honoured, Lord Frothingham. But I cannot give you an answer in so
important a matter at once. I must consult with her mother.” Mrs. Pope
was a shadowy nonentity, flitting nervously in the wake of father and
daughter.
He detained Frothingham for a long talk on England and America, and
sent him away in an almost jubilant mood--no applicant ever left him
downcast. The next day Frothingham got a telegram from Elsie asking
him to come to her as soon as he could. He assumed that her father had
decided to convey his consent through her, and his spirits rose higher.
But the first glimpse of her disturbed him--hers was not the face of a
bearer of good news.
“I saw your father,” he began.
“Yes,” she interrupted. “He has written me.”
“Does he consent?”
“Yes and no.” She hesitated. “He asked me not to tell, but I know I can
trust you. He has been planning to be nominated for Vice-President.
And he has found that he can’t have the nomination if I marry a titled
foreigner--especially an Englishman, because of the Irish. They say it
would kill the ticket.”
Frothingham retreated behind a vacant look.
“He found it out only a few days ago.” She did not feel equal to
telling him that her father had learned this fatal fact through the
exposure of Rontivogli. “So,” she ended, “we couldn’t marry until
after the election. For he says he’s sure of the nomination.”
“And when is this election?”
“A year from next fall.”
Fortunately Frothingham had not the habit of letting his face speak for
him. After a pause he said: “But surely you can persuade him.”
“It’s useless to try. You don’t know him as I do. He seems yielding,
and usually he is. But where he’s set he’s hard as granite.”
“Nearly two years,” he repeated. And to himself: “Impossible! I might
weather six months, but two years--the creditors would laugh at me.”
“And I wish to go away at once,” she said with a long sigh, looking at
him mournfully.
“I--we--can’t wait two years,” he replied.
“We needn’t, need we? We might----” she began, then halted, blushing
vividly.
He pretended not to understand--though he did, for he had already
thought of that plan.
“You know--I’m of age,” she went on, seeing that he was not going to
help her out. “We--we needn’t wait for his consent.” He did not change
expression, but he was saying to himself, “Here’s a mess. She’s so mad
to get away that she’s ready to do anything.”
“I think he’d forgive us,” she went on. “But even if he didn’t, I’d
never regret.”
He knew that he must say something, must say it quickly, and that
it must be appreciative but noncommittal. “I couldn’t accept such a
sacrifice,” he said. “It wouldn’t be decent to take advantage of you in
that fashion. I know it sounds unromantic to say it, but, by Jove, I
don’t go in for the sort of romance that makes a fellow a blackguard.”
And he frankly told enough of his financial difficulties to make the
situation clear to her. “I believe you can talk your father round,” he
ended. “He thinks the world of you.”
Elsie smiled--melancholy and cynical. “Yes--so long as I don’t
interfere. But I know how he feels about the Vice-Presidency. And
that--that other affair has made him----” She shook her head.
This chilled Frothingham. “He’d never forgive her if she ran off with
me and lost him the office,” he reflected. “Besides, I can’t afford to
go in without settlements arranged beforehand. I must chuck it--quick
as ever I can.”
He urged persuading her father, and she promised to try. He saw her
the next day, and the next, both afternoons and evenings. On the third
day he did not see her until late in the afternoon--her father had come
from Washington, and had spent the morning with her. And while they
were talking Frothingham was reading a letter from Honoria which had
been languidly pursuing him for a week. Part of it was:
I think you met Cecilia Allerton in Boston. Had you heard of her
bolting with Frank Mortimer?
“Frank Mortimer!” he exclaimed, sitting upright in bed in his
astonishment. “That brute with the big teeth and the empty head!”
Her father was angry with her for something or other and treated her
cruelly. Everyone was pitying her. Frank fell in love with her out
of sympathy, and she was so miserable that, when her father wouldn’t
consent, she ran off with him. Mr. Allerton has changed his will,
they say, leaving everything to colleges and charities. But Frank has
an income and will have more when his uncle dies, and she has a rich
aunt who loathes her father, and so may leave her something.
Cecilia’s quite mad about Frank, now that they’re married. Willie
Kennefick was dining with us last night. He says she was in love with
Stanley Huddiford, who died a year or so ago. He says she believes
Stanley’s soul has entered into Frank! She’s a clever girl, they say,
but a bit eccentric, like so many of them down Boston way----
Frothingham looked on this news as a direct, providential warning
to him. “I’ll take no risks with Pope,” he said. “It would be sheer
madness.”
And before he left his rooms he wrote to Barney, fixing the next day
but one for his arrival at Chicago. He felt that there was no hope of
winning Pope--at least not at present. “If she by chance succeeds after
I’m gone--and I’ll leave her in a good humour--I can easily return. But
I know there’s nothing in it.”
Failure was mourning in her eyes when he called at five o’clock.
They went for a walk, and in reluctant words she told him that her
father was immovable, that their only choice was between disobeying
him and breaking the engagement. She listened coldly while he
explained his position again; when he had finished she sneered. “You
are--unanswerable,” she said bitterly.
“No doubt I do lack ‘temperament,’” he drawled, an ironic gleam on his
eyeglass.
She was humble at once. “Oh--I understand,” she answered.
But she was too heartsick to talk; and he forgot that he was walking
with her, could only feel ruin’s arm linked firmly in his. It was dusk
when they reached the house.
In the doorway he took her hand and held it.
“I shall see you when I return?” he asked. “Will you answer if I write
now and then?”
“Yes,” she replied gratefully.
She sent away the servant who came at her ring. She detained
Frothingham, hoping against reason and instinct that he would tear off
that tranquil mask of his, would forget his responsibilities as the
bearer of a proud and ancient name, would say: “I care for only you.
Come!” Even after he had left her she lingered, holding the door ajar,
listening for returning footsteps. At last she shut the door, and went
forlornly and wearily to her great, lonely, sombre dressing room. She
stood before the mirror of her dressing table, studying her plain,
wistful, woeful little face. “You aren’t pretty,” she said to it, with
that candour which has its chance in those rare moments when vanity is
quite downcast. “And one can’t expect much when men think of nothing
but looks in a woman.” She could no longer see herself for tears. “And
I believe he’d have been--at least kind to me.”
She rang for her maid, and began listlessly and mechanically to dress
for dinner.
XVI
At Chicago Barney came down the platform to meet Frothingham. “Here you
are!” he exclaimed. “Six months in the country, but not a bit changed.
And if an American goes over to your side and stays a week he has to
learn the language all over again when he gets back.”
It was still daylight, and Barney told his coachman to drive home by
way of “the store”--the great “Barney and Company Emporium--seventy
stores and a bank, three restaurants, a nursery, and an emergency
hospital, all under one roof.” Frothingham watched the throngs pouring
torrent-like through the cañons made by the towering buildings. “Don’t
it remind you of New York?” asked Barney.
“Yes--and no,” he replied. It seemed to him in the comparison that New
York was a titanic triumph, Chicago a titanic struggle; New York a
finished or at least definite creation, Chicago a chaos in convulsion.
There was in the look and the noise of it an indefinable menace which
oppressed him, filled him with vague uneasiness. When Barney told him
the site of it was a swamp a few years before, he thought of a fairy
story his nurse had told him--of a magic city that used to rise from
an enchanted morass at dusk, live a single night, and vanish with the
dawn. And as the daylight waned, he wondered whether this inchoate,
volcanic unreality of a city would not soon be again engulfed in the
bosom of its mother, the swamp. But he began to note here and there
traces of form, civilised form, peering from the chaos to indicate the
trend of the convulsion--that it was upward, not downward.
“It is tremendous,” said Frothingham. “Is it bigger than New York?”
“No,” Barney reluctantly answered. Then he added with curious, defiant
energy: “But it _will_ be! And it’s American, which New York ain’t.
It’s full of people that think for themselves, and do as they d----n
please. We ain’t got many apes out here. We run more to humans.”
They were now driving past Barney and Company’s--a barrack-like
structure, towering story on story from a huge base bounded by four
streets, where surged a seemingly insane confusion of men, women,
children, horses, vans, automobiles, articulate in the demoniac
voices of boys shrieking extras and drivers bawling oaths. And the
sky blackened suddenly, and from the direction of the lake came a
storm, cruelly cold, bitter as hate, seizing the struggling, swearing,
shouting mass of men and animals, lashing it with whips of icy rain,
and pelting it with bullets of hail.
“That’s my little place,” said Barney, pride oozing through his offhand
tone.
“It’s tremendous,” was all Frothingham could say. The “Emporium” and
its surroundings dazed him. He muttered under his breath, “And it’s
Hell.”
Barney told the story of creation as it read for him. He had been a
drummer for a suspender house--eighteen hundred a year for touring
the cities and towns of northern Indiana and Illinois; four thousand
dollars put by after twelve years of toil; eyes ever alert for a chance
to go into business on his own account. One of his towns was Terre
Haute--he called it Terry Hut. In it was a dry-goods shop kept by a
man named Meakim. Barney found that of all the retailers he visited,
Meakim was by far the shrewdest, the most energetic, and, above all,
that he had an amazing talent for “dressing” his show windows and
show cases. He persuaded Meakim to sell out and adventure Chicago with
him. They set up in a small way, and in an obscure corner. But both
toiled; Barney was shrewd and almost sleepless, and Meakim “dressed”
the windows and displayed the goods on and over the counters. They
prospered, spread too rapidly for their capital, failed, gathered
themselves together, prospered again. “I’ve built three stores in
fourteen years,” said Barney. “This last one was finished only five
years ago--the year Meakim died. And already it’s too small--we’re
moving our wholesale department to another building.”
Presently they were in Michigan Avenue and at Barney’s house. It
was a mass of Indiana limestone which he--with the assistance of a
builder, audaciously “branched out” as an architect--had fashioned
into a fantastic combination of German mediæval fortress and Italian
renaissance villa. “Here’s where I live,” said Barney as the carriage
stopped before the huge doors studded with enormous bronze nails. “And
don’t you dare back up Nelly when she jeers about it. She says she
can’t look at it without laughing, or come into it without blushing. I
suppose it _is_ no good, in the way of art. But it keeps out the rain,
and that’s the main point in a house, ain’t it?”
As he was getting out his keys the door was opened by a maid in a
black dress, a white apron and cap. “Jessie,” said he, in a tone
which suggested that she might be his daughter, “this is the Earl of
Frothingham, and I want you to take good care of him, and of the young
man who’s coming with his trunks.”
Frothingham took off his hat and bowed vaguely to the maid, who smiled
cordially. “I’ll show you your room,” she said.
“Never mind, Jessie,” interrupted Barney. “You needn’t bother. I’ll
take him up myself. But I know everything’s all right--Nelly looked
after that.”
Frothingham was impressed by the astonishing difference between the
exterior and the interior of the house. He felt at home at once in
this interior--handsome, cheerful, the absurd splendours of the
architect-builder’s devising softened into comfort and good taste. “We
thought you’d like your young man near you,” explained Barney, “so we
put a bed in the dressing room.”
“Thank you,” replied Frothingham. “This is charming.”
“Nelly knows her business.” Barney’s good-natured face, with its
many dignifying scars from his wars with destiny, beamed paternal
enthusiasm. “You needn’t dress for dinner unless you want to,” he
went on. “I never do unless we have company or I go out somewhere to
something swell and formal. Wickham sometimes does and sometimes don’t.”
“I think I’ll dress, if you don’t mind,” said Frothingham
diplomatically.
“Suit yourself. This is Liberty Hall. We ain’t got any rules.” He
looked at his watch. “That clock on the mantel there is four minutes
fast. It’s seven minutes to seven by the right time. We’re having
dinner at half-past seven, but you can come down just as soon as you
feel like it.”
[Illustration: _Found Nelly alone in the front parlour_]
Frothingham descended at five minutes before the dinner hour and found
Nelly alone in the front parlour. Superficially she was like the women
he had met in the Eastern cities. Like them she was dressed in a gown
obviously imported from Paris; like them she wore it as only American
and French women wear their clothes. He saw instantly that she was a
well-bred girl of a most attractive American type. She was tall and
long of limb--her arms were almost too long. She had a great deal
of dark brown hair shading fascinatingly into black here and there.
She had dark eyes--not brown, as he at first glance thought, but dark
grey--a humour-loving mouth, a serious brow, a clear, delicate, olive
skin. As she and Frothingham were shaking hands, her father and her
brother entered--the brother, Wickham, a huge fellow, topping his
father by several inches and having his father’s keen, good-natured
dark grey eyes and his father’s features, except that the outline was
more refined without being less strong.
Barney put his arm round his daughter and, with a foolish-fond
expression, said: “Didn’t I tell you, Frothingham? Wasn’t I right?”
If Frothingham had been new to “the States” he would have thought
this the strongest kind of a bid for him to enter the family. But he
understood the American character in its obvious phases now. “The old
chap’s mad about her,” was all Barney’s speech suggested to him. “And,”
he admitted to himself, “I think he has reason to be. She’s got the
look I like.” He noted the humourous comment on her father’s flattery
in Nelly’s dark eyes, as he examined her through his eyeglass with
ostentatiously critical minuteness. “Quite up to the mark, I should
say,” he replied with polite audacity, adding apologetically, “though I
don’t pretend to be an expert.”
“You see, I did put on my dress suit, after all,” said Barney, looking
down at his old-fashioned, ill-fitting evening clothes. “The children
would have it. I always feel like a stranded fish in these togs. You
see, I never wore ’em in my life till I was past forty.”
Wickham looked a little nervously at Frothingham; Nelly was smiling
with frank amusement. Then Wickham looked ashamed of himself--but he
carefully observed the peculiar stripes down the legs of Frothingham’s
trousers and the curious cut of his waistcoat and coat--“I must find
out who’s his tailor,” he thought. “Poole don’t send me over the real
thing. I wish I dared wear a monocle. It’s a whole outfit of brains and
manners by itself. I don’t believe he takes it out, even at night.”
A maid announced dinner--not “Dinner is served,” but “Dinner, Mr.
Barney.” And Barney jumped up with, “I’m glad to hear it. I’m hungry
as a wolf.” The dining room was done in old English fashion--and the
dinner, too, though an American would have called it the American
fashion. The feature of its four courses was a huge roast, set before
Barney on a great platter, with a mighty carving knife like a cimetar
and a fork like a two-pronged spit. Barney himself carved--an energetic
performance, lacking in grace perhaps, but swift and sure. On the table
between him and the platter was a pile of plates. He put a slice of the
roast into the top plate and the waitress removed it, carried it to
Nelly’s place and set it down before her. This was repeated until all
were served.
Frothingham watched Barney’s movements attentively, surprised that any
of the American upper classes condescended to eat in such simplicity.
He was almost startled when a bottle of wine was brought, for he had
not forgotten Barney’s denunciation of drink and drinkers. He had
seen so many concessions of real or reputed principle for his benefit
since he had been moving about in American “high life” that he was
somewhat cynical as to principle in America. But he had not expected
to find this degree, or even kind, of weakness in Barney. “He told
me he wouldn’t permit the stuff to come into his house,” he thought,
laughing to himself. Then he noticed that none of the family drank it.
One taste was enough for him--“No wonder he’s opposed to wine,” he said
to himself. Then aloud: “If you don’t mind, I’ll just take whiskey--a
little Scotch.”
Barney showed amused embarrassment; Nelly and Wickham laughed. “We
don’t have anything to drink,” she explained. “Father doesn’t approve.
But he told us you’d been brought up differently--that you must have
wine. So we’ve got wine, but there isn’t any whiskey.”
Frothingham looked vague--he was relieved to find that his friend
Barney was not quite so weak as he had feared. “It doesn’t in the least
matter,” he replied. “I shall get on famously with this.”
“I’ll take you down to the club after a while,” said Wickham, “and you
can have all you want. And to-morrow--eh, father?”
“Yes--yes--of course,” answered Barney. “I never do try to put on style
that I don’t get left.”
He winked at one of the maids significantly, and when she drew near
and bent her head whispered to her. She left the dining room; in about
five minutes she reappeared with a decanter of Scotch whiskey, a tall
glass, a bowl of ice, and a bottle of imported soda on her tray.
“Why, father!” exclaimed Nelly, “where did that come from?”
Barney beamed, triumphant. “We’ve got neighbours, haven’t we?”
“But what _will_ they think of you?” she asked, pretending to be
shocked.
“I don’t know--and I don’t care,” he answered. “I never did spend much
time in worrying about what my neighbours thought of me. Probably
that’s why we’re here, and not in the poorhouse.”
After dinner Frothingham stayed with Nelly in the parlour instead of
going to the club with Wickham. He had found many girls in America
who thought they were natural or who affected naturalness as a pose:
but here was the first girl, it so happened, who was really natural,
without thinking anything about it. She had all the charm of the girls
of his own country for him--he liked ingenuousness; and in addition
she had the charm of knowledge. She knew the world, but she looked at
it with ingenuous eyes--and he would not have believed this a possible
combination. “How do these Americans manage it?” he said to himself.
“Her father comes from well down in the lower classes, yet he has all
the assurance of an aristocrat. And as for the girl, she reminds me of
Evelyn--and Gwen.”
“Do you know,” he said to her, “you don’t suggest an American girl at
all--that is, you do and you don’t. You women over here are cleverer
than ours, but a good many of ’em lack a certain something--a--I don’t
know just what to call it. It seems to me that--well, they are ladies,
of course. But many of ’em--not all--but a great many of those I’ve
chanced to meet--make me feel as if they were not exactly sure of
themselves, as if they were trying to live up to something they’d read
about or seen somewhere. I don’t know that I make myself clear.”
“Perfectly,” replied Nelly. “You mean that they act as if they weren’t
satisfied with being the kind of lady they were born, and are trying to
be some other kind--and don’t succeed at it especially well.”
“Exactly,” said Frothingham. “I feel like saying to them, ‘Oh, come
now, chuck it, won’t you, and let’s see what you’re really like.’
But you--you remind me of our women, except that they’re so ghastly
dull--the most of ’em. Gad, they sit about in the country until
they’re feeble-minded. After a certain age, about all there is left of
’em is the match-making instinct. You’d understand if you’d been over
there.”
“I have been there,” answered Nelly. “I spent more than a year in
Europe--nearly half of it in your country. I liked it, but--well, one
likes one’s own country best, of course.”
“I thought you American women preferred the other side.”
“Oh, a few of us do--those who aren’t happy unless they have somebody
bowing and scraping to them or are bowing and scraping to somebody. You
know, the poor we have always with us--the poor in spirit as well as
the other kind of poor.”
Before they had talked an hour Frothingham felt that the outlook for
his campaign in the Barney house was not promising. Nelly was frank and
friendly, and he saw that she liked him. But there was something in her
atmosphere which made him know that she cared little for the things
which were everything to him and which must be everything to the woman
he might hope to win. He feared that she was not for him. “She ain’t in
my class--or perhaps I’d better say, I ain’t in hers.”
When Wickham came, at half-past ten, she left them. After suppressing
yawns for fifteen minutes he said: “I’m off to bed. I was at a dance
last night and owe myself five hours sleep. You see, father and I get
up at half-past six. We have to be at the store at eight.”
At the store! At eight! “And he hasn’t in the least the look of
that sort of chap,” thought Frothingham. As for rising at half-past
six, one might do it to hunt or shoot. But to do it morning after
morning “merely to set a lot of bounders to selling a lot of
cloth”--preposterous!
XVII
After a few days of Chicago Frothingham felt utterly out of place.
There were no idlers, no idling places. To idle meant to sit in lonely
boredom.
Barney and his son were busy all day--they grudged the half-hour of
that precious time of theirs which they spent at luncheon. Nelly,
too, had her work--some sort of a school she was running, away off
somewhere in the poorer part of the town. He was sensitive enough soon
to discover, in spite of her courtesy, that he was interrupting her
routine seriously and was in the way to becoming a burden. He saw as
much of her as he dared--she had for him a charm that became the more
difficult to resist as his hope of winning her decreased. He relieved
her of himself during her busy hours so tactfully that she did not
suspect him of penetrating what she honestly tried to conceal.
He betook himself to the club. It was usually deserted; if a man did
enter, he raced through and away as if pursued by demons; at luncheon
all ate as if struggling for a prize offered to him who should chew
the least, swallow the fastest, and finish the soonest. He called on
the women he met--they were out or just going out, or just coming in to
busy themselves at home.
In New York, Boston, Washington he had thought the leisure class a lame
imitation of the European class of industrious, experienced idlers,
had found it small and peculiarly unsatisfactory because its men
were inferior to its women in numbers and especially in brains. But
here--there wasn’t a pretence of a leisure class except the loungers in
the parks; and they were threatening, so it was said, to organize and
do all sorts of dreadful things if they weren’t given something to do.
“This is a howling wilderness,” he said to himself. “I should be better
off in a desert. These lunatics make my head swim.”