here.
The people are interesting, and they talk a lot, and loud enough so
that one hears every word and isn’t annoyed by missing the sense. And
how they do waste the food!”
“Food!” Catherine repeated the word with a smile that was
half-humourous, half pleading. “Please don’t use that word, Lord
Frothingham. It always makes me shiver. It sounds so--so animal!”
Frothingham put on the blank look behind which he habitually sheltered
himself when he did not know what to say, or to do, or to think.
Honoria was disgusted with him and with Catherine. “They’re not going
to like each other, not even enough to marry,” she said to herself.
“And it’s a pity, as they’re exactly suited. If Catherine only wouldn’t
pose!”
She was, therefore, somewhat surprised when, immediately she and
Catherine were alone, Catherine burst into rhapsody on Frothingham.
“What a fine, strong face! So much character! What a sincere,
sensitive, pure nature. He’s a splendid type of true gentleman, isn’t
he, Nora? How well he contrasts with our men! Doesn’t he?”
Honoria smiled to herself. “She wants to marry him,” she thought, “and
she’s building a fire under her imagination. I might have known it.
She’s the very person to weave romance over a title and imagine it all
gospel. What a poser!” To Catherine she said: “He’s a decent enough
chap, Caterina. And you’ll admire him more than ever when you’ve read
him up in Burke’s Peerage and looked at the pictures he’s given me of
Beauvais House.”
“How do you spell it? B-e-v-i-s?”
“No, that’s the way you pronounce it. You spell it B-e-a-u-v-a-i-s.”
“Isn’t that interesting? It’s so commonplace to pronounce a word the
way it’s spelt, don’t you think?”
“I never thought of it, my dear. Why not marry him?”
“You are so abrupt and--and practical, Honoria,” said Catherine
plaintively. “But you are a dear. I should never marry a man unless I
loved him.”
Honoria looked faintly cynical. “Certainly not. But surely you can love
any man you make up your mind to marry. What is your imagination for?”
At Sherry’s that night, besides Honoria, Catherine, Longview, and
Frothingham, there were at Longview’s table Mrs. Carnarvon, of the
hunting set, and Joe Wallingford--he hunts and writes verse, both
badly, and looks and talks, both extremely well. Honoria devoted
herself to Wallingford and so released Catherine and Frothingham each
upon the other--she listened for a few seconds now and then to note
their progress.
“It’s a go,” she said to herself with the matchmaker’s thrill of
triumph, as the cold dessert was served. She saw that Frothingham
had ceased to listen, and so had ceased to puzzle; his eyeglass was
trained steadily and sympathetically upon Catherine’s fascinating
beauty--why weary the brain when it might rest and enjoy itself through
the eyes? Catherine was talking on and on, quoting poetry, telling
Frothingham of her emotions, telling him of his emotions--he did not
have them, but she was so earnest that he was half convinced.
“When you said this afternoon that you liked things quiet and
comfortable,” she said, “I felt that it was splendidly in keeping with
your character. I saw that you hated all this noise and display, that
you like to get away in your own corner of your beautiful England and
live grandly and quietly--near Nature.”
If Catherine had not been beautiful and rich he would have said to
himself, “What rubbish!” But, as it was, he thought her profound and
spiritual. And he said, trying to touch bottom and get a firm stand
upon firm earth, “I think you’d like Beauvais.”
“I’m sure I should,” replied Catherine with enthusiasm. “Honoria was
showing me the photographs of it. I admire the great, stately old
house. But I liked best of all the picture of the woods and the
brook. It reminded me of those lines of Coleridge’s--they are so
beautiful--where he speaks of the brook--
“‘_In the leafy month of June
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune._’
Don’t you think those lines fine? Do I quote them right?”
“Yes--I think so--that is,” stammered Frothingham, “it’s a jolly
brook, but we call it a river.” Then to himself: “What an ass she’ll
think me!” But the starting sweat stayed, for she asked him no more
questions; and he, freed from the anxiety of having to try to soar with
her, was able to sit quietly and enjoy her beauty, and the murmurous
rush of her low, musical voice--“It’s like the brook that brute she
quoted wrote about,” he thought.
He did not drive home with his party, but accepted Wallingford’s
invitation to walk in the fresh night air to his club. “Your American
women are tremendously clever,” he said, as they were strolling along.
He was feeling dazed and dizzy from the whirl of his emotions, the
whirls and shocks Catherine Hollister had given his brain.
“Yes, they’re clever,” replied Wallingford, “but not in the way they
think they are. Take Kitty Hollister, for example. She’s all right when
she wants to be. She thinks sense. But what a raft of fuzzy trash she
does float out when she gets a-going. I pitied you this evening. She
laid herself out to impress you. You’re staying in the house with her,
aren’t you? I suppose she whoops it up whenever you’re round?”
“I find her very clever--and interesting,” said Frothingham somewhat
stiffly.
“Of course she is. I’ve known her for seventeen of the nineteen years
she’s gladdened the earth--and I ought to know her pretty well. But
she’s like a lot of the women in this town. They haven’t any emotions
to speak of--nothing emotional happens. But they think they ought to
have emotions such as they read about, and so they fake ’em. Then,
they’ve got the craze for culture. They haven’t the time to get the
real thing--they’re too busy showing off. Besides, they’re too lazy. So
they fake culture, too. Oh, yes, they’re clever. And they look so well
that you like the fake as they parade it better than the real thing.”
“We have that sort in London,” said Frothingham.
“So I’ve observed. But it’s done rather better there--they’re older
hands at it. If you weren’t an Englishman, I’d say it fitted in better
among the other shams. I suppose you’ve noticed that many people
here are imitation English or French? You’ve seen the tags ‘Made in
England,’ ‘Made in France,’ ‘Made in England, finished in France’?”
“I’ve noticed similarities,” replied Frothingham tactfully.
“It’s all imitation stuff--the labels are frauds. We over here don’t
know how to be gracefully idle and inane, as your upper classes do.
It’s not in us anywhere. We haven’t the tradition--our tradition is all
against it. Whenever we do produce a thoroughly idle and inane person,
he or she goes abroad to live, or else loses all his money to some
sharp, pushing fellow, and drops out of sight. All this aristocracy you
see is pure pose. Underneath, they’re Americans.”
“What is an American?” asked Frothingham. “Every time I think I’ve
seen one, along comes some native and tells me I’m wrong. Are you an
American?”
“Underneath--yes. On the surface--no. I used to be, but now I’m posing
with the rest of ’em. You’ll have to get out of New York to see
Americans. There are droves of ’em here, but they’re so scattered in
places you’ll never go to that you couldn’t find them. You’d better go
West if you wish to be sure of seeing the real thing.”
“It’s very confusing. How shall I know this American when I see him?”
“When you see a man or a woman who looks as if he or she would do
something honest and valuable, who looks you straight in the eyes, and
makes you feel proud that you’re a human being and ashamed that you
are not a broader, better, honester one--that’s an American.” And then
he smiled with his eyes so queerly that Frothingham could not decide
whether or not he was jesting.
At the club Wallingford introduced him into a large circle of young
men, seated round two tables pushed together, and covered with “high
balls,” and bottles of carbonated water, and silver bowls of cracked
ice. He said little, drank his whiskey and water, and listened. “It’s
the talk of stock brokers and tradesmen,” he said to himself. “Yet
these fellows are certainly gentlemen, and they don’t talk business in
the least like our middle-class people. It’s very confusing.”
After he left the others were most friendly, and even admiring, in
their comments upon him.
“He’s monotonous, and poor, and will never have anything unless he
marries it,” said Wallingford. “If he were a plain, poor, incapable,
rather dull American, is there one of us that would waste five minutes
on him?”
There was silence, then a laugh.
V
Wallingford and Frothingham developed a warm friendship. Wallingford
was extremely suspicious of himself in it, but after a searching
self-analysis decided that his liking for the Earl was to a certain
extent genuine. “He doesn’t know much--at least, he acts as if he
didn’t. But he’s clever in a curious way, and a good listener, and not
a bit of a fakir. No doubt he’s on the lookout for a girl with cash,
but English ideas on that subject are different from ours--that is,
from what ours are supposed to be. He’s a type of English gentleman,
and not a bad type of gentleman without any qualification.”
When he expressed some such ideas to Catherine Hollister, at a dance
given for her by Mrs. Carnarvon, she went so much further in praise of
Frothingham that he laughed. “So that’s the way the wind blows, eh?” he
said, grinning at her satirically.
She coloured, and put on the look of an offended saint.
“Countess of Frothingham,” he went on, undisturbed. “That _would_ sound
romantic, wouldn’t it? Catherine, Countess of Frothingham!”
“How can you be so coarse-fibred in some ways, Joe, and so fine in
others?” she said reproachfully.
“I don’t know, dear lady. I suppose because I’m human--just like you.”
“Let us dance,” was her only reply. She had known Joe so long that she
couldn’t help liking him, but he certainly was trying.
Later in the evening, remembering Joe’s cruelty and sordidness, she
said to Frothingham: “You don’t know what a pleasure it is to the finer
women over here to meet foreign men. They are so much more subtle
and sympathetic. They are not coarsened by business. They are not
mercenary.”
She raised her dreamy eyes to his as she spoke the word “mercenary,” He
reddened and stumbled--they were dancing the two-step. “I wish _you_
wouldn’t look at me like that,” he said, with an ingenuousness wholly
unconscious. “It reminds me of my sins, and--and--all that.”
She trembled slightly, as he could plainly feel in his encircling arm.
He looked down at her--she always was ethereally beautiful in evening
dress. In his admiration he almost forgot how rich she was; he quite
forgot how oppressively intellectual she was. “Do you--do you----” he
began. Then he stopped dancing and led her into the hall, through the
hall to the library. Two other couples were there, but far enough from
the corner to which he took her.
“May I smoke?” he asked.
“I love the odour of a cigarette,” she replied, in a voice that
encouraged him to resume where he had abruptly left off.
“Perhaps you will smoke?”
“No,” she said, in a tone that was subtly modulated to mean apology or
reproach, according as he liked or disliked women smoking.
“Do you really like England?” he began nervously, seeing to it that his
glass was firmly adjusted.
“I adore it!” Usually she would have gone on into poetical prose
unlimited. But this, she felt, was a time for short answers.
“Would you--mind England--with--with----”
He halted altogether, and she slowly raised her heavy lids until her
eyes met his.
“Catherine!” He seized her hand, and the thrill of her touch went
through him. “You are so lovely. I--I’m horribly fond of you.”
She sighed. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “This lovely dance--these
fascinating surroundings--the music--the dim lights--and--and----” She
lifted her eyes to his again.
He murmured her name, threw away his cigarette, looked round to see
where the other eyes in that room were, then clasped her round the
waist for an instant. “Will you? Will you?” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” she replied, in a tone so faint that he barely heard.
“You have made me happy.” And he meant it.
“How satisfactory she is in every way,” he was saying to himself.
“Looks, money, everything. I’m a lucky dog.” And she was saying to
herself, “Countess of Frothingham! How strong and fine and simple he
is. I love him!” But when he suggested speaking to her father at once
she would not have it. “No--I want it to be just our secret for a
little while,” she pleaded. “Don’t _you_?” He did not see any reason
for it, but he said “Yes” with a surface reflection of her earnestness.
“It’s a pity the world ever should know anything about it, don’t you
think so?” she went on.
“I’m very impatient to claim my countess,” he answered.
She liked the “countess,” but the “my” jarred slightly in her sensitive
ear--she was “acquiring” an earl, not he a countess.
“Not too long,” he remonstrated. It was all very well for her to
be romantic--he wouldn’t have liked it if he had not inspired some
romance. But why should either of them wish to delay ratifying the
bargain that was the real purpose in view? Certainly he wished no
delay. And there was much to be arranged--settlements, a trousseau,
a host of time-consuming preliminaries. Not a day should be lost in
getting under way. His creditors, impatiently awaiting the event of
his American adventure, might become ugly. He hated ugly letters and
cablegrams almost as much as he hated ugly “scenes.” No, he felt
strongly on the subject of long engagements.
His heart was full of her beauty--he had drunk a good deal at supper
half an hour before. His head was full of her dowry--he never drank
so much that he forgot business. “How could I evade if anyone should
congratulate me?” he asked. And then he wished he had not said it, but
had made that the excuse for not obeying her.
“You must deny it, as I shall. You know, we’re not really fully engaged
until I’m ready to have it announced. Besides, as Joe Wallingford says,
a lie in self-defence isn’t a lie. And self-defence isn’t either a
crime or a sin, is it? I think self-defence against prying is a virtue,
don’t you?”
A man came to claim her for a dance. She smiled sweetly at him,
plaintively at Frothingham, and went back to the ballroom. Frothingham
stood in the doorway watching her for a few minutes, then went away
from the dance to walk and think and enjoy. But his mind was depressed.
“Too much supper,” he grumbled. “I ought to be tossing my hat. I
don’t deserve her and my luck. Her cash will put us right for the
first time since my great-grandfather ruined us by going the Prince
Regent’s gait. We shall restore Beauvais House and take the place in
Carlton Terrace again. Gad! what a relief it will be to feel free in
my mind about cab fares, and not to claim commissions from my tailor
when I send him customers. I shall be able to live up to the title
and the traditions----” He painted vividly, but in vain. He caught
himself looking away from the glowing pictures and sighing. “Yes, she’s
pretty--devilish pretty--and a high stepper, but--Gwen would be so
comfortable, so _d----n_ comfortable!”
Honoria suspected their secret, yet doubted the correctness of her
intuitions. “She’d parade it,” she reflected, “if she were really
engaged to him. There must be a hitch somewhere.” And her wonder grew
as the report of their engagement spread only to be strenuously denied
by Catherine.
Catherine was almost tearful in lamenting this “impertinent gossip”
to her. “Isn’t it hateful, Honoria,” she said, “that a young man and
a young woman can’t be civil and friendly to each other when they’re
visiting in the same house, without all the busybodies trying to
embarrass them? Did you see the papers this morning? How _dare_ they
print it!”
Honoria smiled at this mock indignation. “Where’s the injury to you in
crediting you with landing an earl?” she asked.
Catherine gave her a look of melancholy reproach. “Do you know,”
she said dreamily, “I don’t think of him as an earl any longer? His
character makes everything else about him seem of no consequence.
Don’t you think he is a _remarkable_ man?”
“A little less remarkable than a marquis, a little more remarkable than
a viscount--and in comparison with a baronet or a plain esquire, a
positive genius!” replied Honoria.
Frothingham was more and more uncomfortable. Catherine took him
everywhere in her train and, with seeming unconsciousness of what
she was doing, fairly flaunted him as her devoted attendant. Yet
only when they were alone did she ever betray that she had more than
a polite, friendly interest in him. He would have got angry at her,
would have made vigorous protest, but how was it possible to bring such
sordidness as mere vulgar appearances to the attention of so innocent
and high-minded a creature? He restrained himself, or, rather, was
restrained--until Horse Show week.