MISS WELLINGTON ENLARGES HER EXPERIENCE
Few places in the well-ordered centres of civilization are so
altogether dreary as Wickford Junction, shortly before five o'clock in
the morning, when the usual handful of passengers alight from the
Boston express. The sun has not yet climbed to the top of the seaward
hills of Rhode Island, the station and environment rest in a damp
semi-gloom, everything shut in, silent--as though Nature herself had
paused for a brief time before bursting into glad, effulgent day.
The station is locked; one grocery store in the distance presents a
grim, boarded front to the sleeping street. No one is awake save the
arriving passengers; they are but half so, hungry and in the nature of
things cross. Mrs. Wellington was undisguisedly in that mood.
Armitage found some degree of sardonic pleasure in watching her as she
viewed with cold disapproval the drowsy maids and her daughter, who
although as immaculate and fresh and cool and altogether delightful as
the morning promised to be, persisted in yawning from time to time with
the utmost abandon. Armitage had never seen a woman quite like the
mother. Somewhat above medium height, there was nothing in the least
way matronly about her figure; it had still the beautiful supple lines
of her youth, and her dark brown hair was untinged by the slightest
suggestion of gray. It was the face that portrayed the inexorable
progress of the years and the habits and all that in them had lain.
Cold, calculating, unyielding, the metallic eyes dominated a gray
lineament, seamed and creased with fine hair-like lines.
No flippant, light-headed, pleasure-seeking creature of society was
Belle Wellington. Few of her sort are, public belief to the contrary
notwithstanding. Her famous fight for social primacy, now lying far
behind in the vague past, had been a struggle worthy of an epic,
however meticulous the object of her ambition may have appeared in the
eyes of many good people. At all events she had striven for a goal not
easy of attainment.
Many years before, on the deck of her husband's yacht--whither, by
methods she sternly had forgotten, had been lured a select few of a
select circle--the fight had begun. Even now she awoke sometimes at
night with a shudder, having lived again in vivid dream that August
afternoon in Newport Harbor, when she sat at her tea table facing the
first ordeal. She had come through it. With what rare felicity had
she scattered her conversational charms; with what skill had she played
upon the pet failings and foibles of her guests; what unerring judgment
had been hers, and memory of details, unfailing tact, and exquisite
taste! A triumph, yes. And the first knowledge of it had come in a
lingering hand clasp from the great man of them all and a soft "dear"
in the farewell words of his wife. But she had fainted in her cabin
after they left.
Since that day she had gone far. She was on familiar terms with an
English earl and two dukes; she had entertained an emperor aboard her
yacht; in New York and Newport there were but two women to dispute her
claims as social dictator, and one of these, through a railroad coup of
her husband's, would soon be forced to her knees.
It was all in her face. Armitage could read it there in the hard
shrewd lines, the cold, heartless, vindictive lines, or the softer
lines which the smiles could form when smiles were necessary, which was
not so often now as in former years. And in place of the beauty now
gone, she ruled by sheer power and wit, which time had turned to biting
acidity,--and by the bitter diplomacy of the Medicis.
"Ugh!" Armitage drew his pipe from his pocket with humorous muttering.
"A dreadnaught, all right. An out-and-out sundowner. And I beg leave
to advise myself that the best thing about fair Anne is that she favors
her father, or some relative considerably more saintly than My Lady of
the Marble Face."
As Armitage passed the group in pacing the platform, the woman whom he
had been studying raised her eyes and gazed at him with just a touch of
imperiousness.
"I beg your pardon," she said, and a trace of the little formal smile
appeared; "but can you tell me when we are to have a train?"
Armitage glanced at his watch.
"It is due now," he said, "I think--here it comes," he added, inclining
his head towards a curve in the track around which a little locomotive
was pushing two dingy cars.
Mrs. Wellington nodded her thanks and turned to her daughter, as though
dismissing Armitage, who, indeed, had evinced no desire to remain,
walking toward the upper end of the platform where his bag reposed upon
a pile of trunks.
He did not see them again until they boarded the _General_ at Wickford
Landing for the trip down Narragansett Bay. They were all in the upper
cabin, where Mrs. Wellington was evidently preparing to doze. Armitage
walked forward and stood on the deck under the pilot house, watching
the awakening of the picturesque village across the narrow harbor,
until the steamboat began to back out into the bay. The sunlight was
glorious, the skies blue, and the air fresh and sparkling. Armitage
faced the breeze with bared head and was drawing in deep draughts of
air when footsteps sounded behind him, and Anne Wellington and her maid
came to the rail.
"How perfectly delightful, Emilia," she exclaimed. "Now if I could
have a rusk and some coffee I should enjoy myself thoroughly. Why
don't they conduct this boat like an English liner!"
Her eyes, filled with humorous light, swept past Armitage; yes, they
were hazel.
"I am so hungry, Emilia!" She smiled and sniffed the air with mock
ardor. "Emilia, did n't you smell that tantalizing odor of hot
biscuits in the cabin? I wonder where it came from."
Armitage suddenly remembered a previous journey in this boat and he was
on the point of addressing the girl when he checked himself, but only
for a minute. Her mother had addressed him in her presence, had she
not? Certainly that constituted, well, if not an acquaintance, at
least something which involved warrant to assist her in time of stress,
which he decided to be here and now.
So he turned to the girl with that boyish grin and that twinkling of
his clear, gray eyes which people found so contagious in him, and
addressed her in the most natural way.
"If I don't intrude egregiously--" He rounded out this beautiful word,
a favorite of his father's, with a drawling, tentative inflection,
which caused Anne to smile in spite of herself. Seeing which Armitage
continued: "I happen to know that the steward in the galley below makes
biscuits and brews coffee at this hour each morning such as are given
to few mortals. If you 'll allow me the honor of playing waiter, I 'll
be delighted to serve you in the cabin."
[Illustration: "If you'll allow me the honor of playing waiter, I'll be
delighted to serve you in the cabin."]
Anne Wellington heard him in wide-eyed astonishment. Then she laughed,
not at all affectedly, and glanced swiftly through the cabin windows,
to where her mother sat apparently in slumber.
"I thank you. It's awfully polite of you. But you needn't play
waiter. Instead--would it be too much trouble for you to show us where
the--the--"
"Galley," suggested Armitage.
"Where the galley is?"
Armitage hesitated.
"No," he said, "it would be a pleasure. Only, the galley, or, rather,
the mess room, is rather a stuffy place. I--"
"Oh, I should n't mind that in the least. I am not unused to roughing
it." She turned to her maid. "Emilia, go and tell Morgan to say to
mother, if she wakes, that we are in the galley, breakfasting on plum
duff."
Armitage said nothing while they waited for her return. Anne
Wellington was silent, too. She simply stood waiting, tapping the toe
of one of her small russet pumps on the deck and gazing out over the
bay with a curious little smile rippling up from the corner of her
mouth.
Armitage did not quite understand her. While she had been cordial
enough, yet there was an underlying suggestion of reserve, not at all
apparent and yet unmistakably felt. It was, he felt, as though in her
life and training and experience, she had acquired a poise, a knowledge
of at least certain parts of the world and its affairs, which gave her
confidence, made her at home, and taught her how to deal with
situations which other girls less broadly endowed would have found
over-powering, or, at best, distinctly embarrassing.
Not that Armitage had in any way sought to embarrass Miss Wellington.
He had spoken simply upon impulse, being of that nature, and he could
not but admire the way in which she had diagnosed his motive, or rather
lack of motive save a chivalrous desire to serve. Evidently she had
long been accustomed to the homage of men, and more, she was apparently
a girl who knew how to appraise it at its true value in any given case.
If Armitage had but known it, this was a qualification, not without its
value to the girls and elder women who occupied Anne Wellington's plane
of social existence. The society calendar of scandal is mainly a list
of those who have not possessed this essential.
When the maid returned, Miss Wellington smiled and nodded to Armitage,
who led the way into the cabin and to the main stairway and thence down
into the hold.
The steward was a bustling, voluble little man with well-rounded
proportions and a walrus-like mustache. As Armitage and his two
companions entered, he was engaged in removing a coffee-stained table
cover--the crew had finished breakfasting--which he replaced with a
spotless red-and-white checkered cloth.
"Steward," said Armitage, falling unconsciously into the crisp voice of
command, "get some coffee and biscuits for this lady and her maid,
please."
"Yes, sir," the steward smiled affably, "certainly, sir. They 're fine
this morning--the biscuits, I mean. Fine!"
"Very good," said Armitage. He pulled two chairs to the table and was
leaving the room when the girl looked over her shoulder.
"Are n't you going to join us?" she asked.
"Well," said Armitage smiling, "I was going to breakfast in the galley.
It is so warm by the range, you know."
"Nonsense! Don't mind us. It's rather novel breakfasting with one's
maid--and a stranger."
She said this in rather an absent manner, as though the fact to which
she called attention were almost too obvious for remark. Certainly it
was not said in any way to impel Armitage to introduce himself, and he
had no wish to take advantage of a lame opportunity.
"Yes," he said, seating himself at one end of the table; "it impresses
me that way, too."
To say that the biscuits were delicious and the coffee uplifting,
inspiring, would, in the mind of all who have shared the matutinal
hospitality of the steward of the _General_, be an inadequate
expression of gastronomic gratitude. Let it be sufficient to note that
Anne Wellington beamed gratefully upon the steward, who, expanding
under the genial influence, discussed his art with rare unction.
"The secret," he said, leaning confidentially over the back of Miss
Wellington's chair, "is to be sparin' of the yeast; and then there is
somethin' in raisin' 'em proper. Now, the last time Mrs. Jack
Vanderlip was down here, she made me give her the receipt for them
identical biscuits; gave me a dollar for it."
"Mrs. Jack Vanderlip!" cried Miss Wellington, "did she ever grace your
table?"
"Did she ever grace this table! Well, I should say so, and the Tyler
girls and Hammie Van Rensselaer and Billy Anstruther,--he comes down
here often."
Miss Wellington laughed.
"I often have marvelled at Billy's peach-blow complexion," she said;
"now I have the secret."
"Don't tell him I said so, Miss Wellington," said the steward.
The girl, with a biscuit poised daintily in her fingers, did not seem
surprised to hear her name.
"Your acquaintance is rather exten--rather large," she said.
The steward actually blushed.
"I live in Newport, miss," he said.
"Oh!" That was all, and the curious little smile did not leave her
face. But Armitage noticed that in some way the steward found no
further opportunity for exercising his garrulity.
Evidently she assumed that Armitage now knew whom she was, if he had
not known before the steward uttered her name, for he noticed a slight
modifying of her previous attitude of thorough enjoyment. For his
part, Armitage of course had no reason for altering his bearing, and
that he did not was observed and appreciated by his companion. This
eventually had the effect of restoring both to their former footing.
"Yes," she said finally, "it has been rather a novel experience. I am
indebted to you."
"Not to me," said Armitage. Then, by way of conversation, "novel
experiences, as a rule, are not so easily had."
"No, I grasp them whenever," she jerked her head toward the cabin above
and smiled, "whenever I can, conveniently. My old tutor in Munich was
always impressing it upon me never to neglect such opportunities."
"Opportunities? Oh, I see--slumming." Armitage glanced about the
apartment and laughed.
She frowned.
"I was speaking categorically, not specifically; at least I meant to.
I did not mean slumming; I detest it. '_Seine erfahrungen
erweitern_'--enlarging one's experience--is the way my teacher put it.
Life is so well-ordered with us. There are many well-defined things to
do--any number of them. The trouble is, they are all so well defined.
We glide along and take our switches, as father would say, like so many
trains." She smiled. "And so I love to run off the track once in a
while."
"May I have the credit of having misplaced the switch?" Armitage's
eyes were twinkling as the girl arose with a nod.
In the upper cabin, Mrs. Wellington, apparently, still slept, to
Armitage's great joy. Her daughter, with hardly a glance into the
cabin, stepped to the rail and looked down the bay with radiant face.
The promise of the early hours had been established; it was a beautiful
day. It was one of these mornings typical of the hour; it looked like
morning, smelt like morning, there was the distinct, clean, pure,
inspiring feel of morning. The skies were an even turquoise with
little filmy, fleecy shreds of clouds drifting across; the air was
elixir; and the blue waters, capped here and there with white, ran
joyously to meet the green sloping shores, where the haze still
lingered. Ahead, an island glowed like an opal.
"Perfect, perfectly stunning!" cried the girl. Somehow Armitage felt
the absence of that vague barrier which, heretofore, she had seemed
almost unconsciously to interpose, as her eyes, filled with sheer
vivacity, met his.
"What are those little things bobbing up and down in the water over
there?" she asked.
"I believe that is the torpedo testing ground," he said.
"Torpedoes! Ugh!" She shrugged her shoulders. "Mother knew
Vereshchagin, who was in the _Petrapavlovsk_ when she struck the
Japanese torpedo and turned upside down. Do you know anything about
torpedoes?"
"Not much; a little." Armitage thrilled at the first sign she had
given him that she considered or was in any way curious regarding his
personality.
She looked at him.
"I am certain I have seen you before," she said. "You don't live in
Newport?"
"That is not my home," said Armitage. "I come from Kentucky. I am
something of a wanderer, being a sort of fighter by profession."
The girl started.
"Not a prize fighter?" She glanced quickly at the handsome, square,
fighting face, the broad chest and shoulders, and flushed. "Are you
really that?"
Armitage had intended to tell her he was a naval officer, but obsessed
of the imp of mischief, he nodded.
"I can imagine situations wherein I might fight for a prize."
She overlooked what she regarded as the apparent modesty of his answer.
"Really!" she exclaimed. "How interesting! Now I am glad I met you.
I had no idea you were that, of all things. You seemed--" She checked
herself. "But tell me, how did you begin? Tommy Dallas is keen on
your sort. Did he ever--ever back you, I believe he calls it--in a
fight?"
The new trend speedily had become distasteful to Armitage, who inwardly
was floundering for a method of escape from the predicament into which
his folly had led him. He had no wish to pose as a freak in her eyes.
Still, no solution offered itself.
"No," he said at length, "he never backed me. As a matter of fact, I
am more of a physical instructor, now."
"Oh," she said, disappointedly, "I was going to gloat over Tommy.
Physical instructor! Do you know father is looking for one for my two
kid brothers? Why don't you apply?"
"Thanks," said Armitage, a bit ungraciously, "perhaps I shall."
Plainly the girl's interest in him was fast waning. Extremely
chapfallen and deeply disgusted with himself, Armitage bowed, and,
muttering something about looking after his luggage, withdrew.