A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
A Novel of American Society
BY HAMILTON AÏDÉ
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1892
Copyright, 1892, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
TO
_MY DEAR COMPANIONS_
ON
A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
I Dedicate these Pages
A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
CHAPTER I
"Why are you going to the United States?" asked an American, no longer
in his first youth, of a young Englishwoman, on board the _Teutonic_,
the second day after they had left Liverpool.
The sky was blue; the sea was smooth; the hour was noon. The lady
was stretched on a deck-chair; the American sat beside her. Both
were fine types of their races; both had faces which arrested and
held the attention. Mr. Quintin Ferrars was unusually tall for an
American; his limbs were not loosely knit, and his walk was erect and
firm--attributes more common to the dwellers in the prairie than to
those on Fifth Avenue. He had a resolute, thoughtful face, over which
gleams of satire were more apt to play than those of sympathy; with
keen eyes, the expression, even the color, of which it was difficult
to determine. Neither in his accent nor in his colloquialisms was
there any touch of the peculiarity which we call "American," but which
our cousins affirm to be drawn through conduits of heredity from the
undefiled well of English speech of their Puritan fathers. Mr. Ferrars
was accused of being an Anglomaniac; it would be more true to say that
he was keenly critical of the defects in his own country. But then he
was critical of all things, human and divine.
The young Englishwoman, in her tight-fitting Ulster of russet tweed,
with a stalking-cap of the same material, beneath which her abundant
auburn hair was tightly rolled, was tall, and had a well-balanced
figure, with a waist sufficiently large to support her breadth of
shoulder and finely developed bust without suggesting a fear that it
might snap in two. Her clear gray eyes, under dark, level brows, had a
singular directness of outlook; the fine lines of her somewhat large
mouth as much variety of expression, when speaking, as of strength and
sweetness in repose. But the chief characteristic of her handsome face
was the eager interest it displayed in anything, whether grave or gay,
that moved her; the absence of self-consciousness in her intercourse
with both men and women; and the bright smile, which was in itself an
enchantment. She had great animation of manner, a frank and ringing
laugh, and a ready tongue; all of which were probably calculated to
mislead a stranger as to her real character.
"Why are you going to the United States, Miss Ballinger?" again asked
Mr. Ferrars.
"The polite answer would be that I am going to see your country; but
that would not be quite true," answered the young lady, with a smile.
"My brother wished me to come. I am doing so for the sake of being with
him."
"You won't like it. Unless you go to the Far West, we have nothing to
offer you that you haven't got better in Europe."
"People interest me more than things. One gets wrong ideas of Americans
from those one often meets travelling. I shall like studying them on
their own soil."
He lit a cigarette before he replied: "The best types you will probably
not see. They do not push themselves prominently forward."
Miss Ballinger's eyes sparkled with amusement. "One would really think
your object was to dissuade me from attempting to see your country."
"My object is to prevent your being disappointed. We are a very young,
raw country. Youth, in the educational stage, is apt to offend against
good taste. We are made up, at present, of odds and ends. You are sure
to get hold of some odds. The ends require to be unravelled."
"I shall try and unravel them."
"Your brother is trying to do so now." He glanced down the row of
deck-chairs to where Sir Mordaunt Ballinger sat on a stool beside the
recumbent figure of a lady, so thickly veiled that it was impossible
to see if she were young or old. "Have you made Mrs. Courtly's
acquaintance? She is rather a complicated skein to unravel."
"We have exchanged a few words--just enough for me to know that she has
a sweet voice and a very gracious manner."
"She is a charming woman, and a clever one. Not that she does anything
or knows anything particularly well--at all events, much less than half
our highly educated women. But she has that fine receptive capacity
which makes her seize the scope and meaning of most things that do
not demand preliminary study. Of course she is called 'superficial;'
but what does that mean? That she has the artistic instinct unusually
developed in a number of subjects, and an insatiable curiosity about
everything."
"I had no idea she was that sort of person. I thought--I had been told
that she was very fond of admiration--and--"
"I know all you heard. You need not tell me. She is often
misunderstood; most of all, by her own sex. She is fond of dress, and
dancing, and admiration. She is religious, and philosophical, and
pictorial, and poetical--what is she not?--in turn. But she is never
ill-natured, never slanderous. A female Proteus."
"You evidently know her well?"
"I do, but we have always met in Europe. I have never visited her in
New England, where she has a charming house, and entertains a great
deal."
"Has she been long a widow--for I conclude she is one?"
"Her husband died several years since, and she has never yet made up
her mind to change her state. She had one desperate love-affair long
ago. Whether it is that has prevented her marrying again, or whether
her experience of matrimony was not such as to make her desire to
repeat the experiment"--his smile was not pleasant as he said that--"I
do not know. I only know she is the best friend in the world, and that
women are jealous of her because she attracts all sorts and conditions
of men. The lion and the lamb lie down together on her hearth-rug. But
she loves the lion better than the lamb."
"Mordaunt is not a lion--neither is he quite a lamb," laughed his
sister.
"Oh! but he will be made a lion of in the States. The son of so eminent
a man as your father--whose name was so prominent in our country
during the _Alabama_ dispute, will be interviewed, and banqueted, and
have receptions given for him, all the time. Most of this you will have
to endure also. I hope you won't hate it as much as I should."
"I can't believe that you are right, Mr. Ferrars; but if greatness is
thrust upon me in this unexpected manner, I hope I shall be amused. I
have no idea of _expecting_ to be bored with anything. A sense of humor
carries one through so much; and I delight in American humor."
"If you expect that every one is going to talk like Mark Twain, you
will be mistaken. You will find a good deal of unconscious humor
occasionally in the sayings and doings of my countrymen. I hope it will
carry you through those dreary hours, the ladies' luncheons, and all
those terrible afflictions!"
"Must they be afflictions because you are not admitted to them?"
laughed Miss Ballinger.
"Not necessarily. But the tall talk of superior women is bad enough
when it has to bend to the level of our comprehension. What it must be
when they are alone--"
"Well, they will have to bend to the level of mine. I shall collapse
if they ask me, as Miss Lobb did this morning, 'what influence I
considered the ancient religions of Egypt had on the manners and
customs of the Western world?' I murmured, 'I suppose it has tended to
a love of cats,' and fled."
Ferrars laughed, for the first time. "The old maid must have taken it
as personal. I think, in some prior state of existence, she must have
been a cat, though I doubt the Egyptians worshipping her."
"Her voice is very trying. Explain to me why your highly educated
people who talk so much of 'culture' take so little trouble about
training the voice? For the voice _can_ be trained, you know."
"Certainly it can; and our singers prove that the American voice is a
raw material that can be worked to advantage. But then singing pays,
and speaking doesn't."
"Yet you are much given to 'orating!'" said Miss Ballinger, with a
mischievous twitch of her lips. "Is not every American born to hold
forth?"
"Well! As the Yankee said when he stood before Niagara for the first
time, 'What hinders?' We are in the rapids of life. Why should the
cataract of our impetuosity be checked? We have got to do a deal of
talking to make leeway and overtake other nations."
"I think you have overtaken them. Are you a member of Congress?"
"Heaven forbid! What should I do there?"
"Serve your country, I suppose. You do not strike me as a good
American, Mr. Ferrars."
"I am too good an American, and too irritable a man, to stand by and
see all the jobbery and corruption that goes on, and not raise my
voice. And what good would that do, even if I were elected, which I
doubt? There are men shouting their lungs out all the time; there are
papers, every day, denouncing the acts of a man like ----, and yet he
will continue to be a member of our administration until he is hurled
from power, and the opposition set up _their_ gods in the temple. That
is the result of our beautiful universal suffrage--what you are fast
coming to."
"Are you a Democrat or a Republican?"
"Who can say what he is, in the present day? One feels disposed to vote
with the opposition, whatever it is."
"Perhaps that is your principle through life," said Miss Ballinger,
demurely, as she bound a Shetland veil round her face, which the wind
was buffeting too roughly. After that he lost the sunlight, and the
cloud-like shadows that crossed it. The next moment she continued, "You
spoke of the papers just now. If they denounce corruption, they are not
as bad as we are always told they are."
"Their denunciations lose all weight, because they vilify every one.
The Angel Gabriel wouldn't be safe from their attacks. No man's home
or his most private domestic concerns are sacred. No lie is too
preposterous for them to invent; no scandal too hideous for them to
propagate. As no man who brought an action for libel in the States
ever got substantial redress, they carry on their vile trade with
impunity--until some editor happens to be shot by an outraged husband,
or father, when the community says, complacently, "Ah! served him
right!" Can you wonder that the best citizens often shrink from the
pillory of election for office, whether it be the municipal town
council, or anything else? To have their early difficulties, their
family griefs--it may be their family disgrace--their most secret
wounds, torn open; to be pelted with the rotten eggs of vilification
day after day--what man, unless he be made of adamant, or is sunk so
low as to be absolutely indifferent to public opinion, would willingly
subject himself to all this?"
"If a man had a very strong sense of public duty, and if his record
were a clean one, I should think he would. How are things ever to be
improved if all you educated men say this? By the bye, what _do_ you do
with your life, Mr. Ferrars? Something more than vibrate between Europe
and America, I suppose?"
"Well, what I do can be done as well on one side of the Atlantic as the
other. I was brought up to the study of medicine. But I gave that up
when I was still young. Now I do nothing but write."
"Caustic criticism of your own country, I suppose? Anonymous?"
"Yes, anonymous."
"Perhaps you wrote 'Plutocracy,' the authorship of which excited so
much curiosity, a few years ago?"
"I should not own it if I had," he replied, rather sharply. "I hold
Sir Walter Scott's line of conduct quite justifiable in such cases. No
secret could be kept if it was necessary to stand and deliver to the
first highwayman who demanded your treasure."
"So you look on me as a highwayman?" laughed the young Englishwoman,
merrily. "I assure you I had no desire to rob you of--"
"You misunderstand me," he interrupted, looking a little annoyed. "I
did not think of applying the image--a stupid one, I admit--to you. As
a matter of fact, I never write fiction. What I do write, for personal
reasons, I do not put my name to; and, consequently, consider myself
quite at liberty to repudiate."
The gong sounded for luncheon at this moment, and Sir Mordaunt
rose and came up to his sister. He was a tall man, with rather too
small a head for his height, but remarkably well built, and with
that indefinable air of high breeding which is a gift of the gods,
bestowed now and again upon the low-born, but not to be purchased nor
transmitted; depending neither upon the traditions of Eton nor the
tailoring of Poole or Johns. He had a frank, intelligent face, with
indications of possible but transient explosion, in the quick flash
of the eye, and occasional contraction of the brow. But he was more
disposed to smile than to scowl through life. His laugh, and his way of
speaking, strongly marked by what Americans call "the English accent,"
resembled his sister's; and there all likeness between them began and
ended. Miss Ballinger's personality, to a close observer, conveyed a
sense of reserved force under that light manner and readily responsive
smile which her brother's entirely lacked. As some one expressed it,
"all his goods were in his front shop-window." There was nothing to
be explored, nothing to be connived at, in a nature affectionate, if
not very profound; pleasure-loving, and, as some thought, conceited;
quick-tempered, and, as some thought, occasionally impertinent; a
nature every fold of which was exposed to the light that revealed its
spots, and the accretions of dust that are apt to gather upon goods
that are exposed in front shop-windows.
"Come along to luncheon, Grace! I'm as hungry as a hunter. How do you
get on with that Yankee? I hope he was as entertaining as my widow. She
is perfectly charming. I want you to talk to her. She knows almost as
much as you do about pictures and things--and she is awfully amusing."
"I have been listening to her praises from Mr. Ferrars, who, by the
bye, is not a Yankee. He is a Southerner by birth, and a cosmopolitan
by choice--an odd man, and clever; but I don't feel quite sure whether
I like him. All the same, I wish his seat at meals was next me. Mr.
Gunning, with his narrow little mind centred on himself, is such a
bore."
"Mrs. Courtly tells me he is 'a dude,' and tremendously rich. They
think no end of him in New York."
"I dare say; but, as his riches don't interest me, I wish I hadn't to
sit next him three times a day for the next week. I had so much rather
have that nice old man, Senator something, who looks like a portrait by
Tintoret, with his white beard."
"What a queer girl you are! always cottoning to old men. Gunning is a
good-looking chap; talks a little too much about his yacht and his
athletics, and his big game; but I don't think he's half a bad sort."
His sister smiled a subtle, enigmatical smile, and gently pinched her
brother's arm, on which she leaned, as they walked along.
"How well I know you, Mordy! You wouldn't judge him so leniently if
he were a penniless Englishman--'something in the city.' You are at
present resolved to see everything American _en beau_."
"Of course I am. I only wish I had an American girl with some fun in
her next me at table instead of that Lady Clydesdale."
"Well! She is American enough, in all conscience, with her republican
ideas! She seems to me _plus royaliste que le roi_, if one can use such
a conservative figure of speech about her."
"Only the fun's wanting. She is in such deadly earnest, with her rights
and her wrongs, and her emancipation from social slavery, and all the
rest of it."
They had reached the saloon by this time; and most of the famished
passengers were already seated. Opposite Sir Mordaunt Ballinger and
his sister sat a couple concerning whom Grace felt a mild curiosity.
It had not been sufficiently strong to prompt her to speak hitherto;
and they were so quiet and retiring, it was pretty certain they
would never take the initiative. Were they husband and wife? Hardly.
The lady looked a little older than her companion. She had a sweet,
tranquil face; and yet, for all its tranquillity, one read there the
lines of suffering and sorrow. Her abundant brown hair was smoothly
parted over a brow that was too large for beauty, without fringe or
curl, to mitigate the defect in proportion. Her dress was of Puritanic
simplicity. She wore no bracelet, or ornament of any description; but
on her delicate small hand was a wedding-ring.
Her companion, without being ill-built, had the sort of figure which
looks as if he had never been trained to athletics, and is unused to
active exercise. His hands and feet were almost too small for his
height. His chest was contracted; and he had a cough which, without
being constant, made itself heard now and again. His smile was a
very pleasant one, lighting up the entire face, as some smiles seem
incapable of doing; and his rare laugh was merry as a boy's. He wore
his clothes badly, and the clothes themselves were ill-made: facts
which disqualified him in Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's estimation, but
hardly affected his sister. What did affect her was the curiously
intense, powerful young face which rose, beardless, above the
loose-tied neck-cloth. It was too thin and colorless for manly beauty,
though the lines were fine, and the eyes of extraordinary depth.
His voice, like his companion's, was low, and, except by certain
expressions and the pronunciation of certain words, it would not have
been apparent that he was American.
On the lady's right sat Mr. Ruggs, from Chicago, who had been to Europe
to enlist sympathy for the World's Fair, and who held forth to Lady
Clydesdale, opposite him, as to the wonders of the show, "which I tell
you, ma'am, will knock the Paris Exhibition into a cocked hat!" His
opulence and prodigality of illustration seemed a little oppressive to
the gentlewoman beside him. Her companion had Miss Lobb on his left.
That highly cultured lady tackled him at once upon the subject of
undeveloped cosmic forces. Grace asked herself whether he would not be
as glad to escape from the cosmic forces as she would be to forego the
rapid vehemence of the young man from New York. And so, resolved that
the stream of white cloth should divide her no longer from her opposite
neighbors, she startled them with this original observation, addressed
indifferently to both:
"How hungry being at sea makes one!"
The lady responded with a fluttering smile, "I have not experienced it
as yet. I hope my son will do so soon. He has been sick."
Her son? Grace was astonished. And sick? Why, the twenty-four hours
that had passed since leaving Liverpool had been absolutely calm. In
her expressive countenance the young man read possibly what was passing
in her mind.
"_You_ would say 'ill,'" he observed, with a smile. "We use the word in
the old Scriptural sense."
"Yes," said his mother, "'sick unto death.' He really was that. We have
been quite a time in Europe, in consequence."
"Where were you?" asked Grace. "At some Baths?"
"Homburg is the only Bath worth going to," struck in Mr. Gunning. "Lots
going on there, all the time."
"Horrid place. I hate it," said Miss Ballinger. Then, looking at her
opposite neighbor, she continued, "I hope you were at a nice place. How
long were you in Europe?"
"Four months. I was sent right off to Aix-la-Chapelle, after rheumatic
fever, and then on to Spa. We had very little time to travel, but we
did go around in Belgium and Holland for three weeks."
"One picks up awfully sweet delf and old oak in Holland," said Mr.
Gunning.
"What! You saw nothing of England, then? And this is your first visit
to Europe?" Miss Ballinger looked almost indignant as she asked this.
The mother answered, quickly:
"It is our first visit, and I never should have come but for my son's
health. I should dearly love to visit the cathedral towns, and all the
old historical castles in England, but I guess I never shall."
"Yes you will," said her son. "I mean to go next fall, and to take you
with me.... My mother has lived more than twenty-five years in a New
England village, without going further than the sea-shore. She enjoys
travel, but fancies she cannot leave home."
"When one has gotten a house, and help, it's difficult to go right
away, even if there were no other reason," said the mother, shaking
her head. "But _you_ can go. There's no call for _you_ to spend your
vacation at home."
"If one doesn't go to Europe," said Gunning, "the only place is
Newport. You must come to Newport, Miss Ballinger--you really must.
It's yachting, dancing, or picnics all the time. You should see how
our swells live there. Why, Cowes isn't in it--it isn't really. Our
prominent cottagers give such entertainments! Why, there was one
luncheon party last year that cost--"
"Don't tell me, Mr. Gunning. It makes me feel that I am a pauper."
Miss Lobb here interposed to observe that it was only in effete old
countries that pauperism was tolerated. She looked through her double
glasses defiantly at Grace as she added, "With us it is exterminated."
Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's face was convulsed with suppressed laughter,
as he touched his sister's elbow at this moment. "Listen to Mr. Ruggs's
account of Chicago. If it doesn't make you wish to go there! Will you
tell my sister what you were saying about your city?"
"I tell you, miss," said the fat little man, turning a pair of
twinkling eyes on Grace, and with an expression so shrewd and humorous
that she felt uncertain how far he was in earnest, how far endeavoring
to impose on her credulity--"I tell you, miss, we are going to have the
finest city in the whole creation. Don't you make a mistake. There will
be nothing to touch it, until the New Jerusalem is built. Why, already
it takes more than two hours to drive from one end of it to the other!
We've got a street twelve miles long. We've got a tonsorial saloon
paved with dollar-pieces, and a hotel of alabaster and gold. I tell
you, miss, there is nothing to touch it in Europe!"
"And about the World's Fair, Mr. Ruggs? tell us what you propose
doing?" asked Sir Mordaunt.
"Well, sir, we propose bringing over a few of your European princes,
and having them on show. We are in treaty for the Duke of Braganza, as
direct descendant of Columbus, whose bones we feel like having--if we
can--but, odd to say, they make some difficulties. The bones and the
descendants will come right over in galleons made on the model of those
that brought Columbus. We also propose to bring over the Sphinx--"
"What! From Egypt?" Miss Ballinger laughed outright. "Poor Sphinx! It
will feel very strange away from its native desert."
"Oh, we'll blow a lot of sand up right around it. We've got plenty on
the shore of our lake. That's for the classical advertisement. Then
for the Scriptural one. I did think of having Pharaoh in the Red Sea,
and dividing the water by hydraulic pressure; but making the waves
red might create a sort of a--feeling--the citizens might feel kinder
uncomfortable. There's no reason against the Garden of Eden--plenty of
apple-trees, and snakes are common--there's only a little difficulty
about Adam and Eve. However, I've no doubt we shall hit on something.
People do like something Scriptural. There's Ammergau, now! That would
do fust-rate, only those peasants wouldn't come."
"But you're going to have a bigger theatre than the world has ever
seen, I suppose?"
"We have one, sir. And as to acting, have you seen our Clara Morris?
I tell you, sir, there is nothing in creation like it! Why, when she
weeps on the stage, it is enough to make an iron dog come down from a
door-step and lick her hand! Don't talk to me of your Bernhardts and
your Ristor-_eyes_--not but what we'll have them, too, just to show how
superior the _reel_ American article is!"
"And pictures? Are you going in for pictures?"
"I believe you, sir! Why, the pictures at the Paris Exhibition'll be
like a pack of playing-cards compared with ours. I calculate we'll have
the biggest picture on show that has ever been seen. It's forty-two
feet long. I've concluded to bid half-price for it when our show is
over, and to present it to the city."
Here Lady Clydesdale, who was on the other side of Sir Mordaunt, struck
in her oar, and a powerful one it was. She was what Mr. Ruggs styled "a
fine female, but fleshy," and her arrogant assumption of humility was
irritating to others besides the young baronet; perhaps to none more
than to Americans.
"I am sorry to hear you say," she observed, quickly, and in a voice
like a trumpet, "that you are going to imitate the follies of Europe,
in attaching any importance or giving any prominence to princes. It
is degrading to distinguish one individual above another, except for
personal merit."
"Yours and mine are beyond question, Lady Clydesdale," laughed
Ballinger, parenthetically. It was impertinent; but he was nettled. She
turned and rent him.
"My principles and practice are too well known at home for me to argue
with _you_, Sir Mordaunt. I would resign my coronet to-morrow. I would
abolish all class distinctions. I would herd with the humblest, I
would dine with my servants, and give them all the luxuries I enjoy
myself--the piano, horses, carriages--they should live as I do, did the
prejudice of society permit it. I expected to find it more enlightened
in America than in England. I thought there was one country, at least,
where all men were equal! I am disappointed."
What Mr. Ruggs's rejoinder was, for he did rejoin, and how the battle
was fought, Miss Ballinger never heard; for Gunning, who had been
listening to her ladyship's onslaught in amazement, here said in an
undertone:
"Is she mad? Fancied we were all equal! Why, we are just as exclusive
as ever we can be in New York. The Four Hundred shut their doors
against every one who hasn't money, I can tell you."
"Ah! Brains count for nothing, I suppose?"
"Nothing out of Wall Street. A man must work, of course, to make his
pile--if he doesn't inherit one. I was an only child. Lucky, wasn't I?
Never had to work."
"Those who have to work are the lucky ones, in my opinion."
He looked surprised, and shook his head.
"Couldn't have my yacht or my team--couldn't go off to shoot in the
Rockies--couldn't do lots of things, if I had to work. Then, getting
up early every morning.... Oh! it wouldn't suit me." After a minute's
pause he went on: "You'll let me drive you in my team, one day? I'll
get up a luncheon-party for you somewhere in the country. We'll have a
band, and dance afterwards. We'll have a rare, good time."
"I shall do whatever my brother likes in New York. You must ask him.
I shall have absolutely no will of my own. Will you give me those
biscuits?... Thank you."
"We call them crackers. About your brother, I'll see that we have a lot
of bright girls. There's Miss Planter. She is a belle; she will just
suit him. She was made a lot of in London last season, I believe. She
will have a million of dollars. Not bad, eh?"
"Bad, if she is to be married for the sake of them. It is fortunate
she is attractive. I am glad that I have only enough to keep body and
soul alive. No one will marry _me_ for my money!"
"Oh, well, it won't signify to you, having nothing--" He stopped short
and smiled at her. Then, though the connection of ideas was not very
clear, he went on: "I say, Miss Ballinger, this is the second time I
have been to Europe, but I've never seen anything of English society.
I have fooled around in Paris and London a bit, but I have a mind next
year to take a place in England, and hunt. Do you think I should like
it? They say English women don't take to American men. Is that so?"
"We know so few. Most of you are too absorbed in business to spend much
time with us. But your women are very popular. My brother says they are
so much easier to get on with than his own countrywomen."
"That's right enough. But are not we American men easy to get on with,
as well?"
"Certainly--perhaps too easy, sometimes. But, having got on, the thing
is to remain on. I have heard it complained sometimes that Americans
lose ground by assurance. If you come to England, I dare say you will
be made a great deal of, because you are a rich young man. But if
you want to be popular with any one besides manœuvring mammas, take
my advice--never talk about your money, never presume upon it, in any
way. The nicest people resent that.... I am going on deck; it is so hot
here."
She delivered herself of this little homily simply, almost laughingly,
and rose, leaving the young man to his half-finished luncheon. The
mother opposite, without waiting for her son, upon whom Miss Lobb had
once again fastened her fangs, had risen from the table, and Miss
Ballinger followed and joined her on deck.