If it was a dinner, the diners were eager to despatch it. The courses
were served swiftly, the waiters snatching one’s plate if he for a
second ceased the machine-like lifting of food; the conversation was
nervous and in the shrill tones of acute mental excitement. Words
were cut short and slapped together almost incoherently. Sentences
were left unfinished, the speaker leaping on to another sentence or
submerged by the breaking of the flimsy speech-dam of the person he was
addressing. Often all were talking at the same time. “Surely you can
listen as you talk,” said a woman to whom he complained. “Think how
much time it saves!”
If it was a dance, the orchestra detonated the notes like cartridges
from a Maxim gun; the dancers whirled or raced furiously. “Why this
hurry?” he gasped to a handsome, powerful girl, who had dragged him
round a ballroom twice, had flung him into a chair, and was dashing
away with another man to finish the waltz.
“I’ve got to catch the train for the millennium,” she screamed back
over her shoulder and disappeared in the maelstrom.
Even at the play the audience shuffled uneasily while the players sped
through their lines or the orchestra rattled off the between-the-acts
music; and afterward all rushed from the theatre as if it were afire.
The blank expression habitual to Frothingham’s face was now less a
disguise than a reflection of his internal state.
“I must get out of this,” he said to himself at the end of two weeks.
“The disease may be catching. Now I understand that fellow who went
from here to tear London up by the roots and put in his tuppenny tubes.
A Chicagoan should be barred from a country like any other plague.” And
he wrote his sister that he was “beginning to twitch with the Chicago
disease.”
Evelyn had written him regularly--a letter by each Wednesday’s steamer.
She had put a brave face upon their affairs, had tried to make him
picture life at Beauvais House as smooth, almost happy. But he had
more than suspected that a far different story ran between the lines;
and when she wrote that she had engaged herself to Charley Sidney he
understood.
Seven months before he would have grumbled and cursed, and would have
accepted the sacrifice. Now, it roused in him a fierce protest, a
feeling of abhorrence of which he would not have been capable before
he visited America--and the Barneys. “She sha’n’t sell herself to that
creeping cad,” he said, and on impulse he cabled: “Sidney impossible
and unnecessary. You must break it. Answer.”
The answer came a few hours later: “Shall do as you wish.”
Instead of being relieved he repented his impulse, wondered where
it had come from, fell into a profound depression. Seven months of
stalking; nothing to show for it but three ridiculous, sickening
misses. And here he was with an empty bag; and what little heart he
once had for the game was gone; in its place a disgust for it and for
himself. “How Nelly Barney would scorn me if she knew what a creature
I am,” he said. He was now thinking a great deal on the subject of
Nelly Barney’s standards for men and also on the subject of Nelly
Barney as a standard for women. In neither direction did he find any
encouragement. He knew her through being in the same house with her day
after day, through seeing her at all hours and in all moods--and she
never made the slightest attempt to conceal her real self. He felt that
such a woman could not be attracted by his title, would not be likely
to be attracted by himself; he felt that she was at the same time more
worth the winning than any other woman he knew in America--“Yes, or in
England,” he confessed at last.
“What a pity, what a beastly, frightful shame,” he thought. “She’s got
everything that I must have, and everything that I want, too.”
But he had only twelve hundred dollars left, including the thousand
from Wallingford. “I must be gone clean mad,” he exclaimed whenever he
wasn’t with her and was alone with his affairs. Finally he was able
to goad himself into dashing feverishly about in Chicago society. He
sought the set she avoided--it was to him an additional charm in her
that she did avoid it, for he had at bottom the extra-prim ideas of
women which have never lost their hold upon Englishmen. There was,
however, no alternative to seeking this set. He thought it the only one
in which he was likely to succeed--those among the fashionable young
women of the rich families who carried the “free-and-easy” pose in
speech and manner to the point where it looked far worse to a foreigner
than it really was, who laughed and talked noisily in public, who wore
very loud and very clinging dresses, very big hats and very tight shoes.
The newspapers gave him columns of free advertising and, with the
Barneys vouching for him and “Wick” Barney pushing him, he immediately
became a figure. Some of the young women of the “lively” set pursued
him with an ardour which he would have mistaken when he first landed
for evidence of serious attachment or intentions. But he had learned
something of the ways of American flirts, married and single, and he
had had experience of that American curiosity as to foreigners of rank
which he had at first regarded as the frankest kind of title-worship.
Presently he found a girl he thought he could not be mistaken in
fancying he could get--Jane or Jenny (Jeanne, she wrote it) Hooper, the
daughter of that famous Amzi Hooper whose “Hooper’s High-class Hams”
and “Hooper’s Excelsior Dressed Beef and Beef Extract” are trumpeted
from newspaper, billboard, and blank wall throughout the land.
Her older sister had married a Papal duke under the impression that he
was a noble of ancient and proud family. To her horror, to her family’s
humiliation, and to her friends’ hilarity, it came out that the Duke
of Valdonomia was the son of a Swiss hog-packer of as humble origin as
Amzi Hooper and of less than one-fifth his wealth. The family longed
to possess a genuine nobleman, and Jane, a devourer of the English
novels which are written by the middle classes for the middle classes
about the upper classes--seemed to be in sympathy with her father’s
and mother’s ambition and keenly eager to become a “real lady.” It was
assumed by her set that Frothingham had come for her--the newspapers
hinted as much several times each week.
But Frothingham, grown extraordinarily sensitive, shied at the amazing
high heels on which she tottered like a cripple, at the skin-like
fit of her clothes, at the suspicious brilliance of her cheeks and
blackness of her brows and lashes. Whenever she spoke to him suddenly
in her shrill dialect he felt as if a file had been drawn across his
pneumogastric nerve. And she constantly used a slang expression which
seemed to him--in her--the essence of vulgarity. She could not speak
ten sentences without saying that she or somebody or everybody had
nearly or quite “thrown a fit.”
It struck him as a biting irony of fate that the woman whom of all
he knew well in America he least approved should be the one who was
frankly throwing herself at his head in his hour of desperation. When
he learned that her father was an Englishman born and bred in the
“lower middle class,” he felt that he had solved the problem of the
family’s over-eagerness to get him. “That’s why the old beggar almost
cringes as he talks to me,” he said to himself.
“D----n their impudence!” And the next time he met Hooper he treated
him not as an American and an equal, but as an Englishman and an
inferior. And Amzi at once fell into his “place,” just as a car horse,
though elevated to be a coach horse, will halt at one ring of a bell.
“It’s in the blood,” thought Frothingham. “It can’t be hid or got out.”
But--he didn’t venture the experiment with the daughter.
The climax came one morning when he met her by chance in the Lake Park
Drive. She was perched high on a red and black dog-cart in which she
was driving a bay and a gray tandem. Her hat was the biggest he had
seen her wear, and she was swathed in a silver-grey dust-coat with a
red embroidered collar. She stopped and invited him to join her.
“I needed you to complete my turnout,” she said, when they were under
way. Her dazzling smile took part of the edge off her unconscious
insolence--or was it conscious? He found her a puzzle, with her flashes
of good taste and flashes of good sense, with her wit that seemed
accidental and her folly that seemed her real self.
He set his teeth and tried to think only of how much “I need her to
complete _my_ turnout,” and of how pretty she was--for there was no
denying her beauty, or her style for that matter, in spite of its
efflorescence. He saw that everyone was looking at them, but he did
not appreciate that his own striking costume and his eyeglass were as
magnetic as were her hat, her bright skin, and her dust-coat with its
gaudy collar. She was supremely happy. The most conspicuous girl in
Chicago, driving with the most conspicuous man, in the most conspicuous
trap and on the most conspicuous highway--what more could a young woman
ask?
“Wonder why everyone stares so?” she said with deliberate intent to
provide an opening for compliment. She wished to hear him say the
flattering things she was thinking about herself.
“I fancy they’re staring at what I can’t take my eyes off of,” he
replied. “You _do_ look swift this morning.”
“Swift! I don’t like that.” She was frowning. “You Englishmen come over
here and think you can say what you please.”
“I can’t see where’s the harm in telling a girl she’s pretty and well
got up, and looks a stunner.”
“That isn’t what ‘swift’ means in Chicago.”
“Really! You don’t say! That’s what it means in London.”
“But you’re not in London.”
“No.” His tone strongly suggested a wish that he were.
“Wouldn’t it be jolly if this were Hyde Park!” she exclaimed.
He did not show enthusiasm at this--but then his face was made to
suppress, not to express, emotion.
“I simply adore London,” she went on.
“It ain’t bad--for a while, now and then.”
“There’s so much atmosphere about London--I don’t mean the fog and
soot. Here, they’re all crazy about making money and working and all
those kind of things. Whereas, over there, everybody’s for having a
good time and--all those kind of things. Sometimes I think I’ll throw a
fit if I don’t get away from here.”
He looked gloom, then brightened--yes, she was tremendously pretty, and
her mouth was like a red-ripe cherry; yes, she might be toned down into
a fairly decent countess. “They’re quick to adapt themselves, these
American girls. The minute she sees Evelyn she’ll begin to learn.”
“I don’t see how you stand it,” she continued. “When are you going
away? Not that I sha’n’t be sorry--you’ve been awfully nice to me, and
I like to see a really well-dressed man once in a while.”
“Ah, I don’t mind it here.” He paused for fully a minute, then said:
“And I’d like it, you know, if I could take you with me when I go.” He
followed this speech with a slow turning of the head until his eyeglass
was full upon her. “By Jove, her colour’s genuine,” he said to himself.
She had been happy a few minutes before; now she was all thrills and
palings and flushings of ecstacy. She glanced at her conquest with
sparkling eyes and laughing lips. She made him forget what “bad form”
he had been thinking her. “Is that a joke?” she asked, as if she were
assuming that it was.
“We don’t go in for joking about that sort of thing where I come from,”
he drawled.
“But you oughtn’t to have said it here.” She was radiant, but her hands
were trembling--it seemed most romantic to her, quite like a chapter
out of a novel. Nobility and titles and genuine aristocracy, that
not only recognised itself, but also was recognised as aristocracy by
everybody, seemed to her as dream-like as fairyland. “And he does so
look the part!” she said to herself. “Anyone could see that he is the
real thing.”
“If you’ll drive home I’ll ask you again there,” he continued.
And he did, and she accepted him; and he was halfway to Barney’s
before he came from the spell of her fresh young beauty and her frank
admiration of him, and began to think of Nelly and to see Jeanne from
Nelly’s standpoint again. At that moment Jeanne was busily telephoning
her engagement to her intimates, her head full of castles and coronets
and crests and peeresses’ robes. It seemed to her that she could
not wait to begin her triumph--the congratulations of friends, the
receptions, dinners, dances in honour of her and her fiancé, the
flare of newspaper brasses, the big wedding, and the crescendo of
her gorgeous entry into English society as Countess of Frothingham.
Cinderella was no more enraptured when the prince lifted her from the
ashes than was Jenny Hooper with her ill-fed and exuberant imagination,
her ill-directed and energetic ambition, her ill-informed and earnest
conception of “being somebody.”
“And he’s coming to see you to-morrow, pa,” she said to Amzi Hooper,
after delighting his ears with the great news. “He says your consent is
necessary before the engagement’s announced.”
“I guess he and I won’t quarrel over it, Jenny,” replied her father.
“If he suits you, I can stand him.”
Frothingham came the next afternoon and made his formal request. Mr.
Hooper shook hands with him cordially. “I guess my girl knows what
she’s about,” said he. “I’m pleased to have you as a son.”
“Thanks,” replied Frothingham--he could not altogether banish from
his manner the instinctive haughtiness of English upper class toward
English lower class. “When could you receive my representative? Or
shall I send him to someone who represents you?”
Mr. Hooper looked embarrassed and rubbed his jawbone vigorously with
his thumb and forefinger. “Yes--yes--certainly--any time you say. I’ll
talk to him, myself. Can he come to-morrow? I don’t think it’ll take
him long to satisfy me you’re all right.”
Frothingham stared, thinking “D----n his impudence!” He said only,
“To-morrow, at eleven, then,” shook hands as warmly as he thought wise,
and went back to the parlour where Jeanne was waiting for him.
* * * * *
Frothingham’s “representative” was Lawrence, attorney to the British
Consulate at Chicago, a brother of Gerald Boughton’s mother. He had
come to America thirty years before because he could make a living here
and could not make a living at home. He had renounced allegiance to
the British throne because by doing so his income was doubled. But at
heart he regarded himself as a British subject and, while he pretended
to be an American, was so savagely critical of things American that
everyone disliked him. He wore the long, slim side-whiskers which were
the fashion when he left home; he talked with the lisp then affected
as the “hall mark” of a gentleman. He disliked Americans; he despised
Anglo-Americans of the Hooper type; Hooper himself he loathed as an
intolerable upstart, successful where he, of the “upper class,” was
barely able to keep chin above water.
When he came into Hooper’s study at the hour fixed by Frothingham
he was an accurate representation of the supercilious, frozen-faced
“swell” of the Piccadilly district a quarter of a century before.
Hooper knew that he was of the “upper class,” but had not the faintest
deference for him. Hooper had been Americanised to the extent of caring
nothing for mere family. It took a title to stir his dormant instincts
of servility; the untitled Lawrence was a man to be judged by American
standards, as he understood them. Lawrence was not a millionaire and
not on the way toward that goal of every rational ambition; Hooper,
therefore, had no more respect for him than he had for any other
“failure.”
“You’ve come to explain about the Earl of Frothingham,” began Hooper in
the arrogant voice he used at business. “But it’s not necessary. I’m
well informed as to Lord Frothingham’s family and am satisfied he’s
what he represents himself to be.”
Lawrence combed his long lean “Dundrearys” with his slim white
fingers. The joy of battle gleamed in his eyes. “I can’t imagine,”
he replied--he had a broad accent and drawl, said “cawn’t” and
“fawncy”--“why you should fancy I came here to insult Lord
Frothingham, whose representative I have the honour to be.”
“Insult? What do you mean, Mr. Lawrence?” demanded Hooper, his voice
courageous, but not his eyes.
Lawrence felt he had been right in thinking that no American would
negotiate for the purchase of a title unless he were at bottom a
“grovelling snob.” “There could not be a question of Lord Frothingham’s
character,” he said. “And as for his family, there’s none more
illustrious in England.”
“Certainly, certainly. I admitted all that. I assumed that Lord
Frothingham was sending you through over-anxiety--not unnatural when
he’s so far from home.”
“My business with you, Mr. Hooper,” continued Lawrence, “relates
to settlements.” Hooper’s pretence--“the shallow device of a
bargain-hunter”--disgusted him.
Hooper waved his hand--a broad, thick, stumpy-fingered hand. “Oh, I’ve
no doubt Lord Frothingham will do the right thing by my daughter. And
besides, I intend to do something for her--no one ever accused Amzi
Hooper of stinginess.”
“That is gratifying,” said Lawrence. “We shall no doubt have not the
slightest difficulty in reaching an understanding. What, may I ask,
is the--aw--extent of the settlement you purpose to make--upon your
daughter and--and Lord Frothingham.”
Hooper’s face grew red. “You may _ask_, sir, but I’ll not answer. I’m
not in the habit of discussing my private affairs with _any_body.”
Lawrence was angry also--“the fellow’s taking me for a fool,” he
thought. But he knew he must control himself, so he answered smoothly:
“This is extraordinary--most extraordinary, Mr. Hooper. You’ve had some
experience--aw--in foreign marriages----”
Hooper dropped sullenly before this poisoned shaft.
“And,” continued Lawrence, “you must know that settlements are the
matter of course.”
“No, sir!” exclaimed Hooper, pounding the desk, “I know nothing of
the sort. When my oldest daughter married they talked to me about
settlements, but I refused to have anything to do with it.”
[Illustration: “_You may_ ASK, _sir, but I’ll not answer_”]
Lawrence, in fact all Chicago, knew that Hooper, who was not nearly so
rich then, had settled a quarter of a million upon the Papal nobleman
and half a million on his daughter, and had engaged to settle a
quarter of a million more upon the first male child of the marriage.
“We should, of course, not be satisfied with the settlements you made
upon the Duke of Valdonomia,” said he, ignoring Hooper’s falsehood.
Hooper winced, looked bluster, thought better of it, said quietly:
“You’ve been misinformed, Mr. Lawrence. I made no settlements. But I
gave the young people enough to set them up comfortably.”
“Lord Frothingham’s position forbids him to consider any such
arrangement as that, Mr. Hooper. You know how it is with the great
families. They have station, rank, tradition to maintain. They----”
“I won’t bribe any man to marry my daughter. That ain’t the American
way.” This was said, not fiercely, but, on the contrary, in a
conciliatory tone and manner.
Lawrence sneered--inwardly--at this “cheap claptrap,” and said:
“That’s sound--and eminently creditable to you, sir. But you will bear
in mind that Lord Frothingham is an English nobleman, the head of a
distinguished family, and that your daughter is about to become his
Countess, an Englishwoman, the mother of a line of English noblemen. Do
I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly. Perfectly. And I’ve not the least objection to doing what’s
right. I want to make it clear that I’m giving only out of generosity
and affection, and a desire to see my girl properly established.”
“No one who knows you will doubt that,” said Lawrence so blandly
that Hooper could find no fault, could not understand why he was
irritated. “And now that we’re on common ground I hope you’ll give me
some--aw--data--so that I may draw up the necessary papers.”
“Has Frothingham any debts?” asked Hooper abruptly, after a thoughtful
pause.
“There are about fifteen thousand pounds of personal obligations,”
replied Lawrence carelessly, “and a matter of perhaps a hundred
thousand pounds as a charge on the entailed estate. I understand the
entailed part is all that’s left; but the estates can be, should be,
restored to what they were until a hundred or a hundred and fifty years
ago.”
“Um!” muttered Hooper.
“The debt represents, I believe,” continued Lawrence, “the wild oats
and careless management of previous generations. The present Earl has
been--remarkably steady, they tell me, considering his station and
opportunities, and the example of his father and grandfather.”
Hooper had read with an attention that made his memory leechlike every
word of every sketch of Frothingham and the Gordon-Beauvais family in
the Chicago papers. Lawrence’s aristocratic allusions were, therefore,
full of suggestion and moved him profoundly. “Well,” said he, “I should
say, in round numbers, that a million would straighten the young man
out and set them housekeeping in good style.”
There was a queer gleam in Lawrence’s eyes as he replied: “Very
handsome, Mr. Hooper. Most satisfactory. Your daughter can take the
position in England to which the Earl’s rank entitles her.” He looked
as if he were reflecting; then, as if thinking aloud: “Let me see--a
million pounds--five million----”
Hooper sprang to his feet. “You misunderstood me, Mr. Lawrence,” he
protested angrily, but nervously. “My daughter will have that--perhaps
more than that--ultimately. But I meant dollars, not pounds.”
Lawrence put on a expression of amazement. “I beg your pardon, Mr.
Hooper, but really--_really_--you can’t mean that. Two hundred thousand
pounds would barely fetch them even. They’d have nothing to live on.”
“Oh, of course I don’t mean that I’d not give ’em anything in addition.
We were talking only of settlements.”
“Certainly. And you must see, Mr. Hooper, that it would be impossible
for us to accept any settlement so inadequate. Some misfortune might
overtake you and--you would be unable to carry out your present
generous intentions.”
“A million dollars is a big sum of money. It looks even bigger in
England than here.”
“But you are making a great alliance. A million dollars is a small sum
in the circumstances--I mean, in view of the necessity of enabling
your daughter to take all that her position as Countess of Frothingham
entitles her to.”
“Permit me to ask,” said Hooper with some sarcasm, but not enough to
conceal his anxiety, “what did Lord Frothingham expect in the way of
settlement?” The multi-millionaire had developed two powerful passions
with age--avarice and social ambition. These were now rending each the
other and both were rending him.
“Lord Frothingham, of course, did not discuss the matter with me--a
gentleman is, naturally, delicate in matters of money. He simply stated
the posture of his affairs and left me in full charge. When I suggested
to him that eight hundred thousand--_pounds_--would be adequate, he
protested that that was too much. ‘I wish Mr. Hooper to appreciate
that it is his daughter I want,’ said he. ‘Make the least possible
conditions. I’d be glad to marry her without a penny if my position
permitted. It’s hard to have to consider such things at this time,’ he
said. ‘I’m sure we can pull through with seven hundred thousand.’ I did
not and do not agree with him, but I assented because I knew that you
would liberally supplement the settlements.”
Every sentence in that speech exasperated Mr. Hooper--perhaps
Lawrence’s persistence in expressing himself in pounds instead of in
dollars most of all. Pounds made the huge sum demanded seem small, made
his resistance seem mean and vulgar. He reflected for several minutes.
“I won’t do it!” he said in a sudden gust of temper. “Half that is
my final figure. I’ll settle the obligations--the five hundred and
seventy thousand dollars--and I’ll entail five hundred thousand and
give Jenny five hundred thousand for her lifetime, it to go afterward
to the younger children.”
Lawrence combed his whiskers with his fine fingers, shaking his head
slowly as he did so. “But, Mr. Hooper----”
“That’s final,” interrupted Hooper. “It’s bad enough--it’s
shameful--it’s un-American, sir, to make any settlement at all.”