“But I have already met them, your sister and Miss Adgate,” Bertram
announced, with an occult little laugh. Pontycroft looked his surprise.
“Really? They've kept precious mum about it. When? Where?”
“The other day at Venice,” Bertram laughed. “I even had the honour of
escorting them to their hotel in my gondola.”
Pontycroft's face bespoke sudden enlightenment.
“Oho!” he cried. “Then you're the mysterious stranger who came to their
rescue when they were benighted at the Lido. They've told me about that.
And oh, the quantities of brain-tissue they've expended wondering who
you were!”
Bertram chuckled.
“But how,” asked Pontycroft, the wrinkles of his brow tied into puzzled
knots, “how did you know who _they_ were?”
“I saw them the next day when I was at the Florian with Lewis Vincent,
and he told me,” Bertram explained.
Pontycroft laughed, deeply, silently. “Thank Providence I shall be
present at the scene that's coming. The man of the family brings a
friend home to luncheon, and lo, the ladies recognise in him their
gallant rescuer. It's amazing how Real Life rushes in where Fiction
fears to tread. That scene is one which has been banished from
literature these thirty years, which no playwright or novelist would
dare to touch; yet here is Real Life blithely serving it up to us as
if it were quite fresh. It's another instance--and every one has seen a
hundred--of Real Life sedulously apeing ill-constructed and unconvincing
melodrama.”
Bertram, leaning on the window-sill, and looking down at the yellow
flood of the Arno, again softly chuckled.
“Yes,” he said; “but in this case I'm afraid Real Life has received a
little adventitious encouragement.” He turned back into the room,
the stiff hotel sitting-room, with its gilt-and-ebony furniture, its
maroon-and-orange hangings. “The truth is that I've come to Florence for
the especial purpose of seeing you--and of seeking this introduction.”
“Oh?” murmured Ponty, bowing. “So much the better, then,” he approved.
“Though I beg to observe,” he added, “that this doesn't elucidate the
darker mystery--how you knew that we were here.”
“Ah,” laughed Bertram, “the unsleeping vigilance of the Press. Your
movements are watched and chronicled. There was a paragraph in the
_Anglo-Italian Times_. It fell under my eye the day before yesterday,
and--well, you see whether I have let the grass grow. My glimpse of the
ladies was extremely brief, but it was enough to make me very keen to
meet them again. After all, I have a kind of prescriptive right to
know Lady Dor--isn't she the sister of one of my oldest friends? Miss
Adgate,” he spoke with respectful hesitancy, “I think I have heard, is
an American?”
“Of sorts--yes,” Ponty answered. “But without the feathers. Her father
was a New Englander, who came to Europe on the death of his wife, when
Ruth was three years old, and never went back. So she's entirely a
European product.”
His smiling eyes studied for a moment the flowers and clouds and cupids
painted in blue and pink upon the ceiling. Then his theme swept him on.
“He was a very remarkable man, her father. I think he had the widest,
the most all-round culture of any man I've ever known; he was beyond
question the most brilliant talker. And he was wonderful to look at,
with a great old head and a splendid tangle of hair and beard. He was
a man who could have distinguished himself ten times over, if he would
only have _done_ things--written books, or what not.
“But he positively didn't know what ambition meant; he hadn't a trace of
vanity, of the desire to shine, in his whole composition. Therefore he
did nothing--except absorb knowledge, and delight his friends with his
magnificent talk. He made me the executor of his will, and when he
died it turned out that he was vastly richer than any one had thought..
Twenty odd years before, he had taken some wild land in Wyoming for a
bad debt, and meanwhile the city of Agamenon had been obliging enough
to spring up upon it. So, when Ruth attained her majority, I was able to
hand over to her a fortune of about thirty thousand a year.”
“Really?” said Bertram, and thought of Mrs. Wilberton. This rhymed
somewhat faultily with the story of a money-lender. Then, while
Pontycroft, his legs curled up, sat on the maroon-and-orange sofa, and
puffed his eternal cigarette, Bertram took a turn or two about the room.
He didn't want to ask questions; he didn't want to seem to pry. But he
did want to hear just as much about Ruth Adgate as Pontycroft might
be inclined to tell. He didn't want to ask questions, and yet, after a
minute, as Pontycroft simply smoked in silence, he ended by asking one.
“I think Miss Adgate is of the Old Religion?”
“Yes--her father was a convert, and a mighty fervent and eloquent one,
too,” Ponty replied nowise loth to pursue the subject. “That was what
first brought us together. We were staying at the same inn in one of the
Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and on Sunday morning all three of us
tramped off nine miles to hear Mass, Ruth being then about ten. He was a
man who never went in for general society. He never went in for anything
usual or conventional. His life was extraordinarily detached. But he had
his own little group of friends, of old cronies and young disciples,
in pretty nearly every town of Europe, so that he never needed to be
lonely. And he had a brother, an elder brother, whom he was always going
out to America to see; General Adgate, United States Army, retired,
residing at Oldbridge, Connecticut. Every spring, every summer, every
autumn, old Tom Adgate made his plans to go and visit the General, and
then he put the visit off. I think he'd never really got over his grief
for the death of his wife, and that he dreaded returning to the places
that were associated with her.”
Bertram did not want to ask questions--yet now he asked another.
“But Miss Adgate herself--has she never been to America?”
“No, she won't go,” Pontycroft said. “We've urged her, pressed her to
go, Lucilla and I--not to stop, of course--but to see the place, to
_faire acte de presence_. Lucilla has even offered to go with her. And
the General has written fifty times begging her to come and stay with
him at Oldbridge. She really ought to go. It's her native country, and
she ought to make its acquaintance. But she seems to have imbibed a
prejudice against it. She's been unfortunate in getting hold of some
rather terrible American newspapers, printed in all the colours of the
rainbow, in which the London correspondents made her and her affairs the
subject of their prose. And then she's read some American novels. I'm
bound to confess that I can understand her shrinking a bit, if American
society is anything like what American novelists depict. The people seem
entirely to lack manners,--and the novelists seem ingenuously oblivious
of the deficiency. They present the most unmitigated bounders, and
appear in all good faith to suppose they are presenting gentlemen and
ladies.”
“Yes,” agreed Bertram, smiling, “one has noticed that.” Then,
thoughtful-eyed, pacing the floor, the world-traveller spoke: “But
America is very big, and very heterogeneous in its elements, and the
novelists leave a good deal out. There's no such thing as American
society,--there are innumerable different societies, unassimilated,
unaffiliated, and one must pick and choose. Besides, Oldbridge--didn't
you say--is in New England? New England is an extraordinary little world
apart, as unlike the rest of the country as--as a rural dean is unlike
a howling dervish. The rest of the country is in the making, a confusion
of materials that don't match; New England is finished, completed;
and of a piece. Take Boston, for instance,--I really don't know a more
interesting town. It's pretty, it's even stately; it's full of colour
and character; it's full of expression,--it expresses its race and its
history. And as for society, Boston society is as thoroughbred as any
I have ever encountered--easy, hospitable, with standards, with
traditions, and at the same time with a faint breath of austerity,
a little remainder of Puritanism, that is altogether surprising and
amusing, and in its effect rather tonic. No, no, there's nothing to
shrink from in New England--unless, perhaps, its winter climate. It
can't be denied that they sometimes treat you to sixty degrees of
frost.”
Pontycroft blew a long stream of smoke, “I'll ask you to repeat that
sermon to Ruth herself.”
Bertram halted, guiltily hung his head. “I beg your pardon--my text ran
away with me. But why doesn't--if Miss Adgate won't go to America, why
doesn't America come to her? Why doesn't General Adgate come to Europe?”
Pontycroft's brows knotted themselves again. “Ah, why indeed?” he
echoed. “Hardly for want of being asked, at any rate. Ruth has asked
him, my sister has asked him, I have asked him. And it seems a smallish
enough thing to do. But in his way, I imagine he's as unlike other folk
as his brother was in his. He's a bachelor--wedded, apparently, to his
chimney-corner. There's no dislodging him--at least by the written word.
So Ruth, you see, is rather peculiarly alone in the world, as I'm afraid
she sometimes rather painfully feels. She has Lucilla and me, a kind of
honorary sister and brother, and in England she has her old governess,
Miss Nettleworth, a cousin of Charlie Nettleworth, who lives with her,
and might be regarded as a stipendiary aunt. And that's all, unless you
count heaps of acquaintances, and scores of wise youths who'd like to
marry her. But she appears to have devoted herself to spinsterhood. One
and all, she refuses 'em as fast as they come up. She's even refused
a duke, which is accounted, I suppose, the most heroic thing a girl in
England can do.”
“Oh----?” said Bertram, in a tone that by no means disguised his
eagerness to hear more.
“Yes--Newhampton,” said Ponty. “As he tells the story himself, there's
no reason why I shouldn't repeat it. His people--mother and sister--had
been at him for months to propose to her, and at last (they were staying
in the same country house) he took her for a walk in the shrubberies and
did his filial and fraternal duty. I'm not sure whether you know him?
The story isn't so funny unless you do. He's a tiny little chap, only
about six-and-twenty, beardless, rosy-gilled--looks for all the world
like a boy fresh from Eton. 'By Jove, I thought my hour had struck,'
says he. 'I'd no idea I should come out of it a free man. Well, it shows
that honesty _is_ the best policy, after all. I told her honestly that
my heart was a burnt-out volcano--that I hoped I should make a kind and
affectionate husband--but that I had had my _grande passion_, and could
never love again; if she chose to accept me on that understanding--well,
I was at her disposal. After which I stood and quaked, waiting for my
doom. But she--she simply laughed. And then she said I was the honestest
fellow she'd ever known, and had made the most original proposal she'd
ever listened to, which she wouldn't have missed for anything; and to
reward me for the pleasure I'd given her, she would let me off--decline
my offer with thanks. Yes, by Jove, she regularly rejected me--me, a
duke--with the result that we've been the best of friends ever since.'
And so indeed they have,” concluded Ponty with a laugh.
Bertram laughed too--and thought of Stuart Seton.
“The Duchess-mother, though,” Ponty went on, “was inconsolable--till
I was fortunate enough to console her. I discovered that she had an
immensely exaggerated notion of Ruth's wealth, and mentioned the right
figures. 'Dear me,' she cried, 'in that case Ferdie has had a lucky
escape. He surely shouldn't let himself go under double that.' But
now”--Ponty laughed again--“observe how invincible is truth. There are
plenty of people in England who'll tell you that they were actually
engaged, and that when it came to settlements, finding she wasn't so
rich as he'd supposed, Newhampton cried off.”
Bertram had resumed his walk about the room. Presently, “You know Stuart
Seton, of course?” he asked, coming to a standstill.
“Of course,” said Ponty. “Why?”
“What do you think of him?” asked Bertram.
“'A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume,'” Ponty laughed. “Oh, he's a
harmless enough little beast, but it's a pity he oils his hair.”
“Hum,” said Bertram, with an air of profound thought.
Ponty looked at his watch.
“I say,” he cried, starting up; “it's time we were off.”