Part 14

Lawrence felt he had been right in thinking that no American would negotiate for the purchase of a title unless he were at bottom a “grovelling snob.” “There could not be a question of Lord Frothingham’s character,” he said. “And as for his family, there’s none more illustrious in England.”

“Certainly, certainly. I admitted all that. I assumed that Lord Frothingham was sending you through over-anxiety--not unnatural when he’s so far from home.”

“My business with you, Mr. Hooper,” continued Lawrence, “relates to settlements.” Hooper’s pretence--“the shallow device of a bargain-hunter”--disgusted him.

Hooper waved his hand--a broad, thick, stumpy-fingered hand. “Oh, I’ve no doubt Lord Frothingham will do the right thing by my daughter. And besides, I intend to do something for her--no one ever accused Amzi Hooper of stinginess.”

“That is gratifying,” said Lawrence. “We shall no doubt have not the slightest difficulty in reaching an understanding. What, may I ask, is the--aw--extent of the settlement you purpose to make--upon your daughter and--and Lord Frothingham.”

Hooper’s face grew red. “You may _ask_, sir, but I’ll not answer. I’m not in the habit of discussing my private affairs with _any_body.”

Lawrence was angry also--“the fellow’s taking me for a fool,” he thought. But he knew he must control himself, so he answered smoothly: “This is extraordinary--most extraordinary, Mr. Hooper. You’ve had some experience--aw--in foreign marriages----”

Hooper dropped sullenly before this poisoned shaft.

“And,” continued Lawrence, “you must know that settlements are the matter of course.”

“No, sir!” exclaimed Hooper, pounding the desk, “I know nothing of the sort. When my oldest daughter married they talked to me about settlements, but I refused to have anything to do with it.”

Lawrence, in fact all Chicago, knew that Hooper, who was not nearly so rich then, had settled a quarter of a million upon the Papal nobleman and half a million on his daughter, and had engaged to settle a quarter of a million more upon the first male child of the marriage. “We should, of course, not be satisfied with the settlements you made upon the Duke of Valdonomia,” said he, ignoring Hooper’s falsehood.

Hooper winced, looked bluster, thought better of it, said quietly: “You’ve been misinformed, Mr. Lawrence. I made no settlements. But I gave the young people enough to set them up comfortably.”

“Lord Frothingham’s position forbids him to consider any such arrangement as that, Mr. Hooper. You know how it is with the great families. They have station, rank, tradition to maintain. They----”

“I won’t bribe any man to marry my daughter. That ain’t the American way.” This was said, not fiercely, but, on the contrary, in a conciliatory tone and manner.

Lawrence sneered--inwardly--at this “cheap claptrap,” and said: “That’s sound--and eminently creditable to you, sir. But you will bear in mind that Lord Frothingham is an English nobleman, the head of a distinguished family, and that your daughter is about to become his Countess, an Englishwoman, the mother of a line of English noblemen. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly. Perfectly. And I’ve not the least objection to doing what’s right. I want to make it clear that I’m giving only out of generosity and affection, and a desire to see my girl properly established.”

“No one who knows you will doubt that,” said Lawrence so blandly that Hooper could find no fault, could not understand why he was irritated. “And now that we’re on common ground I hope you’ll give me some--aw--data--so that I may draw up the necessary papers.”

“Has Frothingham any debts?” asked Hooper abruptly, after a thoughtful pause.

“There are about fifteen thousand pounds of personal obligations,” replied Lawrence carelessly, “and a matter of perhaps a hundred thousand pounds as a charge on the entailed estate. I understand the entailed part is all that’s left; but the estates can be, should be, restored to what they were until a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Um!” muttered Hooper.

“The debt represents, I believe,” continued Lawrence, “the wild oats and careless management of previous generations. The present Earl has been--remarkably steady, they tell me, considering his station and opportunities, and the example of his father and grandfather.”

Hooper had read with an attention that made his memory leechlike every word of every sketch of Frothingham and the Gordon-Beauvais family in the Chicago papers. Lawrence’s aristocratic allusions were, therefore, full of suggestion and moved him profoundly. “Well,” said he, “I should say, in round numbers, that a million would straighten the young man out and set them housekeeping in good style.”

There was a queer gleam in Lawrence’s eyes as he replied: “Very handsome, Mr. Hooper. Most satisfactory. Your daughter can take the position in England to which the Earl’s rank entitles her.” He looked as if he were reflecting; then, as if thinking aloud: “Let me see--a million pounds--five million----”

Hooper sprang to his feet. “You misunderstood me, Mr. Lawrence,” he protested angrily, but nervously. “My daughter will have that--perhaps more than that--ultimately. But I meant dollars, not pounds.”

Lawrence put on a expression of amazement. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Hooper, but really--_really_--you can’t mean that. Two hundred thousand pounds would barely fetch them even. They’d have nothing to live on.”

“Oh, of course I don’t mean that I’d not give ’em anything in addition. We were talking only of settlements.”

“Certainly. And you must see, Mr. Hooper, that it would be impossible for us to accept any settlement so inadequate. Some misfortune might overtake you and--you would be unable to carry out your present generous intentions.”

“A million dollars is a big sum of money. It looks even bigger in England than here.”

“But you are making a great alliance. A million dollars is a small sum in the circumstances--I mean, in view of the necessity of enabling your daughter to take all that her position as Countess of Frothingham entitles her to.”

“Permit me to ask,” said Hooper with some sarcasm, but not enough to conceal his anxiety, “what did Lord Frothingham expect in the way of settlement?” The multi-millionaire had developed two powerful passions with age--avarice and social ambition. These were now rending each the other and both were rending him.

“Lord Frothingham, of course, did not discuss the matter with me--a gentleman is, naturally, delicate in matters of money. He simply stated the posture of his affairs and left me in full charge. When I suggested to him that eight hundred thousand--_pounds_--would be adequate, he protested that that was too much. ‘I wish Mr. Hooper to appreciate that it is his daughter I want,’ said he. ‘Make the least possible conditions. I’d be glad to marry her without a penny if my position permitted. It’s hard to have to consider such things at this time,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we can pull through with seven hundred thousand.’ I did not and do not agree with him, but I assented because I knew that you would liberally supplement the settlements.”

Every sentence in that speech exasperated Mr. Hooper--perhaps Lawrence’s persistence in expressing himself in pounds instead of in dollars most of all. Pounds made the huge sum demanded seem small, made his resistance seem mean and vulgar. He reflected for several minutes. “I won’t do it!” he said in a sudden gust of temper. “Half that is my final figure. I’ll settle the obligations--the five hundred and seventy thousand dollars--and I’ll entail five hundred thousand and give Jenny five hundred thousand for her lifetime, it to go afterward to the younger children.”

Lawrence combed his whiskers with his fine fingers, shaking his head slowly as he did so. “But, Mr. Hooper----”

“That’s final,” interrupted Hooper. “It’s bad enough--it’s shameful--it’s un-American, sir, to make any settlement at all.”

At “un-American” Lawrence took advantage of the fact that Hooper was not looking at him to indulge in a glance of contemptuous amusement. “Nobody but an American,” he said to himself, “could have dragged ‘un-American’ into such a discussion as this. The cad is dickering over his daughter like an old-clothes dealer over a bag of rags.”

Hooper was talking again--talking loudly: “Not a cent more! Not a d----n cent more! If they need more after they’re married, let ’em come to me for it. They’ll get it. But I ain’t fool enough to make ’em independent of me. I ain’t going to give ’em a chance to forget the hand that feeds ’em. No, sir; I want my daughter to continue to love me and think of me.”

There was no affectation in Lawrence’s astonishment at this view of affection and the way to keep it. “Poor devil,” he said to himself pityingly, “he’s been so perverted by his wealth that he actually doesn’t see he’s taking the very course that’ll make his children hate him.” But he ventured only, “I’m certain, sir, from what I know of your daughter and Lord Frothingham that money could have no influence with them one way or the other.”

Hooper smiled cynically. “It’s human nature,” he said. “The hand that feeds is the hand that’s licked. I’ll give ’em all they need whenever they need it. Do you suppose I’ve no pride in my daughter, in seeing that she makes a good appearance over there? But a million and a half is my outside figure for settlements.”

“Practically less than a hundred thousand over and above the debts,” replied Lawrence, irritatingly reverting to pounds. “That is, about four thousand a year for them to live on.”

“Forty to fifty thousand a year, including Jenny’s income,” corrected Hooper, standing up for dollars. “And while I don’t promise, still, if they behave, they can count on as much more from me.”

“Nine thousand a year,” said Lawrence, translating into pounds, “would hardly keep up Beauvais Hall in a pinched fashion. It would leave nothing for restoring the property; the Hall, for example, needs fifty thousand pounds at once to restore it.”

The reasonableness, the unanswerableness of this presentation of the case exasperated Hooper. “They’ll have to look to me afterward for that,” he said angrily. “I’ve said my last word.”

But Lawrence didn’t believe him. He saw that, though avarice was uppermost for the moment, the “cad’s craving” was a close second--then there was the daughter’s aid. She would have something to say to her father when she knew of the hitch in the negotiations. He rose. “There’s nothing further at present, Mr. Hooper. I shall be compelled strongly to advise Lord Frothingham against going on and engaging himself. I cannot do otherwise, consistently with my duty as the, as it were, guardian for the moment of his dignity and the dignity of his house. It may be that he will disregard my advice. But I don’t see how he can, careless in sordid things and impetuous though he is. The prospect for an unhappy marriage would be too clear. Good-morning, sir.”

Hooper shook hands with him lingeringly. Avarice forbade him to speak. “The Earl will come to your terms,” it and shrewdness assured him. “If he don’t the deal is still open, anyhow.” His parting words were, “Give my regards to the young man. Tell him we hope to see him as usual, no matter how this affair comes out.”

“The coarse brute,” muttered Lawrence, as he stood without the doors of the granite palace. “The soul of a ham-seller, of a pig-sticker.” And he took out his handkerchief and affectedly wiped the hand which Hooper had shaken. “Always a nasty business, this, of American upstarts buying into our nobility. If they weren’t a lot of callous traders and money-grabbers they couldn’t do it. And they usually negotiate at first hand, so that they can drive a closer bargain. And their best society, too! Beastly country--no wonder the women want to be traded out of it into civilisation.”

XVIII

There was a family council at the Hoopers’ after luncheon that day--Mr. Hooper, his wife, and Jeanne. The two women followed Hooper from the dining room into his study, where he was pulling sullenly at his cigar and awaiting the attack. It was his wife who began: “Do you know why Lord Frothingham sent word he couldn’t come to lunch, pa? Jenny here is worried about it.”

Mr. Hooper grunted. Finally he said: “I’m willing to do anything in reason to please Jenny. I don’t approve of this title business. It ain’t American. But as long as the young fellow has turned her head I was not disposed to stand in the way.” He frowned fiercely. “But I tell you flat, I won’t be held up! And that fellow he sent here this morning was a plain highwayman.”

Mrs. Hooper and Jeanne looked significantly each at the other--they had had many talks about his growing stinginess, and they suspected him at once. “What did he want?” inquired Mrs. Hooper.

“I don’t propose to talk this thing over before Jenny. It’s disgraceful that she should have gone into such a business. It ain’t right that she should know about such things.”

Jeanne’s eyes filled with tears. “And I’ve told all the girls!” she exclaimed. “Everybody knows it. I can’t back out now. The whole town’d be laughing at us. I’d be ashamed ever to show my face in the street again. You don’t want to break my heart, do you, pa?”

“You’ve made a sweet mess of it!” snarled her father. “You ought to have had better sense than to have told anybody till the business side of it was settled. I warned your ma about that--I knew what was coming. Now, here you two’ve gone and given him the whip hand!”

“She got at the telephone before she told me,” said Mrs. Hooper.

Neither she nor her husband suspected that Jeanne had thought of just this emergency of a wrangle over settlements and had decided that the best way to overcome her father’s avarice was to put him in a position from which he could not recede. If Frothingham had not insisted on liberal settlements she would have prompted him to it. She was no more eager than was he to embark with small supplies in the hold when it was possible to lay in supplies a plenty. And as her father had acted all her life upon his principle of paternal affection--“The hand that feeds is the hand that’s licked”--she saw no harm in guiding her conduct toward him by principles from the same practical code. As she was about to engage in business, wasn’t it common sense to get as large a capital as she could? “We can’t back out now,” she repeated tearfully, watching him shrewdly through her tears.

“A pretty mess!” growled her father. But he was not really offended, partly because he was fond of his daughter and would have forgiven her almost anything, partly because he understood and sympathised with her eagerness to proclaim her triumph, chiefly because, now that he had thought it over, he was ready to accept Frothingham’s terms. “The hope of getting more and the need of it will keep ’em tame,” he reasoned. And he said, addressing the two women: “When that Lawrence fellow comes again to-morrow, as I’m dead sure he will, I’ll close the matter. But you two keep your hands off!”

As soon as her father and mother were out of the way Jennie went into the library and called up the Barneys. “Is Lord Frothingham there?” she asked.

“I’ll put you on the switch to his room,” was the reply. And presently a voice she recognised as Hutt’s said: “Who wishes to speak to ’Is Lordship?”

“Say that Miss Hooper’s at the telephone.”

There was a pause, a murmur of voices--she was sure one of them was Frothingham’s. Then Hutt answered: “’Is Lordship hain’t ’ere just now, ma’am. Hany message, ma’am?”

She was trembling with alarm. “Just tell him that I called up, and that I’d like to speak to him when he comes in”--this in a rather shaky voice, for a great fear was gathering in around her, a fear that he had become offended at her father’s stinginess and bartering and bargaining, and had decided to withdraw.

She wandered uneasily from room to room. She sat at the telephone several times--once she had the receiver off the hook before she changed her mind about trying to reach him. She ordered her victoria and got ready for the street, to drive about in the hope of accidentally meeting him. At the door she changed her mind again. As she was turning back a boy came by, shouting an extra--“All about the Earl of Frothingham! Big sensation!” She saw that the boy knew who she was, knew that she was supposed to be engaged to Frothingham, was clamouring in that neighbourhood because he thought sales would be briskest there. She fled into the house--but sent a servant out by the basement way to buy the paper.

The headlines were large and black. Frothingham, the story ran, had got into debt in England so deeply that his creditors found he could not pay more than a few pence in the pound; they had consulted as to ways and means of recovering, had organised themselves into a syndicate, had put up five thousand pounds to “finance” him for a hunt for a rich wife in America. “And,” concluded the account, “this exposure comes barely in time to block his attempt to marry the beautiful daughter of one of the richest meat packers in Chicago, moving in our smartest smart set.”

She did not know that this tale was a deliberately false diversion of the facts about a syndicated German prince who had visited Chicago several years before and had almost married there. The truth as to his enterprise had just come out on the other side through the collapse of the Rontivogli syndicate; and the newspaper, relying for immunity on Frothingham’s aloneness, and on his well-understood mercenary designs, had substituted his name for the German’s. She read and believed. She had known from the outset that his main motive was money. But she had succeeded in disguising this unsightly truth in the same flowers of her crudely romantic imagination in which she disguised the truth as to her craving for a coronet. Now it was as if the flowers had been torn away to the last concealing petal and had left exposed things more hideous than she thought were there.

She hid her face and cried a little--“I despise him. Besides, if I went on and married him, what would people say?”

It would have taken finer scales than those available for weighing human motives to decide which of the two reasons embodied in those two sentences was the heavier. She dried her eyes and sat with her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand.

“That’s the best thing to do, every way I look at it,” she said aloud slowly at the end of half an hour’s thought.

She went to the telephone, called up the offices of the Great Western and Southern Railway, asked and got the General Manager. “Is that you, Mr. Burster? Is that you, Tom? Meet me in the parlours of the Auditorium right way.” And she rang off and telephoned to the stable for her victoria.

Ten minutes later she was driving down the avenue in her largest, most beplumed black hat and a pale blue carriage-coat that produced the wonted effect of her public appearances--Burster once said to her: “Jeanne, you’re the only thing on earth than can stop traffic in the streets of Chicago. You can do in two seconds more than a blizzard could do in a week.”

She returned at half-past five. Her father and mother were in the front sitting room upstairs, gloomy as the lake in the dusk of a cloudy day. She entered, whistling and tilting her big hat first over her right eye, then over her left. “Don’t look so cheerful,” she said, patting her mother on the cheek and pulling her father’s beard.

He tried to scowl, but it was a failure; and his voice was not in the least formidable as he said: “A pretty mess you got yourself into, miss, with your telephoning.”

“What telephoning?” she asked with a start.

“Tattling your engagement.”

“Oh!” She threw herself into a chair and laughed.

“Your father telephoned to Mr. Lawrence after he left us----” began her mother.

“What did you do that for, pa?” she interrupted. “He’ll think we haven’t any pride.”

“You ungrateful, thoughtless child! I did it for your sake.”

“What did Mr. Lawrence say?”

Her father hesitated and his face showed how he hated to inflict upon his daughter the pain he thought his words would cause. “He said it was useless to continue our discussion, as Lord Frothingham had definitely and finally decided not to renew his proposal.” The old man’s voice almost broke as he went on: “Jenny, here’s a note that came a few minutes ago--I think the address is in Frothingham’s handwriting.”

Neither he nor her mother dared to look at her as she was hearing these awful disclosures of the downfall of her hopes and the impending brutalities to her pride and vanity. She picked up the note, opened it slowly, read it--a few polite formal sentences, setting forth that he had “yielded to the insuperable obstacles interposed by your father.”

She dropped the sheet and pirouetted round the room in and out between the chairs occupied by her frightened parents--they thought her suddenly gone mad from the shock. “Who says I ain’t the luckiest girl on earth?” she exclaimed.

“What are you talking about, Jenny?” demanded her mother sharply.

“Why, I married Tom Burster half an hour ago. He’s putting the notices in all the papers for to-morrow morning. Everybody’ll think I changed my mind and shook Frothingham. And I did, too!”

“Jenny!” exclaimed her father. “Tom Burster!”

“And he’s coming here to dinner, if you don’t object,” she continued. “If you do, why I’ll join him and we’ll go away and give you a chance to cool off.” She caught her father by the beard. “What do you say, daddy? Say yes, or I’ll pull.”

“Yes,” replied her father with a huge sigh of relief--his daughter was contented; her and their vanity would be spared; Tom Burster would not demand or want a dower; he was not only independent, but also one of the most forward young “self-made” rich men in Chicago. “You’ve got more sense than all the rest of the family put together,” he exclaimed proudly, patting her on the head.

And in an absent, reflective tone she said: “I always felt I’d have some use for Tom sooner or later.”

XIX

Frothingham’s abrupt change of tactics had been caused by a cablegram from Evelyn which reached him at the Barneys’ even as his diplomatic agent was in the heat and toil of the negotiations with Amzi Hooper. It read:

Break off everything and return. Have written you New York. Best possible news. Gwen sends love.

“Why didn’t she say what it was?” he wondered. And he decided that it must be news of too private a nature to be trusted to the telegraph station at Beauvais. Why had she written if he was to go at once? “I suppose,” he concluded, “she was afraid I mightn’t obey orders. ‘Gwen sends love’--that must mean that the news is about me and Gwen.”

But he had no uplifting of spirits--instead, he felt a sense of impending misfortune. He called up Lawrence’s office and told one of the clerks that he wished Lawrence to call him as soon as he came in. In a few minutes Lawrence was relating over the wire the favourable progress of the negotiation.

“It’s off,” said Frothingham. “I want nothing more to do with it. I’m glad it’s in good form for the break. I can drop it decently.”

This so delighted Lawrence that he laughed aloud. “Hooper’s certain to send for me,” he said. “I’ll give him the shock of his life.”

Frothingham cautioned him against any transgression of the most courteous politeness, then went down to luncheon--with Nelly, alone. While she was talking and he listening and looking, all in a flash he understood why the “best possible news” from home depressed him, why “Gwen sends love” did not elate him. He asked Nelly to take him to her school.

“Oh, you wouldn’t be interested,” she said.