GRACE HAYNES.
“Bravo, Miss Leighton! I did not suppose there was so much spirit in
you, when I saw you darning madam’s stockings and buttoning her boots.
You are a brick and positively I admire you. Neither mamma nor Mrs
Hallam needs any one to go with them, any more than the sea needs water.
But it is English, you know, to have an attendant, and such an
attendant, too, as you. Yes, I admire you! I respect you! Our door was
open, and I heard what you said; so did mamma, and she is furious; but I
am glad to see one woman assert her rights.”
It was Grace Haynes, who, coming from her bedroom, joined Bertha, as she
was walking rapidly down the hall and said all this to her. Bertha had
been nearly two weeks at Aix, and, although she had scarcely exchanged a
word with Grace, she had often seen her, and remembering what Mrs.
Hallam had said of her and Reginald, had looked at her rather
critically. She was very thin and wiry, with a pale face, yellow hair
worn short, large blue eyes, and a nose inclined to an upward curve. She
was a kind-hearted, good-natured girl, of a pronounced type both in
dress and manner and speech. She believed in a little slang, she said,
because it gave a point to conversation, and she adored baccarat and
rouge-et-noir, and a lot more things which her mother thought highly
improper. She had heard all that her mother said of Bertha, and, quick
to discriminate, she had seen how infinitely superior she was to Mrs.
Hallam and had felt drawn to her, but was too much absorbed in her own
matters to have any time for a stranger. She was a natural flirt, and,
although so plain, always managed to have, as she said, two or three
idiots dangling on her string. Just now it was a young Englishman, the
grandson of old Lady Gresham, whom she had upon her string, greatly to
the disgust of her mother, with whom she was not often in perfect
accord.
Linking her arm in Bertha’s as they went down the stairs, she continued,
“Are you going to walk? I am, up the hill. Come with me. I’ve been dying
to talk to you ever since you came, but have been so engaged, and you
are always so busy with madam since Celine went away. Good pious work
you must find it waiting on madam and mamma both! I don’t see how you do
it so sweetly. You must have a great deal of what they call inward and
spiritual grace. I wish you’d give me some.”
Grace was the first girl of her own age and nation who had spoken to
Bertha since she left America, and she responded readily to the friendly
advance.
“I don’t believe I have any inward and spiritual grace to spare,” she
said. “I only do what I hired out to do. You know I must earn my wages.”
“Yes,” Grace answered, “I know, and I wish I could earn wages, too. It
would be infinitely more respectable than the way we get our money.”
“How do you get it?” Bertha asked, and Grace replied, “Don’t you know?
You have certainly heard of high-born English dames who, for a
consideration, undertake to hoist ambitious Americans into society?”
Bertha had heard of such things, and Grace continued, “Well, that is
what mamma does at home on a smaller scale; and she succeeds, too.
Everybody knows Mrs. Walker Haynes, with blood so blue that indigo is
pale beside it, and if she pulls a string for a puppet to dance, all the
other puppets dance in unison. Sometimes she chaperons a party of young
ladies, but as these give her a good deal of trouble, she prefers people
like Mrs. Hallam, who without her would never get into society. Society!
I hate the word, with all it involves. Do you see that colt over there?”
and she pointed to a young horse in an adjoining field. “Well, I am like
that colt, kicking up its heels in a perfect abandon of freedom. But
harness it to a cart, with thills and lines and straps and reins, and
then apply the whip, won’t it rebel with all its might? And if it gets
its feet over the traces and breaks in the dash-board who can blame it?
I’m just like that colt. I hate that old go-giggle called society, which
says you mustn’t do this and you must do that because it is or is not
proper and Mrs. Grundy would be shocked. I like to shock her, and I’d
rather take boarders than live as we do now. I’d do anything to earn
money. That’s why I play at baccarat.”
“Baccarat!” Bertha repeated, with a little start.
“Yes, baccarat. Don’t try to pull away from me. I felt you,” Grace said,
holding Bertha closer by the arm. “You are Massachusetts born and have a
lot of Massachusetts notions, of course, and I respect you for it, but I
am Bohemian through and through. Wasn’t born anywhere in particular, and
have been in your so-called first society all my life and detest it. We
have a little income, and could live in the country with one servant
comfortably, as so many people do; but that would not suit mamma, and so
we go from pillar to post and live on other people, until I am ashamed.
I am successful at baccarat. They say the old gent who tempted Eve helps
new beginners at cards, and I believe he helps me, I win so often. I
know it isn’t good form, but what can I do? If I don’t play baccarat
there’s nothing left for me but to marry, and that I never shall.”
“Why not?” Bertha asked, becoming more and more interested in the
strange girl talking so confidentially to her.
“Why not?” Grace repeated. “That shows that you are not in it,—the swim,
I mean. Don’t you know that few young men nowadays can afford to marry a
poor girl and support her in her extravagance and laziness? She must
have money to get any kind of a show, and that I haven’t,—nor beauty
either, like you, whose face is worth a fortune. Don’t say it isn’t;
don’t fib,” she continued, as Bertha tried to speak. “You know you are
beautiful, with a grande-duchesse air which makes everybody turn to look
at you, even the king. I saw him, and I’ve seen those Russians and
Greeks, who are here with some high cockalorums, take off their hats
when you came near them. Celine told me how they all stand up when you
enter the _salle-à-manger_. I call that genuine homage, which I’d give a
good deal to have.”
She had let go Bertha’s arm and was walking a little in advance, when
she stopped suddenly, and, turning round, said, “I wonder what you will
think of Rex Hallam.”
Bertha made no reply, and she went on: “I know I am talking queerly, but
I must let myself out to some one. Rex is coming before long, and you
will know then, if you don’t now, that mamma is moving heaven and earth
to make a match between us; but she never will. I am not his style, and
he is far more likely to marry you than me. I have known him for years,
and could get up a real liking for him if it would be of any use, but it
wouldn’t. He doesn’t want a washed-out, yellow-haired girl like me.
Nobody does, unless it’s Jack Travis, old Lady Gresham’s grandson, with
no prospects and only a hundred pounds a year and an orange grove in
Florida, which he never saw, and which yields nothing, for want of
proper attention. He says he would like to go out there and rough it;
that he does not like being tied to his grandmother’s apron-strings; and
that, give him a chance, he would gladly work. I have two hundred
dollars a year more. Do you think we could live on that and the
climate?”
They had been retracing their steps, and were near the hotel, where they
met the young Englishman in question, evidently looking for Miss Haynes.
He was a shambling, loose-jointed young man, but he had a good face, and
there was a ring in his voice which Bertha liked, as he spoke first to
Grace and then to herself, as Grace presented him to her. Knowing that
as a third party she was in the way, Bertha left them and went into the
hotel, while they went down into the town, where they stayed so long
that Lady Gresham and Mrs. Haynes began to get anxious as to their
whereabouts. Both ladies knew of the intimacy between the young people,
and both heartily disapproved of it. Under some circumstances Mrs.
Haynes would have been delighted to have for a son-in-law Lady Gresham’s
grandson. But she prized money more than a title, and one hundred pounds
a year with a doubtful orange grove in Florida did not commend
themselves to her, while Lady Gresham, although very gracious to Mrs.
Haynes, because it was not in her nature to be otherwise to any one, did
not like the fast American girl, who wore her hair short, carried her
hands in her pockets like a man, and believed in women’s rights. If Jack
were insane enough to marry her she would wash her hands of him and send
him off to that orange grove, where she had heard there was a little
dilapidated house in which he could try to live on the climate and one
hundred a year. Some such thoughts as these were passing through Lady
Gresham’s mind, while Mrs. Haynes was thinking of Grace’s perversity in
encouraging young Travis, and of Reginald Hallam, from whom Mrs. Hallam
had that morning had a letter and who was coming to Aix earlier than he
had intended doing. Nearly all his friends were out of town, he wrote,
and the house was so lonely without his aunt that she might expect him
within two or three weeks at the farthest. He did not say what steamer
he should take, but, as ten days had elapsed since his letter was
written, Mrs. Hallam said she should not be surprised to see him at any
time, and her face wore an air of pleased expectancy at the prospect of
having Rex with her once more. But a thought of Bertha brought a cloud
upon it at once. She had intended removing her from the second-class
_salle-à-manger_ before Rex came, but did not know how to manage it.
“The girl seems contented enough,” she thought, “and I hear has a great
deal of attention there,—in fact, is quite like a queen among her
subjects; so I guess I’ll let it run, and if Rex flares up I’ll trust
Mrs. Haynes to help me out of it, as she got me into it.”