A FOOTMAN had taken the Duke of Bosworth’s cards up to Miss
Mabel Creighton and her mother. The young man had arrived but an hour
before and still wore his travelling gear, but had been given to
understand that an English peer was welcome in a New York drawing-room
on any terms. The drawing-room in which he awaited the American maiden
who had taken his attenuated fancy was large and sumptuous and very
expensive. There were tables of ormolu, and cabinets of tortoise-shell
containing collections of cameos, fens and miniatures, a _lapis
lazuli_ clock three feet high, and a piano inlaid with twenty-seven
different woods. The walls were frescoed by a famous hand, and there
were lamps and candle-brackets and various articles of decoration
which must have been picked up in extensive travels.
The Duke noted everything with his slow listless gaze. He sat forward
on the edge of his chair, his chin pressed to the head of his stick. He
was a small delicately-built man, of thirty or more. His shoulders had
rounded slightly. His cheeks and lower lip were beginning to droop. The
pale blue eyes were dim, the lids red. He was a debauchee, but “a good
sort,” and men liked him.
He did not move during the quarter of an hour he was kept waiting, but
when the _portière_ was pushed aside he rose quickly, and went
forward with much grace and charm of manner. The girl who entered was a
dainty blonde fluffy creature, and looked like a bit of fragile china
in the palatial room.
“How sweet of you to come so soon,” she said, with frank pleasure. “I
did not expect you for an hour yet. Mamma will be down presently. She
is quite too awfully anxious to meet you.”
The Duke resumed his seat and leaned back this time, regarding Miss
Creighton through half-closed eyes. His expression was much the same as
when he had inventoried the room.
“I came to America to see you,” he said.
The colour flashed to her hair, but she smiled gracefully. “How funny!
Just as if you had run over to pay me an afternoon call. Did the trip
bore you much?”
“I am always bored at sea when I am not ill. I am usually ill.”
“Oh! Really? How horrid! I am never ill. I always find the trip rather
jolly. I go over to shop, and that would keep me up if nothing else
did. Well, I think it was very good indeed of you--awfully good--to
brave the horrors of the deep, or rather of your state-room, just to
call on me.”
She had a babyish voice and a delightful manner. The Duke smiled. He
was really rather glad to see her again. “You were good enough to ask
me to call if I ever came over,” he said, “and it occurred to me that
it would be a jolly thing to do. I only had little detached chats with
you over there, and there were always a lot of Johnnies hanging about.
I felt interested to see you in your own surroundings.”
“Oh--perhaps you are going to write a book? I have always felt
dreadfully afraid that you were clever. Well, don’t make the mistake of
thinking that we have only one type over here, as they always do when
they come to write us up. There are just ten girls in my particular
set--we have sets within sets, as you do, you know--and we are each one
of us quite different from all the others. We are supposed to be the
intellectual set, and Alexandra Maitland and Augusta Forbes are really
frightfully clever. I don’t know why they tolerate me--probably because
I admire them. Augusta is my dearest friend. Alex pats me on the head
and says that I am the leaven that keeps them from being a sodden lump
of grey matter. I have addled my brains trying to keep up with them.”
“Don’t; you are much more charming as you are.”
“Oh, dear! I don’t know. Men always seem to get tired of me,” she
replied, with just how much ingenuousness the Duke could not determine.
“Mrs. Burr says it is because I talk a blue streak and say nothing.
Hal is quite too frightfully slangy. Augusta kisses me and says I
am an inconsequential darling. She made me act in one of Howell’s
comedies once, and I did it badly on purpose, in the hope of raising my
reputation, but Augusta said it was because I couldn’t act. Fletcher
Cuyler, who is the most impertinent man in New York said---- Have you
seen Fletcher?”
“He came out on the tug to meet me, and left me at the door.”
“I believe if Fletcher really has a deep down affection for anyone,
it is for you--I mean for any man. He is devoted to all of us, and he
is the only man we chum with. But we wouldn’t have him at the meeting
to-day. Do you know that I should have lent my valuable presence to two
important meetings this afternoon?”
“Really?” The Duke was beginning to feel a trifle restless.
“Yes, we are going in frightfully for Socialism, you know--Socialism
and the vote--and--oh, dozens of other things. Alex said we must, and
so we did. It’s great fun. We make speeches. At least, I don’t, but the
others do. Should you like to go to one of our meetings?”
“I should not!” said the Duke emphatically.
“Well, you must not make fun of us, for I am simply bent on having
all the girls adore you, particularly Augusta. The other day we had
a lovely meeting. It was here. I have the prettiest boudoir: Alex
designed it. It looks just like a rainbow. I lay on the couch in a gown
to match, and the girls all took off their stiff street frocks and put
on my wrappers, and we smoked cigarettes and ate bon-bons, and read
Karl Marx. It was lovely! I didn’t understand a word, but I _felt_
intellectual--the atmosphere, you know. When we had finished a chapter
and Alex had expounded it, and quarrelled over it with Augusta, we
talked over all the men we knew, and I am sure men would be lots
better if they knew what girls thought about them. Alex says we must
regenerate them, quicken their souls, so to speak, and I suppose I
may as well begin on you, although you’re not an American, and can’t
vote--we’re for reforming the United States, you know. What is the
state of your soul?” And again she gave her fresh childlike laugh.
“I haven’t any. Give me up. I am hopeless.” He was arriving at the
conclusion that she was more amusing in detached chats, but reflected
that she was certainly likeable. It was this last pertainment, added to
the rumour of her father’s vast wealth, that had brought him across the
water.
“I don’t know that I have ever seen one of the--what do they call
them?--advanced women? But I am told that they are not Circean. That,
indeed, seems to be their hall-mark. A woman’s first duty is to be
attractive.”
“That’s what Fletcher says. Augusta is my most intimate friend, my
very dearest friend, but I never saw a man look as if he was thinking
about falling in love with her. How long shall you stay?” she added
quickly, perceiving that he was tiring of the subject.
“I?--oh--I don’t know. Until you tell me that I bore you. I may take a
run into Central America with Fletcher.”
“Into what? Why that’s days, and days, and days from here, and must be
a horrid place to travel in.”
“I thought Chicago was only twenty-four hours from New York.”
“Oh, you funny, funny, deliciously funny Englishman! Why Central
America doesn’t belong to the United States at all. It’s ’way down
between North and South America or somewhere. I suppose you mean middle
America. We call Chicago and all that part of the country West.”
“If it’s middle it’s central,” said the Duke, imperturbably. “You
cannot expect me to command the vernacular of your enormous country in
a day.”
He rose suddenly. A woman some twenty years older than Mabel had
entered. Her face and air were excessively, almost aggressively
refined, her carriage complacent, a trifle insolent. She was the faded
prototype of her daughter. The resemblance was close and prophetic.
“My dear Duke,” she said, shaking him warmly by the hand, “I am so
flattered that you have come to us at once, and so glad to have the
opportunity to thank you for your kindness to Mabel when she was in
your dear delightful country. Take that chair, it is so much more
comfortable.” She herself sat upon an upright chair, and laid one
hand lightly over the other. Her repose of manner was absolute. “The
happiest days of my life were spent in England, when I was first
married--it seems only day before yesterday--my husband and I went
over and jaunted about England and Scotland and Wales in the most
old-fashioned manner possible. For six months we rambled here and
there, seeing everything--one was not ashamed of being a tourist in
those days. We would not present a letter, we wanted to have a real
honeymoon: we were so much in love. And to think that Aire Castle is so
near that terrible Strid. I remember that we stood for an hour simply
fascinated. Mr. Creighton wanted to take the stride, but I wouldn’t
let him. He has never been over with me since--he is so busy. I can’t
think how Mr. Forbes always manages to go with his wife, unless it is
true that he is jealous of her--although in common justice I must add
that if she has ever given him cause no one knows it. I suppose it is
on general principles, because she is such a beauty. Still I must say
that if I were a man and married to a Southern woman I should want to
get rid of her occasionally: they _are_ so conceited and they do
rattle on so about nothing. Virginia Forbes talks rather less than
most Southern women; but I imagine that is to enhance the value of her
velvety voice.”
The Duke, who had made two futile efforts to rise, now stood up
resolutely.
“I am very sorry----” he began.
“Oh! _I_ am so sorry you _will_ rush away,” exclaimed his
hostess. “I have barely heard you speak. You must come with us to the
opera to-night. Do. Will you come informally to an early dinner, or
will you join us in the box with Fletcher?”
“I will join you with Fletcher. And I must go--I have an engagement
with him at the hotel--he is waiting for me. You are very kind--thanks,
awfully. So jolly to be so hospitably received in a strange country.”
When he reached the side-walk, he drew a long breath. “My God!” he
thought, “Is it a disease that waxes with age? Perhaps they get wound
up sometimes and can’t stop.... And she is pretty now, but it’s
dreadful to have the inevitable sprung on you in that way. What are
the real old women like, I wonder? They must merely fade out like an
old photograph. I can’t imagine one of them a substantial corpse. I
shall feel as if I were married to a dissolving view. She is charming
now, but--oh, well, that is not the only thing to be taken into
consideration.”
The Creighton house was on Murray Hill. He crossed over to Fifth Avenue
and walked down toward the Waldorf, absently swinging his stick,
regardless of many curious glances. “I wonder,” he thought, “I wonder
if I ever dreamed of a honeymoon with the one woman. If I did, I have
forgotten. What a bore it will be now.”