back to my chair on deck. Sally wasn't in her place, and as I was
wondering what had become of her, the dressing-for-dinner bugle went
wailing over the ship like a hungry Banshee. I said to myself that
Sally must have gone early because her frock was to be particularly
elaborate. I felt conscious of having heaps of interesting things to
tell, and I understood exactly what Victoria means when she says she's
in one of her "pretty and popular moods."
I danced into our stateroom, where only a drawn curtain covers the open
doorway. No one was there, and the cabin was so quiet that it seemed to
greet me with a warning "S-sh!"
Down fell my spirits with a dull thud, though I didn't know why. My
joyousness changed to what storybook writers describe as a "foreboding
of disaster"; but when I have it, it's generally connected with a
lecture from Mother, so I know it only as a sneaky, "I haven't eaten
the cream" sort of feeling.
Just as I had begun to take off my frock, Louise appeared at the door
which leads into the little drawing-room. She said that if I pleased,
Madame would be glad to see me in her cabin. I hurried across to the
other state-room opposite ours, and there found Mrs. Ess Kay, in a
gorgeously embroidered pink satin Japanese thing, which she calls a
kimona. She was sitting in a chair in front of the makeshift
dressing-table, putting on her rings, and clasping bracelets on her
wrists with vicious snaps. Sally, who hadn't begun to dress, was
standing up, looking almost cross; that is, with different features
from hers, she might have succeeded in looking cross.
"Sit down, Betty, please; I want to talk to you," said Mrs. Ess Kay.
Somehow, it always makes me feel stiff when she "Betty's" me, as my old
nurse says it does with your ears if you eat broad beans.
"If I do, I shall be late for dinner," said I, just as if a minute ago
I hadn't been dying to pour out my news.
"Never mind dinner, my dear girl," replied Mrs. Ess Kay, with an air
which I do believe she tried to copy from Mother. "What I have to say
is more important than dinner. I hope what I have been hearing isn't
true."
"That depends upon what it was," I retorted, disguising my pertness
with a smile.
"Don't think I've been tattling," said Sally. "Whatever my faults may
be, _I_ haven't a Rubber Neck."
I didn't know in the least what she meant; but afterwards she explained
that if your neck is always pivoting round, to pry into other people's
affairs, it is a Rubber Neck, and I shall remember the expression to
tell Stan when I go home. He will like to add it to his collection of
strange beasts.
Mrs. Ess Kay partly turned her back upon Sally. "The dear Duchess" (she
always speaks of Mother in that way,) "the dear Duchess has entrusted
you to my charge, Betty, and I don't know what I shall do if you take
advantage of me by playing naughty tricks whenever I am incapacitated
from chaperoning you for half an hour."
One would have thought I was a trained dog! I simply stared with saucer
eyes, and she went on. "Mrs. Collingwood came in to enquire for my
headache, and she told me that you have been running about begging for
money to give to a common man in the steerage. I sent instantly for
Sally, but she either knows, or pretends to know nothing."
I rushed into explanations, sure that when Mrs. Ess Kay understood, I
should be pronounced "not guilty." But to my surprise, her chin grew
squarer and squarer, and her eyes harder and lighter, till they looked
almost white.
"I don't want to be harsh," she said at last, in the tone people use
when they're walking on the ragged edge of their patience, "but for the
Duchess's sake, I must be _firm_. It was very wrong of Tommy Doremus to
let you make yourself so conspicuous. This may lead to your being
dreadfully misunderstood and putting yourself and all of us in a false
position. The man may be a _butcher_ for all you know."
"His complexion isn't pink and white enough for a butcher's," said I.
"Besides, I thought that in America one man was as good as another."
"You were never more mistaken in your life, my dear girl; and the
sooner you correct such an impression the better, or you may get into
serious trouble from which I can't save you. If the steerage man isn't
a butcher, he's probably a professional swimmer, and the whole thing
was a _scheme_, to advertise himself. In fact, I am pretty certain from
what Mrs. Collingwood said, it _was_ that. And I want you to promise me
solemnly that you will _not_ go around helping to advertise the
creature any more. If you say you admire such a person, people will
think you're like the Matinee Girls, who wait at stage doors and run
after actors."
I was so angry, that I "talked back"; and it finally ended in our
relations being somewhat strained at dinner, which ruined my appetite,
until a peculiarly soothing iced pudding came on.
Afterwards, Mrs. Ess Kay was cool to Mr. Doremus, and would have been
cold, I think, if he weren't Mrs. Van der Windt's cousin. He lounged up
to our place on deck to give me the news that the Third Class Hero (as
he calls the bronze young man) refused to be Second Class. He had asked
permission to give the cabin offered him to the child whose life he had
saved, and the mother.
"It's for you to say yes or no, Lady Betty," announced Mr. Doremus,
"because it's your show; you set the top spinning."
"She is to have nothing more to do with the affair," Mrs. Ess Kay
answered for me quickly. "She is very sorry she commenced it, and has
lost the small interest she felt in the beginning. I do hope that
tramp, or beggar, or whatever he is, hasn't gotten it in his conceited
head that Lady Betty Bulkeley has bothered herself about his
insignificant affairs, or he'll be thrusting himself upon her notice in
some way which will be very disagreeable for _Me_, as her guardian."
"Well, he has sent a message of thanks to everyone concerned," said Mr.
Tommy Doremus. "I don't know whether he put Lady Betty at the top of
the list or not, and if that's the way you feel about our nice little
stunt, I expect it's just as well not to enquire further."
All the rest of the trip has been spoiled for me, by the hateful way in
which the excitement of that day ended, and it does seem too bad, for
everything might have been so nice.
Whether people really do make ill-natured jokes or not, I don't know;
but anyhow, Mrs. Ess Kay keeps hinting that they do, which is almost as
disagreeable for me. She says that they have nicknamed the bronze man
"Lady Betty's Hero"; and this has made me so self-conscious that I
can't bear to go near the part of the deck where you look over into the
steerage, for fear some silly creatures may think I'm trying to see
him. I feel as if I had been a conspicuous idiot, and I'm so
uncomfortable with Mrs. Ess Kay now, that I expect to be wretched in
her house. I can't talk it over even with Sally, because, after all,
she's Mrs. Ess Kay's cousin. I wish I had a nose two inches long, and
green hair, and then perhaps Mother and Vic would have let me stop at
home.
Still, I can't help taking an interest in ship life, and now that it's
the morning of the last day on board, I look back on it all as if it
ought to have been even more fun than it was.
I enjoyed hearing about the Marconigrams when they came; it seemed like
living in a tale by Stan's favourite, Jules Verne, to have messages
come flying to us in mid-ocean, like invisible carrier pigeons. I
enjoyed having Mr. Doremus tell me about his luck in the big pools,
when the men bet on the day's run; and I'm afraid I rather revelled in
seeing a row on deck one evening, when one man accused another of being
a cheat and a professional gambler, and almost cried about some money
he'd lost. If I had been the first man, I wouldn't have trusted the
other in the beginning, because he had fat lips, greasy black curls,
and wicked eyes so close together you felt they might run into one, if
he winked too hard on a hot day. But if I _had_ been so stupid as to
trust him, I would have been ashamed to make a fuss afterwards. I think
people ought to be sporting.
I liked the "Captain's dinner," too, in honour of the last night on
board, with the flags and paper-flower decorations, the band playing
military music, the dishes on the menu named after famous generals, and
the stewards filing in, in a long procession, when the salon had been
darkened, each carrying a bright-coloured, illuminated ice, and cake
with tiny English, and American, and German flags stuck into the top.
Yes, I liked everything, except--but now it is nearly over. America is
just round the corner of the world.
III
ABOUT NEW YORK
After you have seen nothing but water for days, it's odd how excited
you are on seeing a little land. Just a little, little land, and not at
all interesting to look at; a strip of grey sand, or a patch of green
grass; and you have been only a few days away from such things, yet
somehow you want to jump up and down and shout for joy.
More than half the first-class passengers on our ship were Americans,
coming home, and I suppose they had gone away because they wanted to
go. If they had liked, they could have stopped in their own country as
well as not; and I heard some of them saying during the voyage that if
they could, they would spend nine months out of the year in Paris; but
they made as much fuss over the first lump of sand we saw as if we were
discovering the North Pole. Some of them had taken this trip a dozen
times or maybe more, but anyone would have thought it was as new to
them as to me.
It seemed as if I were sailing, in a dream, to a dream land, and
everything would be a dream, till I found myself waking up at home. If
anyone had pinched me, I hardly believe I should have felt it, as I
stood by the rail, while we steamed towards New York. We passed a big
fort, and some neat little houses, which looked like officers'
quarters. There were Long Island and Coney Island, which Mr. Doremus
said I must be "personally conducted" to see, some day when I felt
young and frivolous; and by and by I heard people exclaiming "There's
Liberty--there she is! Bless the dear old girl!"
While I was wondering whether they were talking of a lady, or a ship, I
caught sight of a majestic giantess, obligingly holding a torch up to
light the world. Then I knew it was the Statue which I had read about.
"What do you think of her?" asked Mr. Doremus.
"She's a _grande dame_," I said. "Now I know why your girls hold
themselves so well. They're trying to live up to the Ideal American
Woman. But she isn't as big as I thought she would be. Nothing ever is
as big as you think it's going to be, especially when Americans have
told you about it; for one has been brought up to believe that their
big things are bigger than anybody else's in the whole world."
"So they are," said Mr. Doremus, "only where all the things are big,
you don't notice them, for the high grass. And over there's some of the
grass."
He pointed, and I saw a great number of enormous objects, shaped like
chimneys, and apparently about a mile high, scattered aimlessly along
the horizon, which was a brilliant, limpid blue.
"What are they?" I asked. "Great, strange, factories of some sort?"
"No. Houses where pretty women live, and offices where men make the
money for them to live on."
"You must be joking. Women would be afraid to perch up there in the
sky. Besides, it would take too long to go up and down."
"Nothing takes long in America. And it comes natural to our women to
perch up high. Statues aren't the only things we buy pedestals for,
this side of the porpoise-tank. You just wait and see."
"I don't need to wait to see that American men are nice to women," said
I; "perhaps no nicer than Englishmen, really, only you seem to take a
great deal more trouble. Fancy all the men at Mrs. Van der Windt's
table drawing lots every night for the right to sit by her and the two
Miss Eastmans; I don't believe it would have occurred to Englishmen.
The ones who _really_ wanted to sit there, would have tried to get to
their places first, that's all. I do think it was pretty of you."
"Wasn't it? especially supposing none of us particularly wanted--but
never mind. Talking of pretty things, here are the docks."
They were big enough to satisfy even my expectations, and I wished that
I'd insisted on being taken by someone long ago, to visit the London
docks, so that I might know whether ours were better or worse. One
never thinks of going to see things at home; but I began to suspect
that I might some day be stabbed with jealous pangs and need to be
stuffed with a lot of facts about England--though until I knew
Americans I've been in the habit of thinking facts the least
interesting things in the world. They seemed like chairs to sit on or
floors to walk on without noticing what you were doing; but I suppose
it might be awkward without chairs and floors.
Soon we were near enough to New York to see the tremendous chimney
things clearly, and they sharpened the impression that I was sailing
straight into a dream. There could be no such things in the real world;
they wouldn't be possible. But the dream felt very interesting and
intense all of a sudden, and I didn't want to wake up from it just
then, in spite of Mrs. Ess Kay.
The tall shapes were bright and vivid now, as giant hollyhocks growing
in irregular rows. Still, they did not look one bit like houses, or
offices where people could work without going stark, staring mad. I got
a queer idea in my head that the houses themselves must be buried deep
underground, like bulbs, with only their towers sticking up.
The next thing that happened in the dream, was slowing majestically
into our own dock, and that was wonderful. The whole place was alive
with faces, mostly pretty girls' faces, under fascinating hats, gay as
flowers in a flower-show; parterre above parterre of brilliant
blossoms; and they had all been grown in honour of us.
There was a wild waving of handkerchiefs on the ship, and a frantic
fluttering of white among the flowers, as if a flock of butterflies had
been frightened up into the air. Still we were a long time getting in,
and I grew quite impatient; but finally Louise, who had attended to my
packing, took charge of my handbag, my sunshade and coat, with her
mistress's and Miss Woodburn's things. The moment had come to bid the
ship good-bye.
"Now," said Mrs. Ess Kay, slipping her arm into mine, "I wonder, dear
child, if you would mind being left alone to deal with the custom-house
people? You'd stand under your own letter 'B,' of course."
"Oh, Katherine, do you think even Letter B, which sounds so like a
warning to young men, a proper chaperon for a Duchess's daughter?"
exclaimed Sally Woodburn.
I laughed, but Mrs. Ess Kay didn't. She evidently considers things
connected with the American Custom House no fit subject for frivolity.
She went on, without answering; "I'm under 'K,' and Sally 'W.' We'll
both have all we can attend to wrestling with our own Fiends, and
Louise will be just as busy. But you're a British subject, on a short
visit to this country, and they won't be as diabolical to you, dear. I
did all the swearing necessary for you in the saloon, with my own, when
the tiresome man came on board, and there's really nothing left for you
to bother with on the dock, except to open your boxes and say you have
nothing to declare."
I was glad that since profanity had been called for in the saloon,
owing to the tiresomeness of a man, it had been Mrs. Ess Kay who was
obliged to give vent to it, not I; but I felt rather defrauded that I
couldn't have heard, and I wondered if she had gone so far as to
mention "damn." All I said out loud, however, was that I was sure I
could manage very well in the docks, and Mrs. Ess Kay appeared much
relieved. "That's perfectly sweet of you, Betty," she said, launching a
daggery glance at poor, inoffensive Sally, for some reason which I
couldn't understand. "I hope you won't think I'm horrid not to have
asked you to label your baggage 'K,' so it could go with mine. It's
better not, for _everyone_ concerned; I'll explain afterwards _why_;
and Louise shall take you to 'B.'"
Louise did take me to "B," which they had thoughtfully printed very
large and black on a wooden wall of the dock, in a row with all the
other letters of the alphabet. A good many people from the ship were
collecting beneath theirs, as if they were animals getting ready to
join the procession for the ark, under the heading of Cat or Elephant,
as the case might be; and they all seemed worried and apprehensive, as
you do at the dentist's, even when you try to distract your mind by
looking at the pictures in _Punch_.
Louise put my bag on the wooden floor, and folded my coat on it.
"Miladi will do well to sit down," said she. "It may be that the
baggage do not come _immediatement_." With this she bustled away to the
Louise rabbit warren, wherever it was, leaving me to the tender mercies
of fellow "B's," who began to swarm round me and buzz distractedly.
I subsided on the bag, which was very like sitting on the floor; but it
was stifling down there among people's feet; besides, mine soon got
"pins and needles"; so presently I popped up like a Jack out of his
Box, and almost knocked off a man's nose with the crown of my hat.
I said "I _beg_ your pardon!" though what the nose was doing so near
the top of my head I couldn't conceive, until its owner (fumbling with
one hand for his handkerchief to staunch a drop of blood, and snatching
off his straw hat with the other, already full of notebooks and things)
blurted out abruptly: "Are you Lady Bulkeley?"
I _was_ surprised!
"No," said I. "I'm Lady Betty Bulkeley."
"That's all right," said the nose man, as if he forgave me for being
myself. "I didn't know but you'd want to be called Lady Bulkeley by
strangers."
"It isn't my name," I said, more puzzled than ever. I would have tried
to be dignified, as he was a perky-looking young man in an alpaca coat;
but when you have just made a person's nose bleed with your hat, it
would seem unfeeling to be too frigid,--though I believe an application
of ice is supposed to be beneficial.
"Shall I call you Lady Betty then?" asked the man, patting his nose
with his handkerchief, which luckily for my nerves had already a
pattern of pink dots on it.
"I don't see why you should call me anything," said I.
With that, he produced a card, with a whole string of words printed on
it, and poked it under my eyes. "I was just going to introduce myself,"
he said. "I represent _The New York Flashlight_, and I've been sent by
my paper to get something from you, if you'll oblige me."
"Something from me?" I repeated, bewildered. "Is it anything to do with
the Customs? I've nothing to declare."
"Just tell me, please, something about your family. Your brother's the
Duke of Stanforth, isn't he?" (He pronounced it "Dook.")
"Yes, but----"
"Thanks. Young and unmarried, isn't he?"
"Yes. But----"
"Ever been on this side?"
"No. But----"
"He'll come some day, won't he? Most unmarried Dukes do."
"I don't know, I'm sure. Really, I think----"
"Excuse me. You're going to stay with Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, I believe.
Will you make a lengthy visit?"
"I don't----"
"You must have met one or two of our smartest young men on board. What
do you think of them as compared with Englishmen?"
Long before this I had made up my mind that he couldn't have anything
to do with the Customs, or if he did, that it was no wonder Mrs. Ess
Kay had been driven to swearing in the saloon. I was glad now that his
nose was bleeding, and I turned my back upon him, because it was the
most emphatic gesture I could think of. But as I faced round the other
way, wondering if my luggage would ever come, another man pushed
through the "B's" who had got their boxes, and almost bounded into a
foot of unoccupied space in front of me.
"Lady Bulkeley?" he shot at me, like history repeating itself; only he
pronounced me as if my name were founded on my size and weight.
This time I didn't answer. I simply stood at bay, and stared, trying to
look as much like Mother as possible. But the new man didn't seem to
mind this in the least, so apparently my effort was not a success.
"I'm _The Evening Bat_," he remarked hurriedly, with an air of valuing
his time at so much a second.
I was sorry he was a bat, for I've always been fond of bats, they are
such soft, grey, velvet things; and I should have liked to tell him
that he was much more like a chicken hawk, only that would have been
vulgar; and, besides, I didn't intend to pose as chicken to his hawk.
By way of not letting myself be gobbled up, I remained silent; but I
couldn't help starting when a voice behind me exclaimed: "Ah, there, my
chappie. You're welcome to the milk. I've skimmed off the cream. Ta,
ta."
It was the _Flashlight_ flashing at the _Evening Bat_.
The creature was not blinded, however. He seemed difficult to
disconcert. The only response he made was to grin, and push his hat a
little farther back on his head. An inch more, and it must have slid
down over his collar--which was so low in the neck in front that it
gave me the creeps.
"There's plenty of milk and roses, too, I guess," said he, staring in
such a way that I blushed, and was vexed with myself for blushing. I
peered anxiously about, hoping to see a face I knew, even ever so
slightly, which might be summoned to the rescue. But all the "B's" were
passionately minding their own business, and while I was wishing that
Mr. Doremus began with a "B" instead of a "D," I caught the eyes of
a man looking straight at me. The very nicest eyes, and with an
expression in them that filled me with joy!
They said: "Do let me come and get rid of that fellow for you," and
mine said: "Yes--yes--yes. Please come at once."
So the Eyes came, without waiting for more; and it was the Hero of the
steerage who brought them. That was the reason I'd telegraphed "yes,
yes"; for I thought: "He saved a little boy, why shouldn't I trust him,
without an introduction, to save me?"
"Look here," said the bronze man to the _Evening Bat_, "I've got just
five minutes to spare. You can have them if you like."
The _Evening Bat_ looked at him, crossly at first; then his sharp
little face seemed turning into a point of admiration. "By
Je_hos_aphat!" he ejaculated. "Home-made goods will get the preference
over British this time, duty or _no_ duty."
I couldn't think what either of them meant, though at first I was
afraid my man intended the other to understand that the five minutes
would be devoted to knocking him down, or something else violent, as a
punishment for impertinence to a defenceless foreigner. But my mind was
almost instantly relieved, for the two men walked off together quite
amicably, and stood talking at a distance.
A moment later, one of my boxes went by, looking very fat and friendly,
on the shoulders of a porter, who apparently had no head. I rushed out,
and seized it--not the head, but the box; so there was something
encouraging; but I had two pieces of luggage to wait for still.
Most of the other "B's" were more fortunate about getting their things;
nevertheless, they seemed far from easy in their minds, and though they
protested almost tearfully that they'd nothing whatever to declare,
stern persons in uniform stirred up their boxes as I used to do with
the nursery pudding, when all the plums had sunk to the bottom.
I was very tired and very hot, hotter than I'd supposed people could
be, except in a Turkish bath; and I was beginning to be hungry too, for
I'd lunched principally off the Statue of Liberty and Sky-scrapers,
which were more filling than lasting, as a meal.
I fanned myself with my handkerchief as well as I could, and felt sure
I was slowly getting appendicitis; because whenever Americans feel
uncomfortable in any way, it seems almost certain to turn eventually
into that, probably on account of the climate. Would my other boxes
_never_ come? I thought. Most of the "B's" were going home. They had
homes, lucky people, and if they liked, they could presently have tea.
"World without tea,
Ah me!"