"Poem?"
"Yes. Mr. March thinks it's very good."
"I thought he spoke very nicely about 'The Maiden Knight'. And he has
been very nice to papa. You know they have the same room."
"I think Mr. Burnamy told me," Mrs. March said.
The girl went on. "He had the lower berth, and he gave it up to papa;
he's done everything but turn himself out of doors."
"I'm sure he's been very glad," Mrs. March ventured on Burnamy's behalf,
but very softly, lest if she breathed upon these budding confidences they
should shrink and wither away.
"I always tell papa that there's no country like America for real
unselfishness; and if they're all like that, in Chicago!" The girl
stopped, and added with a laugh, "But I'm always quarrelling with papa
about America."
"We have a daughter living in Chicago," said Mrs. March, alluringly.
But Miss Triscoe refused the bait, either because she had said all she
meant, or because she had said all she would, about Chicago, which Mrs.
March felt for the present to be one with Burnamy. She gave another of
her leaps. "I don't see why people are so anxious to get it like Europe,
at home. They say that there was a time when there were no chaperons
before hoops, you know." She looked suggestively at Mrs. March, resting
one slim hand on the table, and controlling her skirt with the other, as
if she were getting ready to rise at any moment. "When they used to sit
on their steps."
"It was very pleasant before hoops--in every way," said Mrs. March. "I
was young, then; and I lived in Boston, where I suppose it was always
simpler than in New York. I used to sit on our steps. It was delightful
for girls--the freedom."
"I wish I had lived before hoops," said Miss Triscoe.
"Well, there must be places where it's before hoops yet: Seattle, and
Portland, Oregon, for all I know," Mrs. March suggested. "And there must
be people in that epoch everywhere."
"Like that young lady who twists and turns?" said Miss Triscoe, giving
first one side of her face and then the other. "They have a good time. I
suppose if Europe came to us in one way it had to come in another. If it
came in galleries and all that sort of thing, it had to come in
chaperons. You'll think I'm a great extremist, Mrs. March; but sometimes
I wish there was more America instead of less. I don't believe it's as
bad as people say. Does Mr. March," she asked, taking hold of the chair
with one hand, to secure her footing from any caprice of the sea, while
she gathered her skirt more firmly into the other, as she rose, "does he
think that America is going--all wrong?"
"All wrong? How?"
"Oh, in politics, don't you know. And government, and all that. And
bribing. And the lower classes having everything their own way. And the
horrid newspapers. And everything getting so expensive; and no regard for
family, or anything of that kind."
Mrs. March thought she saw what Miss Triscoe meant, but she answered,
still cautiously, "I don't believe he does always. Though there are times
when he is very much disgusted. Then he says that he is getting too
old--and we always quarrel about that--to see things as they really are.
He says that if the world had been going the way that people over fifty
have always thought it was going, it would have gone to smash in the time
of the anthropoidal apes."
"Oh, yes: Darwin," said Miss Triscoe, vaguely. "Well, I'm glad he doesn't
give it up. I didn't know but I was holding out just because I had argued
so much, and was doing it out of--opposition. Goodnight!" She called her
salutation gayly over her shoulder, and Mrs. March watched her gliding
out of the saloon with a graceful tilt to humor the slight roll of the
ship, and a little lurch to correct it, once or twice, and wondered if
Burnamy was afraid of her; it seemed to her that if she were a young man
she should not be afraid of Miss Triscoe.
The next morning, just after she had arranged herself in her steamer
chair, he approached her, bowing and smiling, with the first of his many
bows and smiles for the day, and at the same time Miss Triscoe came
toward her from the opposite direction. She nodded brightly to him, and
he gave her a bow and smile too; he always had so many of them to spare.
"Here is your chair!" Mrs. March called to her, drawing the shawl out of
the chair next her own. "Mr. March is wandering about the ship
somewhere."
"I'll keep it for him," said Miss Triscoe, and as Burnamy offered to take
the shawl that hung in the hollow of her arm, she let it slip into his
hand with an "Oh; thank you," which seemed also a permission for him to
wrap it about her in the chair.
He stood talking before the ladies, but he looked up and down the
promenade. The pivotal girl showed herself at the corner of the
music-room, as she had done the day before. At first she revolved there
as if she were shedding her light on some one hidden round the corner;
then she moved a few paces farther out and showed herself more obviously
alone. Clearly she was there for Burnamy to come and walk with her; Mrs.
March could see that, and she felt that Miss Triscoe saw it too. She
waited for her to dismiss him to his flirtation; but Miss Triscoe kept
chatting on, and he kept answering, and making no motion to get away.
Mrs. March began to be as sorry for her as she was ashamed for him. Then
she heard him saying, "Would you like a turn or two?" and Miss Triscoe
answering, "Why, yes, thank you," and promptly getting out of her chair
as if the pains they had both been at to get her settled in it were all
nothing.
She had the composure to say, "You can leave your shawl with me, Miss
Triscoe," and to receive her fervent, "Oh, thank you," before they sailed
off together, with inhuman indifference to the girl at the corner of the
music-room. Then she sank into a kind of triumphal collapse, from which
she roused herself to point her husband to the chair beside her when he
happened along.
He chose to be perverse about her romance. "Well, now, you had better let
them alone. Remember Kendricks." He meant one of their young friends
whose love-affair they had promoted till his happy marriage left them in
lasting doubt of what they had done. "My sympathies are all with the
pivotal girl. Hadn't she as much right to him, for the time being, or for
good and all, as Miss Triscoe?"
"That depends upon what you think of Burnamy."
"Well, I don't like to see a girl have a young man snatched away from her
just when she's made sure of him. How do you suppose she is feeling now?"
"She isn't feeling at all. She's letting her revolving light fall upon
half a dozen other young men by this time, collectively or consecutively.
All that she wants to make sure of is that they're young men--or old
ones, even."
March laughed, but not altogether at what his wife said. "I've been
having a little talk with Papa Triscoe, in the smoking-room."
"You smell like it," said his wife, not to seem too eager: "Well?"
"Well, Papa Triscoe seems to be in a pout. He doesn't think things are
going as they should in America. He hasn't been consulted, or if he has,
his opinion hasn't been acted upon."
"I think he's horrid," said Mrs. March. "Who are they?"
"I couldn't make out, and I couldn't ask. But I'll tell you what I
think."
"What?"
"That there's no chance for, Burnamy. He's taking his daughter out to
marry her to a crowned head."