I feel I have irretrievably thrown in my lot with Charlie Lien and his
set. I found my course with them to-day so easy, they took me to
themselves so quickly. It was all so simple. As I came away from the
King Henry-the-Eighth Hotel, I felt my head was high in the air. We met
Polly Townsend and I bowed to him in the most patronizing manner I could
command and got a profound return. After all, the Skating Club crowd are
a sloppy crowd, as Charlie says—namby-pamby men and bread-and-butter
maidens.
I struggled hard not to keep my appointment, but at the time arranged
found myself at Horace’s. Charlie was there, buying a tie. He took me in
hand immediately and we crossed the street to the Henry-the-Eighth. I
had seen it before, of course, a great tall building mounting to the
sky, but did not know it was an hotel. We entered a door that seemed
very small for such a great building, but I have since learned this is
the “Ladies’ Entrance.” We had no sooner entered the passage-way inside
than we passed into the elevator and Charlie gave orders for the
Palm-room. We mounted a dozen feet only, and stopped, the man opened the
cage door, we turned round a corner, and were in a low room filled with
cigarette-smoke, and some palms and easy chairs and tables. In an
instant I took in these surroundings and the people present. Several
tables were about, each occupied by a man and girl. Some of the men were
old with coarse faces, and some were young and sallow. I could judge
little or nothing of the men. Some of the women were not young, and
their faces were of a type I had only before seen on the street. They
were unhealthy and unwholesome looking. I am sure I could not make
friends with them. To me they were repulsive. The young girls all wore
extreme costumes, and some were much made-up. Paint and powder were
thrown on them. They also were distasteful to me. What sort of a place
had I got into? And the thought struck me that an outsider looking down
upon us must have found me in my simple and plain attire, conspicuous by
contrast.
A waiter came to our table and stood expectant.
“What will you have?” asked my host.
I picked up a card and made a show of looking at it and replied, “An
ice.”
“Two plain ice creams, and two Manhattan cocktails,” ordered Charlie.
I gasped: cocktails! I had often heard of them as being a man’s drink. I
did not wish to drink a cocktail.
“Not a cocktail for me,” I protested; but already the waiter was gone.
“That’s all right,” laughed my host in his discordant way. “You needn’t
drink it, if you don’t want to.” How his croaking laugh jarred on me! I
felt positively frightened.
“What will the other people think?” I asked.
“What do you care what they think?” retorted my companion. “Besides
nobody here knows you, and besides here it is the custom.”
“The custom!” “All the girls do it!” These phrases again passed through
my mind, but did not assuage my fears as my indignation had been
assuaged in Mrs. Lien’s conservatory on Friday night.
“Do you wish to make a drunkard of me?” I asked, finding fortitude I
know not where.
“Look here,” he demanded almost crossly, “you say you want to get into
our set. The people whose guests you are, are not rich; you are not
rich. You have nothing to give except your own good company and the
pleasure one may find in your companionship. I have taken a fancy to
you, feel as if I would like to be kind to you. I am ready to introduce
you to my friends and give you a good time, but the girls I know, and
who are my friends, are not Puritans. They take an occasional drink,
they smoke cigarettes, on the whole they enjoy themselves.”
Charlie Lien paused as if for want of words, but I did not take the
opportunity to speak, as indeed there was nothing to say. I suppose he
was trying to find words to intimate that those who ask of others must
be prepared to give. Could I have got away, withdrawn at this point,
undoubtedly I would have done so. I lacked courage, however, to make the
breach openly.
“Come and sit with us,” I heard Charlie call out, and I saw a lady with
a boy of Charlie’s age making towards us. Charlie stood up and handed
the lady to a seat. They were introduced to me, Iris Carey and Basil
Locke. I was startled out of my boots almost, as I heard my companion
say, “Miss Travers is from England.”
“Good Lord,” I mused. “What does this mean?”
The waiter now appeared with our ices. “Ice cream good for you?”
enquired Charlie of them, and being so assured he repeated his earlier
order.
The two new-comers were evidently on the most familiar terms with
Charlie. I was ignored for the moment, and an animated conversation
sprang up in which each addressed the other by the Christian name. The
conversation bore upon the Hunt Club and motoring; and was doubtless a
measure of high life. At a pause Miss Carey turned to me and asked.
“Have you been long in Canada?”
“Some time, and I like it immensely.”
This seemed to please her; so my embarrassment passed.
“English people always accuse us of asking them how they like our
country: you have evidently learned to forestall the question,” she
remarked. These words seemed to me surprising from one whose
conversation a moment before had been so flippant. I was glad she did
not continue that line, but came under the necessity of answering
Charlie Lien. For one thing my embarrassment was great, and for another
I wished to observe her.
Irish Carey is a tall, willowy girl with a long neck. She is dark and
her complexion very bright. Her cheeks were undoubtedly rouged. Her
forehead is high, bold and very white; her mouth small as is her chin.
How I envied her her command of chatter. I suppose the ability to
chatter is a gift, I find it impossible even to transcribe it, so how
can I hope to copy it?
In Basil Locke, I observed a slight youth with a pale and narrow face.
He had a deliberate way of speaking, a drawl. And he did not have much
to say, the chatter being chiefly between Miss Carey and Charlie.
When we had finished our ices, or even a little before, Basil produced a
cigarette-case and passed it to me. I took one and my heart fell into my
boots. I toyed with it, Miss Carey took a cigarette as did each of the
men. Charlie Lien struck a match and held it towards me. I was smoking
before I knew it. I saw Charlie regarding me, evidently with approval.
My cocktail was still untouched, when the men had finished theirs and
Iris’s glass was half empty. Charlie noticed this, caught my eye and
then glanced at the glass. I drank a little to counteract the effect of
the cigarette, and then smoked to counteract the drink. And then I
talked because I felt like talking.
What I talked about, what we all talked about for an hour and a half I
don’t know, except that my friends did not favour balls, to which their
own set was not asked, or at which the hostess did not provide wine.
From all they said about what each had done or was doing, or intended to
do, I could gather but little and can remember less.
Before we left the hotel Miss Carey suggested that I be shown the
drawing-room of the hotel and Charlie invited me to come with him. We
went up a few steps and soon were among great pillars and pictured, and
hangings, and things, and big upholstered chairs, in which sat couples,
who became strangely silent on our approach. I took advantage of an
opportunity to ask Charlie why he had introduced me as English.
“Why! because you look English. Besides,” and he spoke slowly, “dressed
as you are, or are not, as a Canadian girl you would hardly do for our
set.” We were in a passage-way. Charlie turned round and looked behind
him. Instinctively I knew what was coming: he put his arm about me and
kissed me. I felt that I was being put to the test, my acquiescence
meant I accepted him as my friend with all that went with it. My refusal
meant a final break and a hum-drum existence. I feel I am drifting, that
I have ceased to have any power to select where I shall next place my
foot. I have gone so far, I feel I cannot turn back. One good thing is
that the idea of being untrue to Mumsie and Uncle troubles me less. I
argue to myself that many girls, Iris Carey, for instance, must deceive
somebody. And, after all, if all one reads and hears is true, there must
be a vast number of naughty people in the world. Charlie has promised to
motor Iris, Basil and me out to the Hunt Club to-morrow.
On arrival home I did not give any account of my doings to Mumsie. But I
will have to patch up some story for to-morrow. I don’t like it, but I
must lie. What can I invent?
I settled down to my seat at dinner with a positive feeling of
satisfaction in Mr. Bang’s presence, and by my plate, I found a handsome
copy of _The Vicar of Wakefield_ inscribed as a New Year’s gift to me
from him. I had read the book and told him so.
“Long ago?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, “Father asked me to read it years ago.” In reality it
was three or four years ago.
“You will read it again just to please me,” he pleaded.
I agreed to do so. Uncle asked him some question bearing upon his
business in Toronto. I was glad of this as it prevented any question
being fired at me as to my afternoon’s doings, and I could use my brain
planning how to keep such a question from being asked. I determined to
get Mr. Bang and Uncle talking and to keep them talking. So when a pause
came, I asked Uncle, “What is a Puritan?” little dreaming of what a
flood-gate I would turn loose.
“A Puritan! Who has been calling you a Puritan?” demanded Uncle.
I was just going to reply that I had heard of one girl at Mrs. Lien’s
ball speaking of another as a Puritan, and wished to know exactly what
was meant. All this, of course, would have been half lies—for I was the
girl—but I must lie it seems as things are going. Mr. Bang saved the
necessity.
“Now-a-days a Puritan is considered as an overly good person whom in
business dealings, it is necessary to watch,” he growled.
Uncle smiled and agreed.
“The Puritans most famous in our history are those who settled in New
England in the early 17th century as you know———” he began.
“They were a bad lot,” cut in J. B., “far from what their name would
imply, so you see to be called a Puritan now can hardly be accepted as a
term of respect.”
“Were they very bad?” I asked, inwardly rejoicing at the success of my
strategy.
“Their chief recreation was hanging Quakers, Episcopalians, and Papists;
they, together with the descendants of twenty thousand odd convicts, and
other scum that England had dumped into the New World. Such were the
‘Fathers of the Revolution’ in the great Republic.”
“Twenty thousand convicts is not many in a big nation,” Mumsie
suggested. She always wants to bolster up any bad case.
“The total immigration to the American Colonies before the revolution
was one hundred thousand, out of which grew the three million people
constituting the population at that time,” Mr. Bang replied, looking
severely at his aunt, “and then the British Government swept the streets
of their large cities to find these people wives.”
I noticed that as Mr. Bang said this, he brushed together a number of
crumbs on the table cloth in a significant manner.
“Jack! what a thing to say, and before the child!” Mumsie protested.
“The Child,” indeed!
“If she doesn’t hear worse among the Liens and Mounts than anything she
does from me, she will be lucky,” retorted the amiable one: “besides” he
continued, “the version taught in our schools of the causes that led to
the American Revolution is the only version that could justify the
world’s greatest robbery, perpetuated by the most virulent set of utter,
damned scoundrels the world has ever known.” He looked like a
turkey-cock in his trumpetting indignation.
“Don’t start another revolution,” cried Mumsie, shocked.
It quieted Mr. Bang. He continued in more moderate tones.
“No doubt these women were included in the one hundred thousand. If you
read Mary Johnson’s book, _To Have and to Hold_, you will see there
written that one shipload of wives was warranted honest, but this I
fancy we may put down to the bias and prejudice of the author.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For the simple reason that to-day the serving women[2] of England are
reluctant to come to Canada to receive double the pay they receive at
home. When you consider that a hundred years ago, a passage across the
Atlantic was looked upon with horror and undertaken in terror, and that
in the seventeenth century the danger of being tomahawked by the Indians
in the colonies was very real, you will understand that honest maids did
not then so seek to espouse honest convicts.”
“In old colonial days,” said Uncle, “crossing the Atlantic in sailing
ships was a fearful ordeal. Our family legends are full of stories of
its terrors.”
“Tell her of old Aunt Havelock,” suggested Mumsie.
“What of her?” I said. I preferred anecdotes to Mr. Bang’s jeremiads.
“Aunt Havelock was my aunt; Jack’s great aunt. She was crossing from
England in a sailing ship sometime between 1830 and 1840. The steward
gave her a plate one day that had not been properly washed. She handed
it to him, saying, ‘Sandy, this plate is not clean.’ The honest Scot
took it, looked at it disdainfully and spat upon it, rubbed it with his
apron, and handed it back to her.”