chariot wheels before the eyes of the multitude were too much for him.
It was one of the years when the Horse Show was the fashion for the
fashionable. Not only the racing set and the hunting set, but also
the dancing and the dressing and the literary and artistic sets, and
the fadless, but none the less frivolous, set, flocked there day and
evening to crowd the boxes with a dazzling display of dresses, wraps,
jewels, and free-and-easy manners. At first Frothingham gaped almost
as amazedly as the multitude that poured slowly and thickly round the
promenade, eyes glued upon the occupants of the boxes, never a glance
to spare for the ring from the cyclorama of luxury and fashion. “And at
a horse show!” he muttered, as he noted the hats and gowns made to be
shown only in houses, or in carriages on the way to and from houses,
but there exhibited amid the dust of the show ring. “What rotten bad
taste!”
He was astounded to find Catherine outdone by none in extravagant
out-of-placeness of ostentation--as he regarded it. Day after day,
night after night, she showed herself off to her friends and to
the craning throngs of the promenade in a kaleidoscopic series of
wonderful “creations.” And she insisted that he should always be in
close attendance. As he sat beside her he heard the comments of the
crowd--there was always a crowd in front of Longview’s box: “That’s the
girl.”--“Yes, and the fellow beside her, with the eyeglass, he’s the
Earl.”--“I don’t know how much--some say a million--some say two or
three.”--“He looks dull, but then all Englishmen look that.”--“I’ll bet
he could be a brute. Look what a heavy jaw he’s got.”--“She’ll be sick
of him before she’s had him a year.”
Did Catherine hear? he wondered. Apparently not. He never surprised
in her face or manner a hint of consciousness of self or of being
stared at and commented upon. “But she can’t avoid hearing,” he said to
himself. “These asses are braying right in her ears. And why should she
get herself up in all these clothes, if it ain’t to be stared at?”
And, between performances, the performers in the Longview box dined
in the palm garden at the Waldorf, with their acquaintances at the
surrounding tables, and gossip of their engagement flying, and curious
glances straying toward them over the tops of wine-glasses, and
whispers and smiles--and Catherine soulful and unconscious. On Friday
night, as they drove from the Waldorf to the Garden--she had given him
her hand to hold under cover of the lap-robe--she said, with a sigh:
“I’m so glad it’s nearly over. Only to-night and to-morrow night.”
“Not to-morrow afternoon?” asked Frothingham. “Why do we miss a chance
to exhibit?”
“Only the servants and the children go to-morrow afternoon,” replied
Catherine sweetly. “I’m worn out and sick of it all. So many go merely
for self-display; so few of us, not to speak of those dreadful people
in the promenade, care anything about the dear, beautiful, noble
horses.”
“Why look at horses,” said Honoria, “when there’s a human show that’s
so much more interesting? It may be vulgar, but it’s amusing. I’m
afraid my tastes are not refined.”
Frothingham looked at her with the expression of a thirsty man who is
having a glass of cold water. “That’s what I think,” said he. “And I’m
fond of horses.” A faint sneer in his satirical drawl made Catherine
give him a furtive glance of anxiety--was the worm thinking of turning?
When they were in the box and the others were busy she said to him, in
her tenderest tone: “You’re dreadfully bored by all this, aren’t you?
And I thought it would give you pleasure for us to be together so much.”
[Illustration: “_As if we were a pair of new chimpanzees in a zoo_”]
The surliness cleared from his face somewhat. “No, I’m not bored.
But I hate to be shown off. And, while you’ve been unconscious of it,
the fact is that you and I have been sitting here in this cage five or
six hours a day, gaped at as if we were a pair of new chimpanzees in
a zoo.” As he remembered his wrongs, his anger rose upon the wine he
had freely drunk at dinner. “It’s what I call low--downright rotten,
Catherine,” he finished energetically.
“I wish you wouldn’t use that dreadful word,” she said, tears in her
eyes, but a certain sting in her voice. “I know it’s all right in
England--some of us use it here. But it--every time you or anyone says
it I feel as if someone had thrust a horrid-smelling rag under my nose.
You don’t mind my saying so, do you, dear?”
“Beg pardon,” he said. “We do use rowdy words nowadays. I’m so
accustomed to it I don’t notice.”
Just then up to his ears from the promenade and the crowd gaping at the
“new chimpanzees” came a voice: “They’re fighting--look! look! Hasn’t
he got an ugly scowl? And she’s almost crying.”
He flushed scarlet and sent a glowering glance down into the crowd.
He turned upon Catherine: “Just hear that! They think I’m rowing you.
By--beg pardon, but--well--I sha’n’t endure it another instant.” And
he rose, brushed past Catherine’s mother and Longview, Honoria and two
men hanging over her, and stalked along the aisle down into and through
the recognising crowd, and out of the Garden.
The boxes ate greedily of this sensation, and the crowd in the
promenade scrambled frantically for the crumbs. It was presently noised
round that the Englishman had become angered, had struck someone.
Rumour at first said it was Catherine; but the crowd by the use of
its legs and eyes, and the boxes by the use of their glasses, learned
that this was false. There sat Catherine, calm, absorbed in the ring,
applauding the jumpers, and turning now and then to her companions
with outbursts of ladylike enthusiasm for some particularly clever
performance. However, crowd and boxes saw that the Englishman was gone,
felt that he must have gone in anger.
The Longview party stopped at the Waldorf for supper, and Frothingham,
calmer and a little embarrassed, joined them. Catherine received him as
if nothing had taken place, and the next night they appeared together
at the Garden as usual.
Late in the evening she said to him: “I’ve told mother of our
engagement. Do you mind, dear?”
His face lighted up.
“She wishes you to come down to the country with us on Sunday to stay a
week or two. It is beautiful there, and we shall be very quiet. Shall
you like that?”
“And I may speak to your father?” he asked. “In my country it wouldn’t
be regarded as honourable for me to act as I’ve been acting with you.
I can’t help feeling uncomfortable because I’ve said nothing to your
father.”
“I’ll speak to him first, Arthur. He lets me do as I please. And he’ll
be contented with whatever makes me happy. He’s _such_ a dear!”
Frothingham looked faintly annoyed. It was not in his plan to
include “father” in their romance. Romance with daughter, business
with father--that was the proper and discreet distribution of the
preliminaries to the formal engagement. He had, deep down, a horrible,
nervous fear that he might be drawn into matrimony without definite
settlements--the father might be as difficult to pin down in his way as
was the daughter in her way. “I must take this business in hand,” he
said to himself, “or I’ll be in a ghastly mess.”
Catherine, her mother, and he went down on the one-o’clock train.
The Hollister country place--Lake-in-the-Wood--was a great pile of
brick and stone, impressive for size rather than for beauty, filled
with expensive furnishings and swarming servants in showy livery, and
surrounded by a handsome, well-ordered park, with winding walks and
drives, and romantically bridged streams flowing to and from a large
lake. They lived with more ceremony than did Surrey at Heath Hall--but
there was an air of newness and stiffness and prodigal profusion about
it all, a suggestion of a creation of yesterday that might find a
grave to-morrow. This impression, which had often come to him in the
palaces of New York, began to form as the porter opened the huge gates
between the park and the highway. It grew stronger and stronger as
he penetrated into the gaudy, if tasteful, establishment. Everything
was too new, too grand, too fine. The daughter alone was at her ease;
the mother was not quite at her ease; the father was distinctly, if
self-mockingly, ill at ease.
The two women left Frothingham alone with him, and the old man soon
vented his dissatisfaction. “I suppose _you_ like this sort of
thing,” he said, with a wave of the arm to indicate that he meant
the establishment. “But I don’t. If I had my way we’d be simple and
comfortable--no, I don’t mean that exactly. I suppose at bottom I’m as
big a fool as the women. But, all the same, French cooking gives me
indigestion. That infernal frog-eater in the right wing has it in for
me. He’s killing me by inches. And I’m so afraid of him and the butler
and all the rest of ’em that I don’t kick the traces more than once
a week.” He laughed. “My wife and daughter have got me well trained.
Whenever they tell me to, I sit up on my hind legs and ‘speak’ for
crackers and snap ‘em off my nose.”
Frothingham liked him at once--he was a big, handsome old fellow, with
keen, steel-grey eyes, and the strong look of the successful man of
affairs. “I fancy he’s almost one of those Americans Wallingford talked
about,” he thought.
After a smoke with Hollister he went to his rooms--a suite of vast
chambers, like the show rooms of a palace, with a marble bathroom that
had a small swimming pool sunk in the middle of it. He looked out upon
the drive and the park and the half-hidden streams glittering in the
sunshine. “These people will beat us out at our own game when they get
used to the cards,” he said.
There was the sound of wheels and horses--many wheels and many
horses. He looked down the drive--one after another came into view a
three-seated buckboard, a stylish omnibus, a waggon with the seats
taken out to make room for a huge pile of luggage. In the buckboard
and the omnibus he recognised men and women whom he had met in New
York--the Leightons, the Spencers, the Farrells, the Howards, Mrs.
Carnarvon, Wallingford, Gresham, Browne, a man whose name he could not
recall, Miss Lester, Miss Devenant. “I thought Catherine and I were to
be ‘very quiet,’” he muttered.
There were thirty-two people at dinner that night, sixteen of whom,
including himself, were guests in the house for stays of three days, a
week, ten days. “You said you were to be alone,” he said to Catherine,
with ironic reproach.
She gave him her pathetic, helpless look. “I did hope so. But I asked
some, and mamma asked others, and the rest asked themselves.”
The days passed, and he had only fleeting glimpses of her. Everybody
was hunting, riding, driving, going to luncheons, teas, dinners,
through a neighbourhood ten miles square. Every moment from early
until late was more than occupied--it was crowded, jammed. His idea
of country life was the quiet, lazy ease of England; a week of this
rushing about fagged him, body and mind. He ceased to try for a moment
alone with her; he saw that it was hopeless to expect so much in a
place where he could not get a moment alone with himself.
“You never rest in this country?” he said, addressing the men in the
library at midnight, as they were having a final nightcap.
“Why should we?” replied Browne. “Why anticipate the grave’s only
pleasure?”
“You see,” explained Wallingford, “on this side of the water we take
our pleasures energetically. When we work, we work hard; when we play,
we play hard. If we’re having a good time, we crowd our luck, in the
hope of having a better time. If we’re bored, we hurry, to get it over
with.”
“Do you keep this up the year round?”
“Except on ocean steamers. But we’ll close that gap when we get the
‘wireless’ installed, with a telephone to the head of every berth.”
VI
On a Monday morning--Frothingham’s eighth day at Lake-in-the-wood--only
Wallingford and the tireless Catherine appeared for the early ride.
“It’s cold,” said Wallingford. “Shall we canter?” And they swept
through the gates and on over the frost-spangled meadows for several
miles before they drew their horses in to a walk. Catherine’s cheeks
were glowing, and her eyes were not dreamy and soulful, but bright with
vigorous, wide-awake life.
“I haven’t seen you looking so well in years, Kitty.”
Wallingford was examining her with the slightly mocking, indifferent
eyes that had piqued not a few women into trying to make him like them.
“You look positively human. And it’s becoming--most becoming.”
Catherine began to scramble into her pose. She did not like to be
caught lapsing from her ideals.
“Why _do_ you do it?” Wallingford dropped his mockery for an instant.
“Your own individuality, no matter how poor you may think it, is far
better than any you could possibly invent--or borrow.”
Catherine looked hurt. “Why do you charge deception against everyone
who lives above your level?” she asked. “I hope you’re not going to be
nasty this morning, Joe. I’m blue.”
“What’s the matter? Something real, or----”
“Don’t tease. This is real.”
“What is it? I see you wish to be encouraged to tell me.”
“No--I couldn’t tell anyone.” Catherine’s eyes were tragic. “It’s one
of those things that can’t be told, but must be----”
“Go on. What is it?” Wallingford refused to be impressed by tragedy. “I
see you’re dying to tell me. Why not get it over with?”
“You are so sympathetic, Joe. You pretend not to understand me, but I
feel that you always do.”
“You mean that I refuse to be misled by your charming little pretences.
But how could I? Why, don’t I remember the day, the very hour, you went
in for the ‘soulful’? I must say, I never could see why you took that
up as your fad. Being natural is much harder to win out at--few people
are interesting, or even endurable, when they’re natural.”
“Joe,” she said absently, as if she had not heard him, “I’m afraid I’m
making a--a dreadful--mistake.”
“Well?” he asked almost gruffly, after a short pause.
“About--about--Lord Frothingham,” she confessed, lowering her eyelids
until her long lashes shadowed her cheeks.
“Oh, I think you’ll land him all right,” said Wallingford
encouragingly. “He’s a bit gone on you; and then, too, he needs the
cash.”
“Please don’t speak of him in that way, Joe. He’s not a vulgar
fortune-hunter, but a high, sensitive, noble man.”
“Who said he was a vulgar fortune-hunter? On the contrary, he’s an
honest British merchant, taking his title to market. And he’s been
lucky enough to find a good customer.”
Catherine ignored this description of her knight and her romance. “You
know I’m engaged to him?” she asked.
“Ever since the first time I saw your mother look at him.”
“Yes--she approves it.”
“I should say she would,” said Wallingford judicially. “She’s got the
best part of it. She’ll have all the glory of having an earl in the
family, and she won’t have to live with him.”
“I’m--afraid--I don’t love him as I ought,” said Catherine, with a sigh.
Wallingford laughed. “Now, of what use is it to talk this over, Kitty,
if you won’t be frank? It can’t be a question of loving him that’s
troubling you. Of course you don’t love him. You love his title, and
that would prevent you from loving him for himself, no matter how
attractive he was. But why bother about love? He’s giving you what you
really want.”
“What _do_ I want?” She looked at Wallingford with sincere appeal,
slightly humourous, but earnest.
“I once thought that you wanted to be a real woman. But ever since
your mother took you abroad to fill her own and your head with foreign
notions I’ve been losing faith. What do you want now? Why, the trash
you’re buying.”
“Joe, how can you think I’d sell myself?”
“Why not? It’s generally regarded as a reputable transaction--unless
one is vulgar enough to sell out for the mere necessaries of life. Oh,
I’m not criticising you, Kitty. Perhaps I’d sell myself if I could get
any sort of price. Never having been tempted, I can’t say what I’d do.”
“Please don’t talk in that way, even in jest. It isn’t true. I know it
isn’t true. And it’s knowing that that makes me----” She hesitated,
then went on--“despise myself! It’s of no use to lie to _you_, Joe. I’m
glad there’s somebody I can’t lie to, somebody that sees into me and
forces me to look at myself as I am. And sometimes I _hate_ you for
it. Yes, I hate you for it _now_!” She was sitting very erect upon her
horse, her head thrown back, tears of anger in her eyes.
“Hate?” He shook his head teasingly at her. “I envy you. I’ve tried
every other emotion, and I’d like to try that. But I can’t. I can’t
hate even Frothingham. On the contrary, I like him. If you must have a
title, you’ve got to take a husband with it. And I must say, I think
you’ll be able to harness Frothingham down to a fairly reliable family
horse.”
“How can you jest so coarsely about such a serious matter?” she
exclaimed indignantly.
“But is it? What does it matter whom you marry, so long as you have no
purpose in life other than to make a show and to induce shallow people
to admire you and envy you for the things you’ve got that can be bought
and sold? It’s better, on the whole, isn’t it, my friend, that you
should carry out these purposes through a foreigner, and in a foreign
country, than that you should spoil some promising American and be a
bad influence here?”
“You are cruel, Joe. And I thought you’d sympathise with me, and help
me!”
There was a pause, then he demanded abruptly: “What does your father
say?”
She flushed--partly at the memory of the interview with her father,
partly through shame in recollecting that she had led Frothingham to
believe she had not told him. “He said--but why should I tell you?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, unless because you wish to.”
“Well--I _will_ tell you. He said” (she imitated his nasal drawl): “‘If
your ma and you want to make the deal I’ll sign the papers. I reckon
you know what you’re about. And all our money’s for is to make us
happy. Buy what you please--I’ll settle for it.’”
“Was that all?”
Catherine lowered her eyes. “Yes, that was all he _said_. But he
looked--Joe, it was his look that upset me.”
“I understand.” Wallingford’s voice was gentle and sympathetic now.
“And what answer are you going to make to that look?”
“I’d rather not say,” she replied, giving him a brilliant smile. “Let’s
canter again. We must get home.”
As soon as she reached the house she went to her mother’s rooms.
Mrs. Hollister was finishing her morning’s work with her secretary.
Catherine waited, impatiently playing with her riding whip. When the
secretary left she said: “Mother, I’m going to throw him over.”
Mrs. Hollister paused for an instant in putting away some of her
especially private papers, then went on. Presently she said tranquilly:
“You will do nothing of the sort.”
Catherine quailed before that tone--she had been ruled by her mother
all her life, had never been interfered with in any matter which her
mother regarded as unimportant, had never been permitted to decide any
matter which her mother regarded as important. And her mother’s rule
was the most formidable of all tyrannies--the tyranny of kindness.
“But, mother, I should be wretched with him.”
“Why?”
On the basis of their method of thought and speech each with the other,
it was impossible for her to erect “Because I don’t love him” into
a plausible objection. So she said: “We have nothing in common. His
laziness and cynicism irritate me. He makes me nervous. He bores me.”
“All men are objectionable in one way or another,” replied her mother.
“If you married the ordinary man you would have nothing after you had
grown tired. But marrying him, you’ll have, first, last, and all the
time, the solid advantages of your position and your title. And you’ll
like him better when you’re used to him--he has admirable qualities for
a husband.”
“I can’t marry him,” said Catherine doggedly. She knew it was useless
to argue with her mother.
“You can’t refuse to marry him. It would be dishonourable. Your word is
pledged. It would be impossible for a child of mine to be guilty of a
dishonourable action.”
“When I tell him how I feel he will release me.”
“You mean he would refuse to marry a woman who, after treating a man
as you have treated him, would show herself so light and so lacking in
honour. No, my daughter will not disgrace herself and her family.” Mrs.
Hollister seated herself beside Catherine and put an arm round her.
“She has had her every whim gratified, and that has made her careless
of responsibilities. But she will not show herself in serious matters
light and untrustworthy.”
Catherine stiffened herself against the gentle yet masterful force that
seemed to be stealing in upon her from her mother’s embrace and tone.
“You’ve come to one of those rough places in life,” Mrs. Hollister went
on, “where young people need the help of some older, more experienced
person. And some day soon you’ll be glad I was here to see you safely
over it.”
“I can’t marry him, mother.”
Mrs. Hollister frowned for a second, then her face cleared, and
she said quietly: “Your father and I have put you in a position to
establish yourself well in life. You have engaged yourself to an
honourable man, who has something to offer you, who can assure you a
position that will be a satisfaction to you all your life and to your
children after you. I know I have not brought you up so badly that you
would throw away your career, would disregard the interests of those
you may bring into the world, all for a mere whim.”
Catherine was silent.
“Even if you cared for someone else----”
“But I do,” interrupted Catherine impetuously.
Mrs. Hollister winced and reflected before she went on: “It cannot be
a serious attachment, Catherine, or I should have noticed it. Is it
Joseph Wallingford?”
Catherine did not answer.
“Even if you had been attracted for a moment by a man who had something
to offer besides a little sentiment, that would be gone a few brief
months after marriage, still it would be your duty to yourself and to
your family to make the sensible marriage. You are not a foolish girl.
You are not a child. You know what the substantial things in life are.”
“I can’t marry him,” repeated Catherine stubbornly.
“Has Wallingford been making love to you?” The anger was close to the
surface in Mrs. Hollister’s voice.
Catherine smiled bitterly. “No,” she answered, “he has not. He cares
nothing for me. But I can’t marry Lord Frothingham--and I won’t.”
“You must not say that, Catherine,” said her mother sternly. “It is a
great shock to me to find that you cannot be trusted. If you refused to
marry the man you have voluntarily engaged yourself to, I should never
forgive you.”
Catherine’s eyes sank before her mother’s. “The engagement must be
announced at once,” her mother went on. “You will change your mind when
you have thought it over, and when you realise what my feelings are.”
“I can’t----” began Catherine monotonously.
“I wish to hear no more about it, child,” interrupted her mother, her
eyes glittering a forewarning of the hate she would have for a daughter
who disobeyed her. “To-morrow we will talk of it again.”
Catherine and her mother arose, and each faced the other for a
moment--two inflexible wills. For Mrs. Hollister had made one error,
and that fatal, in training her daughter. She had not broken her will
in childhood, when the stiffest inherited will can be made to yield;
she had only subdued it, driven it to cover. She had left her her
individuality. But she did not know this; so, she saw her daughter’s
looks, saw her daughter leave the room with resolution in every curve
of her figure, and was not in the least disturbed as to the event.
The idea that she, Maria Hollister, could be defied by anyone in her
family--or out of it--could not form in her mind. “It is fortunate,”
she said to herself, “that Wallingford is leaving early in the morning.
I’ll announce the engagement at dinner to-night.”
Catherine went to change her dress, and then searched for Frothingham.
He was alone in the billiard room, half asleep, on one of the wall
lounges. At sight of him--she saw him before he saw her--her courage
wavered. Yes, he was a decent sort of chap; and she was treating him
badly, despicably--had bargained fairly with him, had used the contract
publicly to aggrandise herself at his expense, was about to break her
contract and humiliate him, injure him, through no fault of his. He had
been fair with her, she had been false with him, was about to be base.
“I can’t,” she said to herself. “At least, not in cold blood.”
He saw her, and his face lighted up. She smiled, nodded, hurried
through the billiard room, and disappeared into the hall beyond. As
she turned its angle her knees became shaky and her face white. Then
Wallingford suddenly appeared at the conservatory door. He came toward
her as if he were going to pass without stopping. But he halted.
“Well?” he said.
She leaned against the wall. Her throat was dry and her eyelids were
trembling.
“What is it?” he asked gently.
She hung her head.
“Don’t be afraid to say it to _me_,” he urged. “There isn’t anything
you couldn’t say to me.”