Part 4

As the luncheon progressed Miss Letty became more and more in doubt whether she liked Mr. Romaine or not. She regarded him as being somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-five, and wished to feel the respect for him she ought to feel for all decent graybeards. But Mr. Romaine was as fully determined not to be thought old as Letty was determined to think that he was old. He was certainly unlike any old man that she had ever met; not that there was anything in the least ridiculous about him,--he was much too astute to affect juvenility,--but there was an alertness in his wonderful black eyes and a keenness in his soft speech that was far removed from old age. And he was easily master of everybody at the table, excepting Farebrother and Letty. With feminine intuition Letty felt Mr. Romaine’s power, and knew that had Mr. Chessingham been the old man and Mr. Romaine the young doctor, Mr. Romaine would still have been in the ascendant. The Colonel, with well meant but cruel persistence, tried to get Mr. Romaine into a reminiscent mood, but in vain. Mr. Romaine utterly ignored the “forty years ago, my dear Romaine,” with which Colonel Corbin began many stories that never came to a climax, and he positively declined to discuss anything that had happened more than twenty years before. In fact this peculiarity was so marked that Letty strongly suspected that the old gentleman’s memory had been rigidly sawed off at a certain period, as a surgeon cuts off a leg at the knee-joint.

The Chessinghams evidently enjoyed themselves, and the utmost cordiality prevailed, except between the two girls, who eyed each other very much as the gladiators might have done when in the arena for the fray. Still they were perfectly polite, and showed a truly feminine capacity for pretty hypocrisy. Nevertheless, when the luncheon was over and the party separated, Miss Maywood and Miss Corbin parted with cordial sentiments of mutual disesteem. Scarcely were the two sisters alone at the hotel, before Miss Maywood burst forth with, “Well, Gladys, I suppose you see what the typical American girl is! Did you ever hear anything equal to Miss Corbin’s language to Mr. Romaine and Sir Archy? Actually rating them! And then the next moment plying them with the most outrageous flattery.”

“And yet, Ethel, she seemed to please them,” answered Mrs. Chessingham, doubtfully. “But I was a little scandalized, I admit.”

“A little scandalized! Now, I do assure you, leaving out of account altogether any personal grievance about these two particular men, I never heard a girl talk so to men in all my life.”

Ethel told the truth this time and no mistake.

“Nor did I,” said Mrs. Chessingham. “But perhaps she’s not a fair type.”

“Didn’t Sir Archy tell us she was the most typical American that he has yet seen? And doesn’t Mr. Romaine know all about her family? And really,” continued Miss Maywood, getting off her high horse, and looking genuinely puzzled, “I scarcely know whether it would be right for me to make a companion of such a girl; you know her home is in the same county as Mr. Romaine’s place, quite near, I fancy--and we have been so carefully brought up by dear mama, and so often warned against associating with reckless girls, that I am not quite sure that we ought to know her when we go to Virginia.”

Here Mrs. Chessingham’s confidence in Reggie came to her help.

“Now don’t say that, Ethel dear. Reggie thinks her a charming girl, and you saw for yourself nobody seemed to take her seriously except ourselves, so the best thing for you to do is to go on quietly and be guided by circumstances.”

“But the way she made eyes!” said Miss Maywood, disgustedly. “It’s perfectly plain she means to marry either Mr. Romaine or Sir Archy--she advertises the fact so plainly that she’ll probably overshoot the mark. At all events, I shall be on my guard, and unless I am much mistaken, you will find that we can’t afford to know her.”

Meanwhile Letty, in the little sitting-room of their lodgings, was haranguing Colonel Corbin and Miss Jemima upon Miss Maywood’s iniquities.

“The most brazen piece, Aunt Jemima, actually saying that any girl would marry that old pachyderm, Mr. Romaine! I wouldn’t marry him if he was padded an inch thick with thousand-dollar bills! But she as good as said _she_ would--and the way he poked fun at her! She agrees with everything he says, and she is making such a dead set at him that she can’t see the old gentleman’s game. I am perfectly disgusted with her.”

At the first mention of Mr. Romaine’s name, a faint color came into Miss Jemima’s gentle, withered face.

“Don’t speak of him that way, Letty dear,” she said. “He was a charming man once. But, perhaps, my love, it would be more prudent for you to avoid Miss Maywood. Nothing is more dangerous to young girls than association with others who lack modesty and refinement, as you represent this young lady.”

“I’ll think over it,” answered the prudent Letty, who at that moment remembered that they were all going to the country, which is dull for young people at best, and a new neighbor is a distinct godsend not to be trifled with. But in her heart she had grave doubts of Miss Maywood’s propriety.

IV

It might be supposed that the modest sum of money, which seemed like a million to Colonel Corbin, would have been used in paying off some of the incumbrances on Corbin Hall, or at least in refitting some part of it. A few hundreds might have been spent very judiciously in stopping up the chinks and crannies of the house, in replacing the worn carpets and having the rickety old furniture mended. But far were such thoughts from the Colonel, Miss Jemima, or Letty. Money was a rare and unfamiliar commodity to all of them, and when they got any of it they wisely spent it in pleasuring. New carpets and sound furniture were not in the least essential to these simple folk, and would have altogether spoiled the harmony of the comfortable shabbiness that prevailed at Corbin Hall. So the Colonel proposed to stop a month or two in New York in order to disburden themselves of this inconvenient amount of cash. Farebrother found out involuntarily, as indeed everybody else did, the state of affairs, and he took positive delight in the simplicity and primitiveness of these sweet and excellent people, to whom the majesty of the dollar was so utterly unknown.

So admirably had Mr. Romaine got on with the Corbin party, in spite of the Colonel’s continual efforts to remind him of the time when they were boys together, that he announced his intention, one night, upon a visit to the little sitting-room appropriated to the Chessinghams, of going to New York the same time the Corbins did, and staying at the same old-fashioned but aristocratic hotel. The two young women were sitting under the drop-light, each with the inevitable piece of fancy work in her hand that is so necessary to the complete existence of an English woman. Mrs. Chessingham glanced at Ethel, whose fine, white skin grew a little pale.

Mr. Romaine sat watching her with something like a malicious smile upon his delicate, high-bred old face. He did not often bestow his company upon his suite, as Letty wickedly called his party. He traveled in extravagant luxury, and what with his own room, his sitting-room and his valet’s room, and the apartments furnished the Chessinghams and Miss Maywood, it really did seem a marvel sometimes, as Ethel Maywood said, how anybody could pay such bills. But he did pay them, promptly and ungrudgingly. Nobody--not Chessingham himself--knew how Mr. Romaine’s money came or how much he had. Nor did Mr. Romaine’s relatives, of whom he had large tribes and clans in Virginia, know any more on this interesting subject. They would all have liked to know, not only where it came from, but where it was going to. Not the slightest hint, however, had been got from Mr. Romaine during his forty years’ sojourn on the other side. Nor did his unlooked-for return to his native land incline him any more to confidences about his finances. There was a cheque-book always at hand, and Mr. Romaine paid his score with a lofty indifference to detail that was delightful to women’s souls, particularly to Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood. Both of them were scrupulously honest women, and not disposed in the slightest degree to impose upon him. But if he found out by accident that they had walked when they might have driven, or had paid for the carriage themselves, or had in any way paid a bill that might have been charged to him, he always chided them gently, and declared that if it happened again all would be over between Chessingham and himself. This charming peculiarity had caused Ethel to say very often to her sister:

“Although one would much rather marry an Englishman than an American, I don’t believe any Englishman alive would be so indulgent to a woman as Mr. Romaine would be. I have never known any married woman made so free of her husband’s money as we are with Mr. Romaine’s, and if he does offer himself, I am sure he will make most unheard-of settlements.”

But when Mr. Romaine, sitting back in a dark velvet chair which showed off his face, clear cut as a cameo, with his superb black eyes shining full of meaning, spoke of the New York trip, Ethel began to think that there was no longer any hope of that offer. She remained silent, but Mrs. Chessingham, with a pitying glance at her sister, said resignedly, “It will be very pleasant, no doubt. The glimpse we had of New York when we landed was scarcely enough for so large a place.”

“It is quite a large place,” answered Mr. Romaine, gravely. “How large should you take it to be?” he asked Miss Maywood.

“About two or three hundred thousand,” replied Ethel, dubiously.

“There are four million people within a radius of ten miles of New York’s City Hall. Good-night,” said Mr. Romaine, with much suavity, rising and going.

When he was out of the door Mrs. Chessingham spoke up promptly: “What a story! I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Of course it isn’t true,” complained Ethel, “but that is the worst of Americans--you never can tell when they are joking and when they aren’t. As for Miss Corbin, I simply can’t understand her at all. However, this move of Mr. Romaine’s settles one thing. Miss Corbin will be Mrs. Romaine, mark my words.”

“Reggie says that there is positively nothing in it; that Mr. Romaine likes her, and is amused by her. She _is_ amusing.”

“Yes, I know she is,” replied Ethel, ruefully, with something like tears in her voice at the admission.

“And he says that she wouldn’t marry Mr. Romaine to save his life--and that he has heard her laugh at the idea.”

“That only shows, Gladys dear, how blind Reggie is, like the rest of his sex. Of course Miss Corbin protests that she doesn’t want Mr. Romaine. She did the equivalent to it the very first talk we ever had together, that day at the Casino. But I didn’t believe her, and what shocked me was her want of candor. The notion of a girl who doesn’t want money and position is entirely too great a strain on my credulity. I suppose she’ll say next that she doesn’t want to be Lady Corbin and live at Fox Court. I think it’s much better to be truthful about things.”

“So do I, dear. But my own belief is that she really likes Mr. Farebrother best of all.”

“Nonsense,” cried Ethel, sharply. “Mr. Farebrother couldn’t begin to give her Sir Archy’s position or Mr. Romaine’s money. He’s an architect, with about enough to live on after his father’s fortune is cut up into six or seven parts. Not that I pretend to despise Mr. Farebrother; I am truthful in all things, and I think he’s a very presentable, pleasant man, and would be a good match. But to suppose that any girl in her senses would take him in preference to Mr. Romaine or Sir Archibald Corbin is too wildly grotesque for anything. I’ll follow Mr. Romaine’s example and say good-night.” And off she went.

Sir Archy had begun to find Newport pleasanter day by day. He had wearied in the beginning of the adulation paid to his title and his money, and it soon came to be understood that he was not in the market, so to speak. He found the Farebrother girls pleasant and amiable, and showed them some attention. As he showed none whatever to any other of the cottage girls, nor did he go to any except to the Farebrothers’ villa, the family were credited with having laid a deep scheme to monopolize him. The real state of the case was too simple to be understood by artificial people.

Then he had an agreeable sense of familiarity with Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood. They were really well bred and well educated English gentlewomen. Ethel’s aloneness had perhaps developed rather too sharply her aspirations toward an establishment of her own, but that is a not uncommon thing among women, and the terrible English frankness brings it to the front without any disguises whatever. Sir Archy, though, knew how to take care of himself among his own countrywomen, as Englishmen do. But he was like clay in the hands of the potter where his American cousin, as he persisted in calling Letty Corbin, was concerned.

Whether Letty was extravagantly fond of him or utterly detested him he could not for the life of him discern. He did discover unmistakably, though, that she was a very charming girl. Her frankness, so different from Ethel Maywood’s frankness, was perfectly bewitching. She acknowledged with the utmost candor her fondness for admiration,--her willingness to swallow not only the bait of flattery, but the hook, bob, sinker, and all,--and calmly related the details of her various forms of coquetry. Thus she possessed the charm of both art and simplicity, but, as the case is with her genus, when she fancied she was artful she was very simple, and when she meant to be very simple she was extremely artful.

But she was a delightful and never ending puzzle to Sir Archy. He was manly, clever, and modest, but deep down in his heart was fixed that ineradicable masculine delusion that he was, after all, a very desirable fellow for any girl; and his money and his title had always been treated as such outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace, that he would have been more or less than human if he had not been sanguine of success if ever he really put his mind to winning any girl. But Letty was a conundrum to him of the sort that it is said drove old Homer to suicide because he could not solve it.

Farebrother, however, understood Letty and Sir Archy and the Romaine party perfectly, and the little comedy played before his eyes had a profound interest for him. When he heard of Mr. Romaine’s decision to go to New York and stay at the same hotel with the Corbins, he chuckled and shrewdly suspected that Mr. Romaine had in mind more Miss Maywood’s discomfiture than Miss Corbin’s satisfaction. He chuckled more than ever when, on the evening he went to see the Corbins off on the boat, he found the Romaine party likewise established on deck with Mr. Romaine’s valet and Mrs. Chessingham’s maid superintending the transfer of a van-load of trunks to the steamer.

They were all sitting together on the upper deck when Farebrother appeared. He carried three bouquets exactly alike, which he handed respectively to Mrs. Chessingham, Miss Maywood, and Letty. Miss Maywood colored beautifully under the thin gray veil drawn over her handsome, aquiline features. Mrs. Chessingham smiled prettily, but Letty’s face was a study. A thunder-cloud would have been more amiable. Farebrother, however, was not in the least disconcerted, but went over to her and smiled at her in a very exasperating manner.

“So kind of you to give us all bouquets alike,” began Letty, scornfully.

Meanwhile, in order to keep her chagrin from being obvious to Ethel and Mrs. Chessingham, who would by no means have understood her particularity about attentions, she was cuddling the bouquet as if it were a real treasure.

“I suppose your feeble intelligence was not equal to inventing three separate bouquets for one occasion,” she continued, frowning at the offender.

“Yes, it was,” answered Farebrother, stoutly. “I knew though that it would thoroughly exasperate you, so I did it on purpose.”

At this candid defiance Letty’s scowl dissolved into a smile.

“I like your childlike innocence,” she remarked, “and the way you avow your dishonest motives. And I like a man who is a match for me. I was going to give the wretched nosegay to the stewardess, but now I’ll keep it as a souvenir of your delightful impertinence.”

“Thank you,” responded Farebrother politely. There was still half an hour before the boat started, and all three of the young women felt a degree of secret anxiety as to whether Sir Archy Corbin would be on hand to bid them good-by. He had spoken vaguely of seeing them again, and had accepted Colonel Corbin’s elaborate invitation to make a visit at Corbin Hall, but whether he would depart far enough from his British caution in dealing with marriageable young women to see them off on the boat, was highly uncertain.

Miss Maywood, being an eminently reasonable girl, did not fix her hopes too high, and thought that to be Lady Corbin was too good to be true. Yet it was undeniable that he seemed to like her, and in this extraordinary country, where, according to her ideas, there was a scandalous laxity regarding the value of attentions, Sir Archy might fall into the prevailing ways. So she kept her weather eye open, in spite of the presence of Mr. Romaine, who sat a little distance off slyly watching the bouquet episode and Farebrother.

Letty considered Mr. Romaine merely in the light of an interesting fossil, but she felt a characteristic desire to monopolize Farebrother. Besides, at the bottom of her heart was a genuine admiration for him, and she felt a sentimental tenderness at the parting which she fully expected him to share. But Farebrother was irritatingly unresponsive. He divided his attentions among the three women with what was to Letty the most infuriating impartiality. Nor did he show the downcast spirits which she fully expected, and altogether his behavior was inexplicable and unsatisfactory.

Letty, however, determined, as the severest punishment she could inflict, to be very debonair with him, and when at last he seated himself in the camp chair next hers, she began upon a flippant subject which she thought would let Farebrother see that the parting was as little to her as to him.

“When I get to New York I shall have some money of my own to spend, and I have been wondering what I shall do with it,” she said, gravely.

“I am glad to see you appreciate your responsibilities,” answered Farebrother.

“Now I know you are making fun of me,” said Letty, calmly. “But I don’t mind. In the first place, I would like to buy two stained glass windows for the church which you miserable Yankees wrecked during the war. Have you any idea of the price of stained glass windows?”

“I think they run from fifteen dollars up to twenty or thirty thousand.”

“I shouldn’t get a thirty thousand dollar one, at all events. Then I must have a complete new riding outfit for myself. This comes of going to Newport. Before that I thought my riding-skirt, saddle, and bridle quite good enough, but now I yearn for a tailor made habit and all the etceteras. How much do you think that will cost? However, it’s not worth while to ask you, for you wouldn’t be likely to know. And if you knew, you wouldn’t tell me the truth.”

“Again--thanks.”

“And of course I want some clothes--swell gowns like those I saw at Newport. And my mother’s watch is past repairing any more, and my piano is on its last legs, and I promised to bring dear Mrs. Cary, our next neighbor, an easy-chair for a present, and of course I shall have to carry Dad Davy and all the other servants something nice, and I must make a little gift to Aunt Jemima, and, and--I’m afraid my money won’t hold out.”

“Don’t give up,” said Farebrother, encouragingly. “Leave out the swell gowns, and the watch, and the piano, and the riding habit, and I daresay you’ll have enough left for the rest.”

“What do you take me for? To get nothing for myself? Please understand I am not so foolish as I look. But, perhaps, after all, I won’t buy any of those things, and I will lay it all out in a pair of pearl bracelets to match my mother’s necklace, and trust to luck to get another windfall at some time during my sojourn in this vale of tears.”

But Farebrother, who professed to be deeply interested in this scheme for squandering a fortune, would not let the subject drop. He drew Miss Maywood into the conversation, and although the two girls cordially disliked each other, they were too ladylike to show it, and they had in mind the prospect of spending some months in a lonely country neighborhood, when each might find the other a resource.

“I should think, dear,” said the literal Ethel, in her sweet, slow English voice, “that it would be impossible to buy half the things you are thinking of out of that much money, and everything is so ruinously dear in New York, I understand.”

“Oh,” answered Letty, airily, “it’s not the impossibility of the thing that puzzles me; it is the making up of my mind as to which one of the impossibilities I shall finally conclude to achieve.”

Miss Maywood thought this a very flippant way of talking, but all American girls were distressingly flippant, except the sham English ones that she met at Newport, who were distressingly serious. And then in a moment or two more a genuine sensation occurred. Sir Archy appeared, red but triumphant, followed by his man, and both of them loaded down with gun-cases, hat-boxes, fishing-reels, packing-cases, mackintoshes, sticks, umbrellas, traveling-rugs and pillows, guide-books and all the vast impedimenta with which an Englishman prepares for a twelve hours’ trip as if he were going to the antarctic circle.

Everybody was surprised to see him, and to see him in that guise. Mrs. Chessingham opened her eyes, the ever ready blood flew into Ethel’s fair face, while Letty uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“You here!” she cried.

“Yes,” sighed Sir Archy, beginning to pitch down his sticks, umbrellas and mackintoshes, while he heaped a whole cartload of other things upon the patient valet. “I made up my mind at the last moment that it would be deucedly dull without all of you, and here I am.”

Mr. Romaine, who had been sitting at a little distance, now advanced, his eyes gleaming with a Mephistophelian amusement. In traveling costume, his make-up was no less complete than in full evening dress. His perfectly fitting ulster was buttoned closely around his slight figure; his usual gray hat was replaced by a correct traveling-cap; his dog-skin gloves fitted without a wrinkle. He took in at once the sensation Sir Archy’s unexpected appearance would create in the feminine contingent of the party, and he wanted to be on hand to enjoy it.

“We are very pleased to have your company, Sir Archy,” he said, blandly, “and still more so if you intend patronizing the same hotel that we shall in New York.”

“Thank you,” answered Sir Archy, heartily. “I had intended to do so, having been recommended by Colonel Corbin.”

Just then the Colonel appeared.

“Why, my dear fellow,” he cried, in his rich, cordial voice. “This is truly gratifying. I thought when I bade you farewell this morning it was for a considerable period, until you paid us that promised visit at Corbin Hall,” for the Colonel had become completely reconciled to Sir Archy, and had generously overlooked his experiences during the war.

“Yes,” said Sir Archy, cheerfully, “I was afraid I’d be a horrid bore, following you all up this way, but I felt so dismal after I had told you good-by--swore so hard at Tompkins, and made a brute of myself generally--that at last I concluded I’d better pull up stakes and quit.”