Some two months later the _Meteoric_, one of the fast ocean
greyhounds, was approaching the port of New York. At sight of land the
cabin passengers, who had been killing time resignedly in one
another’s society, became possessed with a rampant desire to leave the
vessel as soon as possible. When it was definitely announced that the
_Meteoric_ would reach her dock early enough in the afternoon to
enable them to have their baggage examined and get away before dark,
they gave vent to their pent-up spirits in mutual congratulations and
adieus.
Among those on board thus chafing to escape from the limitations of an
ocean voyage was George Colfax, whose eagerness to land was enhanced
by the hope that his absence had made the heart of his lady-love
fonder. His travels had been restful and stimulating; but there is
nothing like one’s own country, after all. So he reflected as, cigar
in mouth, he perused the newspapers which the pilot had brought, and
watched the coast-line gradually change to the familiar monuments of
Manhattan.
Yet apparently there was a subconsciousness to his thought, for as he
folded his last newspaper and stretched himself with the languor of a
man no longer harried by lack of knowledge as to what has happened
during the last seven days, he muttered under his breath:
“Confound the customs anyway!”
A flutter of garments and a breezy voice brought him politely to his
feet.
“That’s over with, thank Heaven!” The speaker was a charming woman
from Boston, whose society he had found engrossing during the
voyage--a woman of the polite world, voluble and well informed.
“I just signed and swore to the paper they gave me without reading
it,” she added, with a gay shrug of her shoulders, as though she were
well content with this summary treatment of a distasteful matter.
“Have you made your declaration yet?” she asked indifferently.
“No.”
“What I don’t understand is why they should make you take oath to a
thing and then rummage through your trunks as though they didn’t
believe you.”
“It’s an outrage--an infernal outrage,” said George. “Every time the
Government does it the spirit of American institutions is insulted.”
“I haven’t much with me this time, anyway; they can hardly expect that
a person will go to Europe for six months and not bring back more than
one hundred dollars’ worth of things,” continued Miss Golightly
artlessly. “One might almost as well stay at home. It isn’t as if I
bought them to sell. They are my own ownty donty effects, and I’ve no
intention of paying the Government one cent on them if I can help it.
And they charge one for presents. Of course, I won’t pay on presents I
have bought to give other people. That would simply make them cost so
much more.”
“The whole thing is a wretched and humiliating farce,” was George’s
not altogether illuminating comment on this naive revelation of the
workings of the female mind. He spoke doggedly, and then hummed the
refrain of a song as though to keep up his courage.
“Well, I’ll go and take my turn,” he said, with the air of
aristocratic urbanity which made him a favorite in social circles.
Miss Golightly detained him to add: “If you find any better method, I
wish you’d let me know. It seemed the simplest way not to declare
anything, and to trust to luck.”
So great was the bustle and confusion that George was not conscious of
the presence of his lively companion again until he heard her voice in
his ear two hours later on the pier or platform where the baggage from
the _Meteoric_ was being inspected.
“Well,” she said under her breath, “I’m all through. They gave me a
jewel of a man. And you?”
“I’ve had no trouble.” George spoke with nonchalance as if to imply
that he had expected none. Out of the corner of his eye he was
following the actions of the custom-house official allotted to him who
was chalking his examined trunks with the hieroglyphics which
signified that the Government had released its grip on them.
This done, George beckoned to an attendant porter, after which he
turned again to Miss Golightly.
“If you’ll wait a moment until I see these things of mine safely in
the hands of the transfer express, I’ll put you into your carriage and
take a fond farewell.”
“You needn’t hurry,” was her answer.
“My friend, Miss Pilgrim, has declared thirty-four articles, and she
doesn’t know in which of her eight trunks any of them are. She and the
citizen in glasses meted out to her, who insists on finding every one,
are now engaged in ransacking her entire wardrobe. I intend to keep at
a safe distance from the scene of worry. That’s what comes of being
conscientious.”
George and the inspector, preceded by the porter wheeling the
traveller’s three trunks, hat-box, and small bags, set out for the
other end of the shed.
George returned ten minutes later; he stepped briskly and was beaming.
“Still waiting, I see,” he said jocularly.
“And in your eyes I read the purple light of love, young man. I wish
you success.” Her words were the rallying outcome of confidences on
shipboard after five days at sea.
George blushed, but looked pleased. “You may see her first,” he said,
“for she is constantly at her cousin’s, or was before she took up
Settlement life.”
“How much did you give him?” asked Miss Golightly.
The reversion to their previous topic was so abrupt and barefaced that
the lover stared for a moment, then tried not to appear confused.
“Oh, a mere trifle!” he said with offhand dignity.
“I gave mine twenty-five dollars,” she whispered. “Wasn’t that
enough?”
“Abundant, I should say. But I am not well posted on such matters.” It
was evident he wished to avoid the subject, and was also impatient to
get away, for he took out his watch. “If Miss Pilgrim is really likely
to be detained--” he began.
Miss Golightly rose to the occasion and dismissed him. “I understand,”
she exclaimed amiably. “Every minute is precious.”
Nevertheless, it was not until two days later that he succeeded in
finding Mary Wellington at home. He called that evening, but was told
by the person in charge that she had taken a brief respite from work
and would not return for another twenty-four hours. On the second
occasion, as the first, he brought with him under his arm a good-sized
package, neatly done up.
“I am back again,” he said, and he pressed her hand with unmistakable
zeal.
Her greeting was friendly; not emotional like his, or unreserved; but
he flattered himself that she seemed very glad to see him. He
reflected: “I don’t believe that it did my cause a particle of harm to
let her go without the constant visits she had grown accustomed to
expect.”
He said aloud: “I came across this on the other side and took the
liberty of bringing it to you.”
Mary undid the parcel, disclosing a beautiful bit of jade; not too
costly a gift for a friend to accept, yet really a defiance of the
convention which forbids marriageable maidens to receive from their
male admirers presents less perishable than flowers or sweetmeats.
“It is lovely, and it was very kind of you to remember me.”
“Remember you? You were in my thoughts day and night.”
She smiled to dispel the tension. “I shall enjoy hearing about your
travels. A friend of yours has told me something of them.”
“Ah! Miss Golightly. You have seen her, then, at your cousin’s? A
companionable woman; and she knows her Europe. Yes, we compared notes
regarding our travels.”
He colored slightly, but only at the remembrance of having confided to
this comparative stranger his bosom’s secret under the spell of an
ocean intimacy.
“You brought home other things, I dare say?” Mary asked after a pause,
glancing up at him.
“Oh, yes!” The trend of the question was not clear to him, but he was
impelled to add: “For one thing, I ordered clothes enough to last me
three years at least. I bought gloves galore for myself and for my
sister. As I belong to the working class, and there is no knowing how
soon I may be able to get away again, I laid in a stock of everything
which I needed, or which took my fancy. Men’s things as well as
women’s are so much cheaper over there if one knows where to go.”
“With the duties?”
The words, gently spoken, were like a bolt from the blue. George
betrayed his distaste for the inquiry only by a sudden gravity. “Yes,
with the duties.” He hastened to add: “But enough of myself and my
travels. They were merely to pass the time.” He bent forward from his
chair and interrogated her meaningly with his glance.
“But I am interested in duties.”
He frowned at her insistence.
“Miss Golightly,” continued Mary, “explained to us yesterday how she
got all her things through the custom-house by giving the inspector
twenty-five dollars. She gloried in it and in the fact that, though
her trunks were full of new dresses, she made oath that she had
nothing dutiable.”
He suspected now her trend, yet he was not certain that he was
included in its scope. But he felt her eyes resting on him
searchingly.
“Did she?” he exclaimed, with an effort at airy lightness which seemed
to afford the only hope of escape.
“How did you manage?”
“I?” He spoke after a moment’s pause with the calm of one who slightly
resents an invasion of his privacy.
“Did you pay the duties on your things?”
George realized now that he was face to face with a question which, as
lawyers say, required that the answer should be either “yes” or “no.”
Still, he made one more attempt to avert the crucial inquiry.
“Does this really interest you?”
“Immensely. My whole future may be influenced by it.”
“I see.” There was no room left for doubt as to her meaning. Nor did
he choose to lie. “No, I paid no duties.”
“I feared as much.”
There was a painful silence. George rose, and walking to the
mantel-piece, looked down at the hearth and tapped the ironwork with
his foot. He would fain have made the best of what he ruefully
recognized to be a shabby situation by treating it jocosely; but her
grave, grieved demeanor forbade. Yet he ventured to remark:
“Why do you take this so seriously?”
“I expected better things of you.”
He felt of his mustache and essayed extenuation. “It was--er--unworthy
of me, of course; foolish--pig-headed--tricky, I suppose. I got mad.
I’d nothing to sell, and the declaration is a farce when they examine
after it. So I left them to find what they chose. I’m terribly sorry,
for you seem to hate it so. But it’s an idiotic and impertinent law,
anyway.”
“In other words, you think it all right to break a law if you don’t
happen to fancy it.”
George started visibly and colored. He recognized the aphorism as his,
but for the moment did not recall the occasion of its use. He chose to
evade it by an attempt at banter. “You can’t make a tragedy, my dear
girl, out of the failure to pay duties on a few things bought for
one’s personal use, and not for sale. Why, nearly every woman in the
world smuggles when she gets the chance--on her clothes and finery.
You must know that. Your sex as a class doesn’t regard it as
disreputable in the least. At the worst, it is a peccadillo, not a
crime. The law was passed to enable our native tailors to shear the
well-to-do public.”
Mary ignored the plausible indictment against the unscrupulousness of
her sex. “Can such an argument weigh for a moment with any one with
patriotic impulses?”
Again the parrot-like reminder caused him to wince, and this time he
recognized the application.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, with sorry yet protesting confusion.
“It’s the inconsistency,” she answered without flinching, perceiving
that he understood.
George flushed to the roots of his hair. “You compare me with
that--er--blatherskite?” he asked, conscious as he spoke that her
logic was irrefutable. Yet his self-respect cried out to try to save
itself.
“Why not? The civil-service law seemed a frill to Jim Daly; the
customs law an impertinence to you.”
He looked down at the hearth again. There was an air of finality in
her words which was disconcerting.
“I’ve been an ass,” he ejaculated. “I’ll give the things up; pay the
duties; go to prison, if you like. The punishment is fine or
imprisonment.” He intended to be sincere in his offer of
self-humiliation, though his speech savored of extravagance.
Mary shrugged her shoulders. “If you did, I dare say a bevy of society
women would tender you a banquet when you were released from jail.”
He bit his lip and stared at her. “You are taking this seriously with
a vengeance!”
“I must.”
He crossed the room and, bending beside her, sought to take her hand.
“Do you mean that but for this--? Mary, are you going to let a little
thing like this separate us?”
He had captured her fingers, but they lay limp and unresponsive in
his.
“It is not a little thing; from my standpoint it is everything.”
“But you will give me another chance?”
“You have had your chance. That was it. I was trying to find out
whether I loved you, and now I know that I do not. I could never marry
a man I could not--er--trust.”
“Trust? I swear to you that I am worthy of trust.”
She smiled sadly and drew away her hand. “Maybe. But I shall never
know, you see, because I do not love you.”
Her feminine inversion of logic increased his dismay. “I shall never
give up,” he exclaimed, rising and buttoning his coat. “When you think
this over you will realize that you have exaggerated what I did.”
She shook her head. His obduracy made no impression on her, for she
was free from doubts.
“We will be friends, if you like; but we can never be anything
closer.”
An inspiration seized him. “What would the girl whom Jim Daly loves,
if there is one, say? She has never given him up, I wager.”
Mary blushed at his unconscious divination. “I do not know,” she said.
“But you are one person, Jim Daly is another. You have had every
advantage; he is a--er--blatherskite. Yet you condescend to put
yourself on a par with him, and condone the offence on the ground that
your little world winks at it. Remember
“‘Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues.’
How shall society progress, unless my sex insists on at least that
patent of nobility in the men who woo us? I am reading you a lecture,
but you insisted on it.”
George stood for a moment silent. “You are right, I suppose.” He
lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he turned and left the
room.
As he passed out, Mary heard the voices of the orphans, Joe and Frank,
in the entry. The former in greeting her held out a letter which had
just been delivered by the postman.
“You’ve come back, Miss Wellington,” cried the little boy rapturously.
“Yes, Joe dear.”
Mechanically she opened the envelope. As she read the contents she
smiled faintly and nodded her head as much as to say that the news was
not unexpected.
“But _noblesse oblige_,” she murmured to herself proudly, not
realizing that she had spoken aloud.
“What did you say, Miss Wellington?”
Mary recalled her musing wits. “I’ve something interesting to tell
you, boys. Miss Burke is going to be married to Jim Daly. That is bad
for you, dears, but partly to make up for it, I wish to let you know
that there is no danger of my leaving you any more.”