"I am the daughter of the house," she explained, "and I'm named
Fyles too, though they usually call me Verna."
"And the little f, of course," I said.
"Just like yours," she returned. "There may be some capital F's in
the family, but we wouldn't acknowledge them!"
"What a fellow-feeling that gives one!" I said. "At school, at
college, in business, in the war with Spain when I served on the
Dixie, my life has been one long struggle to preserve that little
f against a capital F world. I remember saying that to a chum the
day we sank Cervera, 'If I am killed, Bill,' I said, 'see that
they don't capital F me on the scroll of fame!'"
"A true ffrench!" exclaimed Beauty with approval.
"As true as yourself," I said.
"Do you know that I'm the last of them?" she said.
"You!" I exclaimed. "The last!"
"Yes," she said, "when my father dies the estates will pass to my
second cousin, Lord George Willoughby, and our branch of the
family will become extinct."
"You fill me with despair," I said.
"My father never can forgive me for being a girl," she said.
"I can," I remarked, "even at the risk of appearing disloyal to
the race."
"Fyles," she said, addressing me straight out by my first name,
and with a little air that told me plainly I had made good my
footing in the fold, "Fyles, what a pity you aren't the rightful
heir, come from overseas with parchments and parish registers, to
make good your claim before the House of Lords."
"Wouldn't that be rather hard on you?" I asked.
"I'd rather give up everything than see the old place pass to
strangers," she said.
"But I'm a stranger," I said.
"You're Fyles ffrench," she exclaimed, "and a man, and you'd hand
the old name down and keep the estate together."
"And guard the little f with the last drop of my blood," I said.
"Ah, well!" she said, with a little sigh, "the world's a
disappointing place at best, and I suppose it serves us right for
centuries of conceit about ourselves."
"That at least will never die," I observed. "The American branch
will see to that part of it."
"It's a pity, though, isn't it?" she said.
"Well," I said, "when a family has been carrying so much dog for a
thousand years, I suppose in common fairness it's time to give way
for another."
"What is carrying dog?" she said.
"It's American," I returned, "for thinking yourself better than
anybody else!"
"Fancy!" she said, and then with a beautiful smile she took my
hand and rubbed it against the hound's muzzle.
"You mustn't growl at him, Olaf," she said. "He's a ffrench; he's
one of us; and he has come from over the sea to make friends."
"You can't turn me out of the park after that," I said, in spite
of a very dubious lick from the noble animal, who, possibly
because he couldn't read and hadn't seen my card, was still a prey
to suspicion.
"I am going to take you back to the castle myself," she said, "and
we'll spend the day going all over it, and I shall introduce you
to my father--Sir Fyles--when he returns at five from Ascot."
"I could ask for nothing better," I said, "though I don't want to
make myself a burden to you. And then," I went on, a little
uncertain how best to express myself, "you are so queer in England
about--about----"
"Proprieties," she said, giving the word which I hesitated to use.
"Oh, yes! I suppose I oughtn't to; indeed, it's awful, and
there'll be lunch too, Fyles, which makes it twice as bad. But to-
day I'm going to be American and do just what I like."
"I thought I ought to mention it," I said.
"Objection overruled," she returned. "That's what they used to say
in court when my father had his famous right-of-way case with Lord
Piffle of Doom; and from what I remember there didn't seem any
repartee to it."
"There certainly isn't one from me," I said.
"Let's go," she said.
There didn't seem any end to that park, and we walked and walked
and rested once or twice under the deep shade, and took in a
mouldy pavilion in white marble with broken windows, and a Temple
of Love that dated back to the sixteenth century, and rowed on an
ornamental water in a real gondola that leaked like sixty, and
landed on a rushy island where there was a sun-dial and a stone
seat that the Druids or somebody had considerately placed there in
the year one, and talked of course, and grew confidential, until
finally I was calling her Verna (which was her pet name) and
telling her how the other fellow had married my best girl, while
she spoke most beautifully and sensibly about love, and the way
the old families were dying out because they had set greater store
on their lands than on their hearts, and altogether with what she
said and what I said, and what was understood, we passed from
acquaintance to friendship, and from friendship to the verge of
something even nearer. Even the Uncle Tom hound fell under the
spell of our new-found intimacy and condescended to lick my hand
of his own volition, which Verna said he had never done before
except to the butcher, and winked a bloodshot eye when I remarked
he was too big for the island and ought to go back with me to a
country nearer his size.
By the time we had reached the cliffs and began to perceive the
high grey walls of the castle in the distance, Verna and I were
faster friends than ever, and anyone seeing us together would have
thought we had known each other all our lives. I felt more and
more happy to think I had met her first in this unconventional
way, for as the castle loomed up closer and we passed gardeners
and keepers and jockeys with a string of race-horses out for
exercise, I felt that my pretty companion was constrained by the
sight of these obsequious faces and changing by gradations into
what she really was, the daughter of the castle and by right of
blood one of the great ladies of the countryside.
The castle itself was a tremendous old pile, built on a rocky
peninsula and surrounded on three sides by the waters of Appledore
Harbour. It lay so as to face the entrance, which Verna told me
was commanded--or rather had been in years past--by the guns of a
half-moon battery that stood planted on a sort of third-story
terrace. It was all towers and donjons and ramparts, and might, in
its mediaeval perfection, have been taken bodily out of one of Sir
Walter Scott's novels. Verna and I had lunch together in a
perfectly gorgeous old hall, with beams and carved panelling and
antlers, and a fireplace you could have roasted an ox in, and rows
of glistening suits of armour which the original ffrenches had
worn when they had first started the family in life--and all this,
if you please, tete-a-tete with a woman who seemed to get more
beautiful every minute I gazed at her, and who smiled back at me
and called me Fyles, to the stupefaction of three noiseless six-
footers in silk stockings. Disapproving six-footers, too, whose
gimlet eyes seemed to pierce my back as they sized up my clothes,
which, as I said before, had suffered not a little by my trip, and
my collar, which I'll admit straight out wasn't up to a castle
standard, and the undeniable stain of machine-oil on my cuffs
which I had got that morning in putting the machine to rights. You
ought to have seen the man that took my hat, which he did with the
air of a person receiving pearls and diamonds on a golden platter,
and smudged his lordly fingers with the grime of my Fourth of
July. And that darling of a girl, who never noticed my
discomfiture, but whose eyes sparkled at times with a hidden
merriment--shall I ever forget her as she sat there and helped me
to mutton-chops from simply priceless old Charles the First plate!
We had black coffee together in a window-seat overlooking the
harbour and the ships, and she asked me a lot of questions about
the war with Spain and my service in the Dixie. She never moved a
muscle when it came out I had been a quartermaster, though I could
feel she was astounded at my being but a shade above a common
seaman, and not, as she had taken it for granted, a commissioned
officer. I was too proud to explain over-much, or to tell her I
had gone in, as so many of my friends had done, from a strong
sense of duty and patriotism at the time of my country's need, and
consequently allowed her to get a very wrong idea, I suppose,
about my state in life and position in the world. Indeed, I was
just childish enough to get a trifle wounded, and let her add
misconception to misconception out of a silly obstinacy.
"But what do you do," she asked, "now that the war is over and
you've taken away everything from the poor Spaniards and left the
Navy?"
"Work," I said.
"What kind of work?" she asked.
"Oh, in an office!" I said. (I didn't tell her I was the Third
Vice President of the Amalgamated Copper Company, with a twenty-
story building on lower Broadway. Wild horses couldn't have wrung
it out of me then.)
"You're too nice for an office," she said, looking at me so
sweetly and sadly. "You ought to be a gentleman!"
"Oh, dear!" I exclaimed, "I hope I am that, even if I do grub
along in an office." I wish my partners could have heard me say
that. Why, I have a private elevator of my own and a squash-court
on the roof!
"Of course, I don't mean that," she went on quickly, "but like us,
I mean, with a castle and a place in society----"
"I have a sort of little picayune place in New York," I
interrupted. "I don't SLEEP in the office, you know. At night I go
out and see my friends and sometimes they invite me to dinner."
She looked at me more sadly than ever. I don't believe humour was
Verna's strong suit anyway,--not American humour, at least,--for
she not only believed what I said, but more too.
"I must speak to Papa about you," she said.
"What will he do?" I asked.
"Oh, help you along, you know," she said; "ffrenches always stand
together; it's a family trait, though it's dying out now for lack
of ffrenches. You know our family motto?" she went on.
"I'm afraid I don't," I said.
"'Ffrenches first!'" she returned.