beginning to look quite nice. For really, though small and wiry, with
ginger-coloured hair and moustache and no-coloured eyes, Mohunsleigh
isn't an ugly man, when you come to notice his nice, sharp features.
He's only a distant cousin of mine, and so old (he's nearly forty) that
in the first years of our acquaintance he made himself agreeable by
teaching me to ride on his foot; but I always liked him--whenever I
remembered his existence. Naturally, though, this hasn't been often, as
one of his many eccentricities is to be continually prowling at the
ends of the earth--anywhere, where there may be animals to shoot. What
kind, he doesn't seem to care, if they are only large enough. Once, he
was fond of tigers; but the last thing he had a fad for was polar
bears, and he sent mother a skin, which makes the oak room smell
strongly of camphor.
"I hope, anyhow, you're going to pay a good long visit to Newport,"
said Mrs. Pitchley.
"I meant to go back to-morrow morning," replied Mohunsleigh. "But
perhaps I might stop on a bit longer."
"We'll give you some fun," volunteered Miss Pitchley, looking
frightfully pretty.
"Will you?" said Mohunsleigh. "Jolly nice of you. I must think about
it." Then he deigned to remember that I was his little long-lost
cousin; asked when I'd arrived on this side the water, and a few other
things; but he looked more at Miss Pitchley than at me. I suppose it is
difficult to be much excited about a person who has taken riding
lessons on your foot.
Potter asked Mohunsleigh where he was staying, and when he heard it was
at an hotel, he said his sister wouldn't allow that to go on. Lord
Mohunsleigh would have to come to The Moorings, that was settled; and
his man must be told to pack up his things directly. Mightn't word be
sent by messenger at once?
"Haven't brought a man, thanks awfully. Shed that habit long ago," said
my cousin. "I've got precious little luggage, too; picked this thing up
in a shop as I came along, and they charged me the deuce of a lot for
it. You're awfully good, you know, and all that, to offer to put me up,
but I only came prepared to spend a night or two."
Then Potter insisted, and blew all Mohunsleigh's objections away one by
one, as if they had been threads of cobweb; still, my cousin wouldn't
give a definite answer, perhaps not understanding American hospitality,
or perhaps having other ideas which he preferred. At all events, we
went to the bathing machines (which weren't bathing machines at all,
but dear little houses) without anything being decided. The only
invitation which Mohunsleigh had really accepted was Mrs. Pitchley's,
for her husband's bathing box.
She kept her word, and called him "Lord Mohunsleigh" in quite a high
voice, just as we passed the man who had refused to let him go onto the
beach before; but the man didn't seem impressed in the least. I think
he didn't even recognise Mohunsleigh as the same person, or if he did,
he pretended very cleverly not to.
I had forgotten the horror of the bathing dress in my surprise at
meeting Mohunsleigh, but it fell over me again like a cloud, as soon as
I was shut up in the bathing box with those wisps of green silk. I
wouldn't have the maid help me, and wrestled with the ordeal alone. It
took me some time; but when everything was on (there were only four
things, counting the cap and smart little sandals) I couldn't say to
myself that the effect wasn't attractive. It was; and I did approve of
myself in the quaint head-dress, which was more like a fetching silk
toque with an Alsatian bow in front, than a mere cap.
But the awful moment came when I was ready, with my hand on the door.
I'm sure Joan of Arc must have felt like that when she had let her hair
down, and put on that graceful white dress of hers one sees in the
pictures, to be burned. She may have been dimly aware that she was
looking quite her best, as I was; but even that couldn't have buoyed
her up much at the moment, and it didn't me.
As I stood hesitating, somebody knocked. I peeped out, and it was
Sally--quiet, unassuming little Sally, with her middle-aged
airs--looking like one of Stan's Gaiety Girl photographs, in a short,
low-necked dress of bright poppy colour, with silk legs as shiny as an
Archdeacon's, only with quite a different effect.
"Come on, my green Undine," said she; and I came, because she pulled me
so suddenly that otherwise I should have fallen flat on my nose.
Having seen her dressed so much in my style, it wasn't quite as bad as
before; and when I was out of my box,--like one of those little
barometer women that tell fair weather,--there was Mrs. Pitchley in
crimson, and Carolyn Pitchley in white, and lots of pretty women, all
with the same lovely stockings. There hadn't been any standing about
when we arrived, because we were early, not having gone to the Casino
first as the others had, and it was a relief to find them; or it was,
until I had a great shock.
Instead of the men being away at a separate beach of their own, they
were put with us, and kept popping out of boxes every minute, and
running up to talk to the girls they knew, just as calmly as if they
were in evening dress. My eyes almost came out of my head for an
instant. Then I just swallowed hard, and leaped over about five
centuries of prejudice as if I were jumping across a tiny beck.
"Everything's a matter of custom," said I to myself; and in another
minute I was racing gaily down to the water, hand in hand with Sally,
as if we had been little girls with sand pails and shovels.
I expected to feel as if I had plunged into a million-gallon bath of
iced water, when I got out among the creamy breakers; but judging from
the sensation, Americans have had their part of the Atlantic
beautifully warmed from underneath, with some patent heating apparatus.
It would be just like them!
The sandy beach is so level, you can patter out ever so far, until you
finally have to bob up and down for the rolling waves, as if they were
Royalties--and so they are, for the Kingdom of Mer. I can swim a
little, and Potter took me beyond the breakers. It was great fun, under
that arch of turquoise sky, with the sun dancing on the clear green
water, as if the millionaires of Newport had been sprinkling gold
pieces. But the best of all was the floating platform, about a hundred
yards from the beach, where we sat and let the emeralds and pearls that
the Princesses of Mer threw, spray over us.
At home, when you are at the sea, your governess or some other person
who thinks enjoyment ought to be measured off by rule, sits on the
shore looking at her watch; and when you have been in exactly twenty
minutes she tells you to come out directly, or you will catch a chill.
I've always wondered what it would do to you if you stopped in for
twenty-one minutes, though I never had the chance to try; but in
America all that is quite different, as different as the very way they
say "seaside," with their accent on the first instead of the last
syllable.
Nobody thinks about watches. You just bathe and bathe as long as you
feel like it. When you are tired of it you come out; then you bake
yourself in the sand for a little while if you like, and run back to
begin over again. It is heavenly. No other adjective half expresses it.
When we did really make up our minds to stop out for good, and had
dressed ourselves, feeling like goddesses just born of the foam (or
gods, as the case might be), we all met--our party, the Pitchleys and
my cousin,--to arrange about what Mohunsleigh would do.
It seemed that Mrs. Pitchley had invited him to lunch, and as she had
been so kind about the bathhouse, he explained to Potter, he thought
that he couldn't very well refuse. About stopping on, he would decide
later; but he consented to drive with us in the afternoon, in a motor
car of Potter's that holds six. By that time, he would have had time to
send a wire to a friend of his in New York, and to make up his mind
what he had better do about going back.
When we got home, we found Mrs. Ess Kay much better, and up. She was
inclined at first to be cross with Sally and Potter for taking me to
the beach; but when she heard about Mohunsleigh, she forgot to be
vexed, and seemed almost excited about him, I can't think why.
She asked lots of questions, very quickly, one after the other,
brightening up when Potter told how he had invited Mohunsleigh to come
to The Moorings, but looking quite strained and wild at the news about
his lunching with the Pitchleys.
"You _oughtn't_ to have let him go, Potter," she said.
Potter shrugged his shoulders--those square American shoulders of his.
"Strange as it may seem to you, he wanted to. That settled it. I didn't
monkey with the gunpowder."
Mrs. Ess Kay's lips went down at the corners, and her eyes flashed.
"How easy it is to see that woman's game," said she. "Cora Pitchley
knows that Mrs. Van der Windt and the committee will be only too
anxious for us to go to the Pink Ball _now_, and she thinks she sees a
way of getting there too, after all. Mark my words, she's got her Earl;
it'll go hard with her if she doesn't _stick_ to him. Betty, can't you
do something? He's your cousin. You've a right to him."
"I don't know that I want him particularly," I confessed.
"Mohunsleigh's a dear, queer old thing, and I'm fond of him; but we
haven't seen much of him at home, for years. And I know he can't be
bothered with me."
"Anyhow, he certainly ought to be here," said Mrs. Ess Kay, anxiously;
"it will be perfectly loathsome if we have to sit still and see the
Pitchley's gobble him up."
"Poor Mohunsleigh!" I exclaimed. "Why, what will they _do_ with him?"
And for a lurid instant I beheld Miss Pitchley and Carolyn as beautiful
ogresses, with their lips red--too red.
"They'll go to the Pink Ball with him, and by him. They couldn't
without him. That's what they'll _do_," said Mrs. Ess Kay, as if she
saw my cousin's whitening bones picked clean by the Pitchley family.
"And we shall have to be intimate with them, the whole time he stays."
"Oh, you needn't feel bound to for my sake. It isn't as though
Mohunsleigh----" I began; but Mrs. Ess Kay snapped my poor sentence in
two, as if it had been cotton on a reel.
"I have to think for all of us," said she; "Cora Pitchley is a
climber."
We changed our dresses (Sally says one must be forever changing one's
dress at Newport), lunched; and then at the door appeared a gorgeous
white motor car lined with scarlet, which I had never seen before. As
we all had on white, from head to foot, we matched it beautifully; and
feeling that we looked nice enough even to grace an accident, if it
_must_ come, we started to pick up Carolyn Pitchley and my cousin.
Mrs. Ess Kay didn't go, for she wasn't quite herself yet; and besides,
she perhaps thought that in the circumstances Mohunsleigh ought to be
brought to call before she met him informally. I don't know that any of
us were as sorry as we ought to have been not to have her.
The Pitchleys' house, which is called the Chateau de Plaisance, is on a
much grander scale than The Moorings. It thinks it is an old French
Chateau, and tries to convey the same impression to beholders, as do
several others of more or less the same sort. But it's a hopeless
effort. The poor dears might as well give up and resign themselves once
for all to being a blot on the exquisite blue and gold landscape;
though perhaps if they can hold out for two or three hundred years,
they may do better. The farther we went, along a glorious road called
the Cliff Drive, and the more charming Colonial houses and delightful
"cottages" I saw, the more I felt that the regular palaces were
mistakes, with Newport for a setting and the sea for a background. I am
glad that I didn't live at the time when all the real castles of the
world were young and awkward. Perhaps they looked just as crude as
these, at first, though it's hard to imagine it.
When we went back, the first thing that Mrs. Ess Kay asked, was: "Well,
what about Lord Mohunsleigh?"
"He's made up his mind to stop, and send for his things," said I.
"You gave him my note? He's coming to us?"
"I gave him the note, and he's coming round presently to thank you for
being so kind. But--he feels he had better stay with the Pitchleys. You
see, it's like this. They happen to be sending a servant to New York
to-day, to do some commissions for Mrs. Pitchley, so the man will go to
Mohunsleigh's hotel too. And as they're doing so much for him, and Mrs.
Pitchley and her husband know some friends of his at Home, he
thinks--But he'll tell you all about it himself."
"I told you so!" said Mrs. Ess Kay.
X
ABOUT A VIOLET TEA AND A MILLIONAIRE
While we were motoring, Mrs. Ess Kay had been terribly busy with her
secretary, getting invitations ready for a Violet Tea.
She was giving the Tea, she explained, to introduce me to Newport
Society, and she was having a Violet one because it was not the right
time of year for violets.
I meekly suggested that as a reason for giving some other kind of Tea,
but she said not at all. She wished to have that kind because violets
were hard to get, though not impossible. I would see when the time came
that she could get them. And I should also see, if it were indeed true
that I did not know, what a Violet Tea was. She wanted it to be a
surprise for me; she thought I would like it.
I hadn't long to wait before learning the true inwardness of a Violet
Tea, for Mrs. Ess Kay was determined to get me "out" as soon as
possible; and it seems that in America the time to bring a girl out is
at a tea. At least, that is one way; and as Mrs. Ess Kay was even then
planning to give something very big just before the much talked about
"Pink Ball," so as to "take the shine off that grand affair," she
wished to get the teacups washed up before she sent out the next
invitations.
I'm sure Mother wouldn't take as much trouble for a house party to meet
the King and Queen, as Mrs. Ess Kay did for that Violet Tea; and I
daren't think even now--though it happened weeks ago--of the money she
must have spent.
For one thing, she and Sally and I had to have violet dresses. She
would buy mine (I don't see how I should have done it, if she hadn't,
especially as Vic wrote just then that Mother felt poorer than ever,
and That Man hadn't yet proposed), and it was beautiful; pale violet
silk muslin, trimmed with violets and their leaves. Then violet and
silver livery was ordered in a great hurry for the four footmen--to be
worn on one afternoon, and no more! But these things were mere sketchy
details, compared to other preparations.
One room, where tea was to be served, was entirely draped with violet
silk, from the palest to the darkest shades; and for the smaller of the
two drawing-rooms--the one where Mrs. Ess Kay would stand to receive
her guests--wire frames were made, from measurements, to fit and cover
all four walls. I couldn't imagine what these frames were for, at
first, but when their hour came, they were padded with moss and covered
with fresh violets. The curtains were taken down from the windows, and
a network of violets was hung up in their place, with an effect of
great loveliness when the light streamed through the screen of flowers.
And even this was not all, for a soft thick mat of grass and moss was
spread over the polished floor, with a sprinkling of violets. All the
furniture was taken away, and instead, along the walls, were placed
banks of artificial moss and violets. No doubt these would have been
real, too, but when crushed, they would have stained the dresses of
those that sat upon them. Altogether, the room was turned into a woodsy
bower of violets; and I was given a great bunch of the dear flowers to
carry.
There had been only a week in which to prepare these sensational
effects, but everything was finished in time, and without flurry.
Already I knew a great many of Mrs. Ess Kay's friends; and on the day
of the tea it seemed that each person whose acquaintance I had made had
remembered me with a cartwheel of violets. All my flowers were placed
in vases on tables in the big drawing-room, adjoining the bower of
violets; and as a card was attached to each bunch, pinned on the masses
of violet satin ribbon which trailed from it, each giver could have the
pleasure of seeing how his gift compared with his neighbour's. It was a
wonderful display--a violet show. And, as Mrs. Ess Kay had said, "it
was not the right time of the year for violets."
We stood on our feet for hours, smiled yards of smiles, and said the
same things over and over again so many times, that I began to feel
like a phonograph doll which I saw in my first New York shop. Only,
when I ran down nobody wound me up, and I had to go on by myself as
best I could, which was fatiguing, and made the machinery squeak.
But everybody said it was a huge success. The New York papers had each
more than a column about the "function," as they called it, and Mrs.
Ess Kay was piously happy.
I had thought we were very gay before; but after the Violet Tea, from
getting up to going to bed, we never had a moment that hadn't its own
appointed place in the procession of hours, like a bead in a long
rosary.
After breakfast, we went to the Casino, to play tennis, listen to the
concert, or pretend to, and to gabble. There, we would meet everybody
we knew; and it was odd to see the calm, but slightly conscious air of
superiority with which the Everybodies, going in or out, passed the
poor nobodies assembled to watch the Casino entrance. Just as the
middle and lower class people stand till they are ready to drop, only
to see the Queen drive into the Park, or leave Buckingham Palace
dreadfully bored, to open a bridge, so these Americans jostle each
other to see their millionaires and especially millionaires, going to
enjoy themselves. Fancy if Londoners reduced themselves to a state of
collapse for the pleasure of seeing Mr. Beit take off his hat to Mrs.
Wertheimer! But the millionaires in America seem to be like our
aristocracy, only more important, for the non millionaires take a great
deal more trouble to stare at them than the common people do at us.
After the Casino, there was always the beach, and the most delightful
things happened at the beach. It was never twice the same. Then, we
would lunch with some one, or some one would lunch with us at The
Moorings. Afterwards there would be a drive, calls to make, perhaps two
or three wonderful "At Homes," or concerts, with great singers and
entertainers from New York; twenty minutes' rest, and then a scramble
to dress for dinner, with a "dinner dance" to follow, or amateur
theatricals.
Of course, as I haven't been presented yet, and don't know anything
about what the Season is like in Town, except what Vic has told me, I
can't judge of the differences at first hand; but then, Vic has told me
a lot, and I have heard Stan and Loveland talk; besides, one seems to
know one's own country and country people by instinct without having
actually to see what they do; and I'm sure that even in the smartest
set at home they don't dream of bothering their heads to think of such
original entertainments as in America.
In England there are just two or three kinds of parties. You give a
crush, which is grand if you have a big house, or you ask a few bright,
particular ones and enjoy yourself. Or in the country you have a house
party, and pick out the men because they can shoot and the women
because they are pretty; or else, if it's winter, you hunt and you have
theatricals. But the Americans at Newport turn up their noses at that
slow, old-fashioned kind of thing. They lie awake nights (I'm sure they
must) to think of something so original that nobody else can ever have
had anything the least like it before. It is better, too, to have it
very sensational and startling. If you are invited to a party, you
never know a bit what it will be like; whether you will dance in a
barn, and eat your supper on horseback out of decorated mangers;
whether there will be captive balloons at a garden party; whether a
Noah's Ark will have been rigged up on a miniature lake, or whether you
will have a pair of skates provided for you and find yourself cutting
figures on the ice in a gorgeously illuminated skating-rink, with the
thermometer up to goodness knows how many degrees outside.
Of course, in a place where everybody gets nervous prostration trying
to outdo everybody else in originality and extravagance, it wouldn't be
like Mrs. Ess Kay to let herself fall behind.
She simply made up her mind that her big entertainment should be _the_
affair of the season, before she decided what form it should take. She
thought instead of sleeping, for several nights, and began to wear the
expression on her face which I have in motor cars when I think we are
going to telescope with something twice our size, and am trying to
prepare for eternity with a pleasant smile on my lips. She ate scarcely
anything, telephoned a good deal, and took phenacetin in hot milk.
Then, suddenly, it came to her;--I mean the Idea.
We were at lunch when she thought of it, and luckily there were no
visitors except Mrs. Pitchley and Carolyn, Mohunsleigh, and Tom
Doremus. It was bad enough even with them, for she half sprang up, then
sat down again, first going red, then going pale; and we all thought
she was getting ready to faint. But as soon as she could speak, she
said, when we shrieked at her, "It's nothing--nothing. I've just
thought of something, that's all."
Afterwards, when she and Sally and Potter and I were alone together,
she told us that at last she had got the right inspiration for her big
entertainment.
It was two days after the Violet Tea, so it was quite time she should
get it, she said; and she had been dreadfully worried, because the
invitations ought to go out almost at once. The famous Pink Ball at the
Casino was for the 23d, and she wanted to have her party the night
before, so that everybody would be worn out, and the ball would fall
flat.
"But we've got our cards all right now," said Potter. "Why do you want
to queer the show?"
"I intend to show Mrs. Van der Windt what I can _do_," she answered.
"Suppose a lot of the people you want refuse you, so that they can be
fresh for the ball?" Sally suggested.
"They won't," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "when they have seen what I shall say
on the invitations."
Then she got up, went to her desk, took out some engraved cards which
she had ready, all but filling in the date, and wrote something in one
corner. "What do you think of that?" she asked Sally.
Sally took the card, looked at it for a minute, laughed, and passed it
on to me, while Potter came and stared over my shoulder.
She had written across the card: "Fancy Dress, with Masks. A Visit to
the Maze; and Aladdin's Cave."
"Do you think that will bring them?" she enquired, with a triumphant
and mysterious air.
"I think it _will_," said Sally.
"You know your business, old girl," remarked Potter.
"They'll want to know what it means, and they'll be bound to come and
find out. What _is_ your idea, anyway?"
"I'll tell you another time," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "I should like it to
be a surprise for Betty, just as it will be for people outside. She'll
enjoy it more."
I didn't tease to know the secret, though I was really curious,
especially about Aladdin's Cave, which seemed to promise something
gorgeous. The mystery was religiously kept; but there was plenty of
excitement in sending out the invitations.
There were endless discussions between Mrs. Ess Kay and Potter, and
though she seemed so angry with Mrs. Van der Windt and several other
members of the Ball committee, for trying to make a stand against her,
she was perfectly ruthless about the names she would scratch off the
lists her secretary was continually making out and revising for her.
I heard her say that she wouldn't have dreamed of asking the Pitchleys,
if they hadn't "got hold of" Mohunsleigh; and that Cora Pitchley,
whatever else she might be, was the cleverest woman in Newport, to have
scooped in all the honours. Though to this day I can't see exactly what
she meant, for she never would explain.
Anyhow, whatever the superlatively clever thing was that Mrs. Pitchley
had done, there was no longer a question of her being kept out from the
Pink Ball, or anything else. People were charming to her, and we met
Mrs. Van der Windt herself at the Chateau at a luncheon party with a
vaudeville entertainment afterwards, and also at a dinner. Mrs. Van der
Windt seemed to like my cousin, Mohunsleigh, very much, too, and gave a
moonlight motor car picnic especially for him, with only a few people
asked besides ourselves, and the Pitchleys and Tom Doremus.
Mohunsleigh had not expected to stay more than a few days; but when he
found that the friend he wanted to visit in California was detained in
New York on business, and Mrs. Pitchley and everybody urged him very
much to stop, he decided that he would. I didn't suppose that
Mohunsleigh would care for frivolities, after all the years he has
spent tramping about in strange countries, killing things; but he
appeared to be perfectly happy and nothing bored him, so long as the
Pitchleys were there.