done. And it does cost such a lot to keep ’em up. And there’s no way of
heating them. We don’t build ’em any more--except new people that must
show off.”
“That’s the trouble here,” said Madame Almansa. “The new people who
know nothing of the art of living build palaces as soon as ever they
can afford it. It’s supposed to be the badge of superiority. Instead,
it’s the badge of ignorance and vulgarity. I refuse to permit my
children to live in the midst of such nonsense. You must come to see
us, Lord Frothingham, in our little house just through this square.”
Her sister, Isabella, who called herself Ysobel because she fancied
it more aristocratic, laughed queerly--almost a sneer, though
good-natured. And when Frothingham went away to her father’s sitting
room, she laughed again. “It’s all very well for you, Susanna----”
“Susan,” interrupted Madame Almansa.
“Well, Susan, then--though I hate to pronounce such a common word in
addressing anyone above the rank of servant. It’s all very well for you
to talk in that fashion. You’ve established yourself. You can afford to
affect simplicity, and to insist on being called Susan, and on dropping
your title, and on living in a plain little house, and on bringing up
your children as if they were tradesmen’s sons instead of the sons of
one of the proudest nobles in----”
“You know Almansa,” interrupted “Susan.” “How _can_ you speak of him as
proud or a noble?”
“He _is_ a weazened, oily creature,” admitted Ysobel, delighted to make
her sister wince by agreeing with her and “going her one better.” “And
I jumped for joy when you shook him, because I shouldn’t have to let
him kiss me any more. But, all the same, he’s a great noble. And you
know perfectly well, Madame Almansa, that if you had it to do all over
again you’d marry him--yes, if he were ten times worse----”
“Don’t, Bella--please!” exclaimed “Susan” in a large, tragic way.
“Mon Dieu!” She clasped her hands and in heroic agitation swept
magnificently up and down the small, clear space. “When I think of the
heritage of my boys--my Emilio and my Alfonso----”
“My Prince Rio Blanco and my Marquis Calamar,” mocked Ysobel. “Cut it
out, Sue. I loathe--_cant_!”
“Instead of filling your head with these false notions of nobility,”
said “Sue,” sarcastically, “you would better look to your English, at
least. But the vulgar speech you and your girl friends use nowadays is
in keeping with your vulgar ideas of aristocracy.”
“Yes, Madame la Duchesse,” said Ysobel, her good nature unruffled. “And
when I’ve married a title and then shaken the man I’ll talk in the same
top-lofty way that you do.”
Madame Almansa raised and lowered her superb shoulders and changed
the subject to dress--she affected an extreme of simplicity, and that
required a great deal more time and thought than her former easily
gratified craze for the startling. Presently her father came with
Frothingham. “You’re going to Senator Pope’s to dinner, aren’t you?”
he said absently. Frothingham thought he looked like the pictures of
“Brother Jonathan,” except that his white chin whiskers were rooted in
a somewhat larger chin space.
“Not I,” replied Madame Almansa. “You know, father, I’m to stay here
and do the honours at your dinner.”
“Yes, yes, Susie--I remember.” Senator Ballantyne seemed pleased, but
uneasy. “But you must be careful--very careful. Your grand airs will
frighten ’em.”
Ysobel laughed. “Mamma and I are going to Mrs. Pope,” she said, “and
Lord Frothingham, too. And then we all go to the White House dance
afterward.”
“No, the White House dance is to-morrow night,” said Madame Almansa. “I
am going.”
“Well, well--no matter,” interposed Senator Ballantyne. “All I want is
to be sure that you get out of the way before my constituents come.
Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself to desert me. But I suppose
they won’t mind it so long as Sue is here.”
“What time’s your dinner, pa?” asked Ysobel.
“Half-past six,” replied the Senator, and he turned to Frothingham: “At
home they have dinner--no, they call it supper--at five o’clock.”
“That’s ’way, ’way out West, Lord Frothingham,” explained Ysobel,
“where papa and mamma come from.”
“And you, too, young lady,” said her father teasingly. “You were born
there.”
“Yes, but I was caught young and taken to France,” retorted Ysobel. “I
spoke French before I spoke English.”
Senator Ballantyne frowned, became abstracted, was presently sighing.
His eldest daughter heard it and gave a theatrical sigh of sympathy.
Ballantyne seemed not to hear, but _something_ had irritated him, for
he frowned heavily.
Mrs. Ballantyne came in from her drive. She was a fine-looking woman,
had all the outward appearance of the _grande dame_, and acted the
part so well that not even herself had caught her in a slip for many
years--a notable triumph in the art of pose when it is considered that
she was a country-school teacher until she was twenty-four and had
never seen a city or been east of the Alleghenies until she was past
thirty. Frothingham helped her relieve herself of a great sable-lined
cloak which he handed to a servant. The servant bent double in a
bow--Mrs. Ballantyne paid well for obsequiousness. “When do those
people of yours begin to come, Samuel?” she asked, framing her
sentence and her manner to impress Frothingham.
Ballantyne looked annoyed, and, with a furtive glance at him, said:
“Lord Frothingham will carry away a strange notion of democratic
institutions as represented by Senators, mother.”
Mrs. Ballantyne permitted him to call her mother because it was the
only word of address that did not rasp her aristocratic nature. Her
name was Jane--that she could not endure even before the days of her
grandeur. She had made him call her Mrs. Ballantyne before people until
she discovered that it was “shocking bad form.” She decided upon mother
because the old Austrian Ambassador, whose title was of the oldest and
whose blood was of the thin and pale bluest, said to her one day, “I
like your American fashion of husbands and wives calling each other
mother and father. It has a grand old patriarchal ring. My wife and I
have adopted it.”
“You must get out of the way by six o’clock,” continued Ballantyne,
addressing himself to “mother.” “Several of them said they’d come round
early for half an hour’s chat before supper.”
“I’m sorry we’re to be driven out,” said Frothingham. “I fancy I’d like
to see your constituents.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Lord Frothingham,” Mrs. Ballantyne answered
him--for his benefit she was “laying it on with a trowel,” as Ysobel
would have said. “They’re--but you know how it is in politics. I wish
Samuel would leave public life.”
“What!” exclaimed Ballantyne, in mock horror. “And have all our poor
relations that I’ve got nicely placed at the public crib bounced in a
body, and come grunting and squealing to me to be supported! One of the
objects in getting public office in this country, Lord Frothingham,
is to relieve one’s self of the support of one’s poor relations and
friends. The late President Arthur said to me when he was at the White
House: ‘The degradation of it! That I should have to lower myself for
six hours every day to keeping an employment agency!’”
“But we can’t dress and drive round the streets from six o’clock until
eight,” said Ysobel.
“They’ll be in the reception room by eight,” replied her mother, “or
else they won’t be through dinner. We can get out unseen.”
Frothingham maintained his look of blank indifference, but underneath
he was vastly amused--“And they’re quite unconscious what cads
they are,” he thought. As if in answer to this, Senator Ballantyne
said to him, in a tone of humourous apology: “Our constituents are
plain people, Lord Frothingham--honest, simple. They lead quiet,
old-fashioned lives. I always send my family away or make them ‘come
off their perch’ when I have to receive anyone from home--that is, any
but my regular political lieutenants. To tell you the gospel truth, I’m
ashamed to have my old friends see how absurd we’ve become.”
At six o’clock Frothingham was idling in a small smoking room in
the rear of the great parlour--it was on the second floor. Senator
Ballantyne came in and grew red in the cheeks. “Oh, I didn’t expect to
see you,” he said, with an embarrassed laugh.
Frothingham pretended not to notice, but he instantly saw the
embarrassment, and the cause of it as well. The Senator was not in
evening dress, nor even in his uniform of “statesman’s frock.” To
combat the unfavourable impression his great castle would make upon the
excursionists from his distant State he had got himself up in an old
blue sack suit with torn pocket and ragged cuff, in trousers bagging
at the knees and springing fantastically where they covered his
boot-legs.
He seated himself and talked absently until there was a ring of the
front doorbell. He started up. “I must go,” he said. “That’s the first
ones.” And he hurried away.
Frothingham waited a few seconds, then went into the hall and leaned
carelessly on the banister where it commanded a view of the front
door. He chuckled. Not the pompous and liveried butler was opening
it, but Senator Ballantyne himself in his impressive livery of the
“plain people.” And Frothingham grinned as his great hearty voice--how
different, how much more natural, than his usual voice--rolled out a
“Why, hello, boys! Hello, Jim! Hello, Rankin. How d’ye do, Mrs. Fisher.
Glad to see you, Miss Branigan. The maid wasn’t about, so I thought
I wouldn’t keep you waitin’. Come right in and take off your things.
Ladies, I’m sorry to say my wife’s run off and left me--had to go to a
dinner where the President and his wife are to be. You know, we ain’t
allowed to decline. But we won’t miss her. My oldest girl Sue’s in the
parlour. You remember Sue?”
They all went into the “parlour”--that is, the little first-floor
reception room, which had been partly refurnished, or rather,
dismantled, for the occasion. The bell rang. Frothingham chuckled
again, as he saw, not butler nor manservant nor Senator, but a neatly
dressed upstairs girl, without a cap, hasten to open the door. As he
heard the rustle of skirts on the stairway leading to the sleeping
rooms, he prudently strolled into the smoking room.
When he went up to dress Hutt said to him: “Beg pardon, my lord, but
my, it’s queer, the dinner party they’re ’avin hin the little back
room.”
Frothingham went on shaving. Hutt took silence as permission to gossip.
“They’ve sent hoff hall the servants, hexceptin’ the maids, my lord.
They’ve got heverythink on the table at once and they’re waitin’ on
themselves.”
“Last night,” said Frothingham, “you gave me a shirt with a spot on the
collar. You’re getting careless and impudent, Hutt.”
When he reached the parlour Mrs. Ballantyne and Ysobel were
waiting--Mrs. Ballantyne ablaze with rubies and diamonds, Ysobel slim
and white and golden in an expensively plain white dress with golden
spangles. Mrs. Ballantyne rang for a servant. “See that the doors
leading into the hall downstairs are closed,” she said.
The servant returned and announced that the way was clear. The three
descended the grand stairway rapidly, entered the carriage, and drove
away--“with two on the box.”
Presently Ysobel laughed. “You should have seen Susan, Lord
Frothingham,” she said. “She was rigged up in a black alpaca made with
a basque.”
“Alpaca?” asked Frothingham. “What’s that? And what’s a basque?”
“Alpaca is--well, it’s a stuff they wear out West in the country when
they dress up. I suppose they wear it because the country is so dusty,
and black alpaca catches and shows every bit of dust. And when you
touch it it makes your teeth ache and the gooseflesh rise all over you.
A basque--it’s a sort of waist, only it’s little and tight and short on
the hips and low in the collar, and it pulls under the arms--I can’t
describe a basque. It has to be seen. My idea of future punishment is
to dress for a thousand years in black alpaca made with a basque, and
to have to rub your hands over it every five minutes.”
XII
Pope, as Mrs. Ballantyne explained to Frothingham, was an Eastern
Senator--a multi-millionaire, sent to the Senate because he practically
supported, that is, “financed,” the machine of his party in his State,
besides making large contributions to its national machine. “So the
‘Boss,’ as they call the leader of the party in that State,” she said,
“sold Mr. Pope one of the Senatorships, keeping the other for himself.
Mr. Ballantyne is the leader, the master, of his party in _his_ State
and, while he’s too modest to tell it, is one of the masters of the
party in the nation. He could be President if it weren’t for the
disgusting prejudice among the people against all who happen to have a
little something”--“a little something” being Mrs. Ballantyne’s modest
way of speaking of their millions. “But,” she went on, “old Mr. Pope is
a nonentity. He sits in his seat and votes the way they tell him to and
is nice to everybody. Mr. Ballantyne suspects he’s getting ready to buy
the Vice-Presidency.”
“How much does that cost?” asked Frothingham.
“It’ll cost him half a million if the chances of our party’s carrying
the election are good; if they’re not so good, perhaps he can get it
for a quarter of a million. But they may not dare nominate him. They
may have to take some popular poor man. The ‘many-headed monster,’ as
Shakespeare calls it, has been grumbling of late. We have a hard task
in our country, Lord Frothingham, to keep the people with property in
control.”
“It’s the same all over the world nowadays, I fancy,” said Frothingham.
“One has to apologise for being well born or for living in decent
style. The trouble with the lower classes at home is that they don’t
have to work hard enough. They used to be too busy to look about and
make themselves and everybody uncomfortable by doing what they call
thinking.”
“That’s the trouble with our lower classes, too,” answered Mrs.
Ballantyne, in her grandest manner. “We educate too much.”
The carriage rushed into the brilliantly lighted entrance of Senator
Pope’s house. Frothingham saw Ysobel’s face, saw that she was having a
violent attack of silent laughter. And he understood why. “The young
’un has a sense of humour,” he said to himself. “It’s ridiculous for
these beggars to pose and strut before they’ve had time to brush the
dirt off their knees and hands.”
As they entered the drawing room Frothingham’s attention riveted upon
two gilt armchairs ensconced in a semicircle of palms and ferns.
“For the President and his wife,” said Ysobel. “They’re dining here
to-night, you know. This is the first President in a long time who has
accepted invitations below the Cabinet circle. He comes to Senator
Pope’s because they’re old friends. It’s quite an innovation and has
caused a great deal of scandal. But I don’t blame him. Where’s the use
in being President if you can’t do as you please?”
Mrs. Pope, stout and red and obviously “flustered,” came bustling up.
After she had greeted them she said: “Lord Frothingham, you’re to take
my daughter Elsie in to dinner.” Then to Mrs. Ballantyne: “Oh, my dear,
why didn’t you warn me of the quarrel between the Cabinet women and the
Speaker’s family. Whatever _shall_ I do? Mrs. Secretary Mandon’s here,
and so are the Speaker and his wife.”
“I’d send Grace Mandon in ahead of the Speaker’s wife, if I were you,”
replied Mrs. Ballantyne. “I’ve no patience with the pretensions of the
House. It’s distinctly the commonest branch of the Government, while
the Cabinet is next to the President.”
“But,” objected Mrs. Pope plaintively, “the Speaker is _so_ influential
and really fierce about precedence, and his wife has _such_ a tongue
and _such_ a temper, and neither he nor she _ever_ forgives.”
“Do as you like, of course,” said Mrs. Ballantyne stiffly. Being of the
Senate it exasperated her that the House should be placed ahead of it.
Just then a murmur ran around the room--“The President! The President!”
Those who were seated rose, conversation stopped, and the orchestra
began to play. “Bless my soul,” muttered Frothingham, “they’re playing
‘God Save the King’!” And then he remembered that the Americans had, as
he put it, “stolen our tune and set a lot of rot about themselves to
it.” The President and his wife entered, he frowning and red and intent
upon the two gilt chairs. Mrs. Pope curtsied, her husband contracted
his stiff old figure in a comical half-salaam. All bent their heads
and a few of the young people, among them Ysobel, curtsied.
“See him looking at those chairs?” said she to Frothingham.
Frothingham nodded.
“He’s awfully sour at the etiquette here,” she went on. “I suppose he’s
afraid the country’ll find out about it and cut up rough. He’s smashing
right and left, and everyone’s wondering when he’ll throw out the gilt
chairs.”
But his courage apparently failed him, for he and his wife advanced to
the “thrones” and seated themselves. No one else sat, the men moving
about to get the partners indicated on the little gilt-edged crested
cards they had found in envelopes addressed to them and laid upon the
tables in the coat-rooms. Frothingham examined Elsie Pope and saw
that she was small and slight, square in the shoulders, thin in the
neck, her hair of an uncertain shade of brown, her eyes commonplace,
her features irregular. “She looks a good-tempered soul,” he said to
himself, searching resolutely for merits. And then he noted that her
hands were red, and that she had flat, rather wide wrists. “A good,
plain soul,” he added. He sat silent, waiting for her to begin to
entertain him--he hadn’t got used to the American custom of the men
entertaining the women; and the New York and Boston women, acquainted
with the British way, had humoured him. But he waited in vain. At last
he stole a glance at her, and noted a gleam in the corner of her eye,
the flutter of a humour-curve at the corner of her mouth. “A shrewd
little thing, I suspect,” he thought. And he said to her, “No--really,
I don’t bite.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I was beginning to be afraid you didn’t bark,
either,” she said.
His expression retired behind his eyeglass. “Nor do I, unless I’m bid.”
“I like to be talked to--I’d so much rather criticise than be
criticised.”
“What do you like to hear about?” he asked.
“About the man who’s talking. It’s the only subject he’ll really put
his heart into, isn’t it?”
Frothingham smiled faintly, as if greeting an old and not especially
admired acquaintance.
“I’m so disappointed,” she said presently. “All winter I’ve had the
same man take me in everywhere--you know, we follow precedence very
closely here in Washington. And, when I found I was to have a new man,
I had _such_ hopes. The other man and I had got bored to death with
each other. And now--you’re threatening to be a failure!”
Frothingham did not like this--it was pert for a woman to speak thus to
him; he resented it as a man and he resented it as Lord Frothingham.
“That’s a jest, ain’t it?” he drawled. “We English, you know, have a
horribly defective sense of American humour.”
“No, it wasn’t a jest,” she replied. “It was a rudeness, and I beg your
pardon. I thought to say something smart, and--I missed. Let’s change
the subject. Do you see that intellectual-looking man with the beard on
the other side of the table--next to Ysobel Ballantyne?”
“The surly chap?”
“Yes--and he’s surly because mamma has made a dreadful mistake. She’s
put him two below the place his rank entitles him to. He’ll act like a
savage all evening.”
“Fancy! What a small matter to fly into a rage over.”
“A small matter for a large man, but a large matter for a small man.
Sometimes I think all men are small. They’re much vainer than women!”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of what I’ve seen in Washington. They say the women started
this craze for precedence. I don’t know whether that’s so or not. But I
do know that in the three years I’ve been out I’ve found the men worse
than the women. And those things look so much pettier in a man, too.”
“But I thought there wasn’t any rank in this country.”
“So I thought--I was educated in France. I believe in rank and all
that--it seems to me absurd to talk about equality. But I despise this
silly squabble over little places that last only a few years at most.
As Mr. Boughton was saying--you know Mr. Boughton?”
“You mean the Second Secretary at our Embassy?”
“Yes. He said to me only last night: ‘America has an aristocracy just
as we have, but gets from it all the evils and none of the good, all
the pettiness, none of the dignity and sense of responsibility.’”
“But they tell me it’s different--out West.”
“I don’t know. I can only speak of the East--especially of Washington.
There isn’t a capital in Europe or Asia, the diplomats say, with so
elaborate a system of rank and precedence as we have. Why, do you know,
it’s so bad that the fifteen-hundred-dollar-a-year clerks and their
families have a society of their own between the circles of those who
get eighteen hundred and those who get twelve hundred. And they’d
rather die than mix with those who get less than they do.”
“Really! Really, now!”
“And anything like a good time is almost impossible. It’s precedence,
precedence everywhere, always. You can’t entertain informally.”
“It must be as if one were laced in a straight jacket.”
“I’m going abroad next year and am never coming back, if I can help it.
I’m going where at least there’s real rank to get excited about. I’ll
go with Ysobel and her mother--unless Ysobel decides to marry on this
side.”
Frothingham was internally agitated, but gave no sign of it.
“She’s marrying either Mr. Boughton or that handsome Italian sitting
next to Mrs. Ballantyne--the Prince di Rontivogli.”
“Ah,” said Frothingham. And to himself, “Just my rotten luck!”
“She makes no secret of it,” continued Miss Pope, “so I’m not violating
her confidence. She says she’s determined to marry higher than her
sister did. She likes Mr. Boughton better, though I should think she’d
prefer the Prince--his face is ideal, and such manners! But, while
Mr. Boughton is his granduncle’s heir and his granduncle is old and
a widower--still--well, the dukedom might slip away from him. For
instance, he might die before his granduncle.”
“That would be ghastly for her, wouldn’t it, now?” said Frothingham.
“It would kill poor Ysobel. She’s _so_ proud and ambitious! And
that’s why she has an eye for the Prince--he’s of a frightfully old
family, you know. One of his ancestors tried to poison Cesare Borgia
and did succeed in getting himself poisoned or smothered or something
thrilling. And they were an old, old family then. Oh, Ysobel is flying
high. If her father would give her mother and her a free hand, I think
she’d land a prince of some royal family.”
[Illustration: _Cosimo, Prince di Rontivogli_]
Behind his mask Frothingham was hastily reforming his line of battle.
The Ballantyne fortune was apparently inaccessible to an attack from
a mere Earl; but he could keep it under surveillance while employing
his main force against the Pope citadel, which seemed to be inviting
attack. He did not fancy Miss Pope--she was too patently conscious of
her cleverness and it was of a kind that did not attract him, was not
what he regarded as feminine; nor was she physically up to his standard
for his Countess-to-be. But--she had the essential; and he had been in
America nearly five months and had had two, practically three, failures.
For the rest of his two weeks at the Ballantynes’ he spent as much
time as he courteously could with Miss Pope. And when he joined Joe
Wallingford at the New Willard, sharing his suite--and paying less
than a third of the expenses--he was with her a large part of each
day, driving with her, riding with her, lunching where she lunched,
dining where she dined, dancing with her, walking with her, sending
her flowers. In Boston and New York he had been somewhat hindered by
the chaperon system, careless though it was. Here chaperoning was the
flimsiest of farces, and he and Elsie were together almost as freely
as if she were a man.