Part 3

You know George is very touchy on his dignity, and has old-fashioned ideas of what’s due a Duke from his inferiors. It seems he got into a huff when he first came because they treated him in offhand fashion, as they treat everybody. And he tried to snub them. And when they snubbed back, only they had illustrated newspapers to do it in, he went wild, and has been making matters worse and worse for himself. Some of the papers have had leaders pitying Miss Dowie, and predicting that she’ll have him in the divorce court for brutality shortly--think of it--Georgie, quiet Georgie! Everyone is hating him, for he assumed that even Miss Dowie’s friends were like the newspapers that had slated him, and he snubbed right and left.

He took me to his hotel. He had an apartment that costs him fifteen pounds a day--ain’t that cruel? But he said he didn’t propose that these savages should sneer at his poverty--they’re doing it, anyhow, and they hint that the Dowies are paying his hotel bill, or will have to pay it. However, I think he did well to spread himself. There’s something about this country that makes you ashamed to seem poor. You spend money and pretend you’ve got plenty of it. They call it “throwing a bluff,” or “making a front.”

George had taken an apartment for me at a tall price, but I wouldn’t have it, as I wouldn’t saddle him with the expense--he hadn’t her money in hand then. Besides, I knew that as soon as he was gone I’d have to come down, and that would have looked bad. After I was installed in a very comfortable little apartment thirteen floors up--think of that!--at three pounds a day, we drove to Dowie’s. A crowd saw us off at the hotel, people pointed and stared at us all the way up the street, and there was a crowd waiting for us at Dowie’s. They live in a huge greystone castle,--there is no end of smart houses here, but a queer jumble--samples of everything. I hadn’t known old Dowie an hour before he told me the house and ground and all cost him six hundred thousand, our money.

The girl--but you’ll judge her for yourself. I rather fancied her. Affected, of course, and trying to act a duchess out of one of Ouida’s novels. Rather fat, too, and her hair is thin, and a _mussy_ shade of yellow. I think she’ll waddle in about five years. Still, she’s sensible and quick, and dresses well. All the women here do that. But the money! It’s heart-rending to see it parade by. And they seem to be throwing it away, but they don’t. Everything is horribly dear here. I must look sharp or I sha’n’t last long.

The newspapers will give you all you want to know about the wedding--it was quite a show--perhaps vulgar and overdone, but really gorgeous. I like America, and I like the people. They’re jolly good-natured, and the nice ones here are much the same as nice people anywhere else. The Longviews have taken a big furnished house, and I’m staying with them. Next week a friend of Miss Longview--a Miss Hollister, who lives here, but her people are still in the country--is coming to visit her. Her (Miss Hollister’s) father owns a lot of railways and mines, and is no end of a financial swell. I’m too sleepy to write another word, except

ARTHUR.

How is Gwen? Be good to me, Evelyn--with love--

A.

IV

Honoria took Frothingham to the Grand Central Station to meet Catherine, and he liked the very first glimpse of her as she came striding down the platform. She was tall and narrow, and she wore dresses and wraps that emphasised both these characteristics. She had a long, thin neck and a small, delicately coloured face, which she knew how to frame most fascinatingly in her hair, with or without the aid of her hat. She had dreamy young eyes, long and narrow, and her red lips and her slender, nervous fingers made it clear that she lived in her senses rather than in her intellect--that she would neither say nor think anything brilliant, but would feel intensely, and could be powerfully appealed to through her imagination. She was wearing a light brown, brightly lined coat that trailed to her heels; and she was holding up from the dust and close about her many folds of soft, fine materials, cloth and silk and linen and lace. In her wake came a maid and a porter, each laden with her belongings, an attractive array of comforts and luxuries of travel.

“I’m glad you brought a closed carriage,” she said, with a shiver, as they started for home. “It’s raw, and the sky seems to weigh upon one’s shoulders and head. This is a day to hide in the house, close by an open fire.”

Frothingham was surprised by this fairy-princess delicateness in so robust a creature. He thought the day mild, and as for the sky, why bother about anything that far away, so long as it sent nothing down to bother one?

“You forget we are English,” said Honoria. “We call this good weather. I must confess the closed carriage was a happy accident.”

“So like you, Honoria! Isn’t it, Lord Frothingham?” Catherine gave him a sweet smile. “She never permits one to keep agreeable illusions. Now, I was loving her for being so thoughtful for me.”

As Frothingham only stared, shy and stolid, through his eyeglass, the two girls began to talk each to the other--they had not met in two years, not since Catherine and her mother visited Honoria at Longview’s place in Bucks.

“What a beautiful place it was!” said Catherine. “I often dream of it. But then, I love England. It is of such a wonderful, vivid shade of green, and everything is so cultivated, and refined, and--and--like a fairy garden. Don’t you find the contrast very great, Lord Frothingham? We are very new and wild.”

“I’ve seen only people since I’ve been here. I must say the people--at least, those I’ve met--remind me of home, except that they speak the language differently. As for the city, it’s not at all as I fancied. It’s much like Paris--more attractive than London, not so gloomy.”

“Paris!” Catherine smiled, with gently reproachful satire. “Oh, you flatter us.”

“I like it better,” insisted Frothingham. “It’s Paris with English in the streets--I hate Frenchmen.”

“No, they’re not nice to look at--the men,” admitted Catherine. “But I adore what they’ve done. What would the world be without France?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Frothingham, with his cynical, enthusiasm-discouraging drawl. “They’re hysterical beggars, always exploding for no reason. It makes me nervous. I like quiet and comfort.”

“Lord Frothingham isn’t so sensible as he pretends,” put in Honoria. “He’s really almost as sentimental and emotional as you are, Catherine.”

“Oh, but I’m neither,” replied Catherine. “I don’t dare to be. If I find myself the least bit enthusiastic I catch myself up and look round, frightened lest somebody may have noticed. I’m such a liar--we all are over here. Don’t you like sincerity, Lord Frothingham?”

“I--I suppose so.” Frothingham looked vague. “What do you mean?” Catherine’s “intensity” confused him.

“I mean being true to one’s self, and not ashamed to show one’s self as one is, and never afraid to tell the truth.”

“But all of us do that, don’t we?” said Frothingham. There was a twinkle in his eye--or was it only the reflection of light from his glass?

Honoria gave him her “candid friend” look. “Nobody does,” said she. “That is, nobody who has temperament enough to lead any sort of life above an oyster’s.”

“But I can see at a glance that Lord Frothingham has temperament.” Catherine looked at him with intensely sympathetic appreciation. “Yes, men can be sincere and truthful. But women must always repress their real selves.”

Frothingham looked stolid and hopeless. Whenever conversation turned on abstractions he felt like a man fumbling and stumbling about in a London fog. “Really?” he said. “Really, now?”

“I don’t know why women fancy they must be liars,” said Honoria. “Do you mind dining at Sherry’s to-night?” Catherine in her psychological moods bored her. She sometimes ventured on aërial flights, but had no fancy for aërial flounderings.

“Sherry’s? That will be delightful! I like dining at restaurants--I’m very American in that respect.”

“But so do I,” said Frothingham. “That is, in your restaurants here. The people are interesting, and they talk a lot, and loud enough so that one hears every word and isn’t annoyed by missing the sense. And how they do waste the food!”

“Food!” Catherine repeated the word with a smile that was half-humourous, half pleading. “Please don’t use that word, Lord Frothingham. It always makes me shiver. It sounds so--so animal!”

Frothingham put on the blank look behind which he habitually sheltered himself when he did not know what to say, or to do, or to think. Honoria was disgusted with him and with Catherine. “They’re not going to like each other, not even enough to marry,” she said to herself. “And it’s a pity, as they’re exactly suited. If Catherine only wouldn’t pose!”

She was, therefore, somewhat surprised when, immediately she and Catherine were alone, Catherine burst into rhapsody on Frothingham. “What a fine, strong face! So much character! What a sincere, sensitive, pure nature. He’s a splendid type of true gentleman, isn’t he, Nora? How well he contrasts with our men! Doesn’t he?”

Honoria smiled to herself. “She wants to marry him,” she thought, “and she’s building a fire under her imagination. I might have known it. She’s the very person to weave romance over a title and imagine it all gospel. What a poser!” To Catherine she said: “He’s a decent enough chap, Caterina. And you’ll admire him more than ever when you’ve read him up in Burke’s Peerage and looked at the pictures he’s given me of Beauvais House.”

“How do you spell it? B-e-v-i-s?”

“No, that’s the way you pronounce it. You spell it B-e-a-u-v-a-i-s.”

“Isn’t that interesting? It’s so commonplace to pronounce a word the way it’s spelt, don’t you think?”

“I never thought of it, my dear. Why not marry him?”

“You are so abrupt and--and practical, Honoria,” said Catherine plaintively. “But you are a dear. I should never marry a man unless I loved him.”

Honoria looked faintly cynical. “Certainly not. But surely you can love any man you make up your mind to marry. What is your imagination for?”

At Sherry’s that night, besides Honoria, Catherine, Longview, and Frothingham, there were at Longview’s table Mrs. Carnarvon, of the hunting set, and Joe Wallingford--he hunts and writes verse, both badly, and looks and talks, both extremely well. Honoria devoted herself to Wallingford and so released Catherine and Frothingham each upon the other--she listened for a few seconds now and then to note their progress.

“It’s a go,” she said to herself with the matchmaker’s thrill of triumph, as the cold dessert was served. She saw that Frothingham had ceased to listen, and so had ceased to puzzle; his eyeglass was trained steadily and sympathetically upon Catherine’s fascinating beauty--why weary the brain when it might rest and enjoy itself through the eyes? Catherine was talking on and on, quoting poetry, telling Frothingham of her emotions, telling him of his emotions--he did not have them, but she was so earnest that he was half convinced.

“When you said this afternoon that you liked things quiet and comfortable,” she said, “I felt that it was splendidly in keeping with your character. I saw that you hated all this noise and display, that you like to get away in your own corner of your beautiful England and live grandly and quietly--near Nature.”

If Catherine had not been beautiful and rich he would have said to himself, “What rubbish!” But, as it was, he thought her profound and spiritual. And he said, trying to touch bottom and get a firm stand upon firm earth, “I think you’d like Beauvais.”

“I’m sure I should,” replied Catherine with enthusiasm. “Honoria was showing me the photographs of it. I admire the great, stately old house. But I liked best of all the picture of the woods and the brook. It reminded me of those lines of Coleridge’s--they are so beautiful--where he speaks of the brook--

“‘_In the leafy month of June That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune._’

Don’t you think those lines fine? Do I quote them right?”

“Yes--I think so--that is,” stammered Frothingham, “it’s a jolly brook, but we call it a river.” Then to himself: “What an ass she’ll think me!” But the starting sweat stayed, for she asked him no more questions; and he, freed from the anxiety of having to try to soar with her, was able to sit quietly and enjoy her beauty, and the murmurous rush of her low, musical voice--“It’s like the brook that brute she quoted wrote about,” he thought.

He did not drive home with his party, but accepted Wallingford’s invitation to walk in the fresh night air to his club. “Your American women are tremendously clever,” he said, as they were strolling along. He was feeling dazed and dizzy from the whirl of his emotions, the whirls and shocks Catherine Hollister had given his brain.

“Yes, they’re clever,” replied Wallingford, “but not in the way they think they are. Take Kitty Hollister, for example. She’s all right when she wants to be. She thinks sense. But what a raft of fuzzy trash she does float out when she gets a-going. I pitied you this evening. She laid herself out to impress you. You’re staying in the house with her, aren’t you? I suppose she whoops it up whenever you’re round?”

“I find her very clever--and interesting,” said Frothingham somewhat stiffly.

“Of course she is. I’ve known her for seventeen of the nineteen years she’s gladdened the earth--and I ought to know her pretty well. But she’s like a lot of the women in this town. They haven’t any emotions to speak of--nothing emotional happens. But they think they ought to have emotions such as they read about, and so they fake ’em. Then, they’ve got the craze for culture. They haven’t the time to get the real thing--they’re too busy showing off. Besides, they’re too lazy. So they fake culture, too. Oh, yes, they’re clever. And they look so well that you like the fake as they parade it better than the real thing.”

“We have that sort in London,” said Frothingham.

“So I’ve observed. But it’s done rather better there--they’re older hands at it. If you weren’t an Englishman, I’d say it fitted in better among the other shams. I suppose you’ve noticed that many people here are imitation English or French? You’ve seen the tags ‘Made in England,’ ‘Made in France,’ ‘Made in England, finished in France’?”

“I’ve noticed similarities,” replied Frothingham tactfully.

“It’s all imitation stuff--the labels are frauds. We over here don’t know how to be gracefully idle and inane, as your upper classes do. It’s not in us anywhere. We haven’t the tradition--our tradition is all against it. Whenever we do produce a thoroughly idle and inane person, he or she goes abroad to live, or else loses all his money to some sharp, pushing fellow, and drops out of sight. All this aristocracy you see is pure pose. Underneath, they’re Americans.”

“What is an American?” asked Frothingham. “Every time I think I’ve seen one, along comes some native and tells me I’m wrong. Are you an American?”

“Underneath--yes. On the surface--no. I used to be, but now I’m posing with the rest of ’em. You’ll have to get out of New York to see Americans. There are droves of ’em here, but they’re so scattered in places you’ll never go to that you couldn’t find them. You’d better go West if you wish to be sure of seeing the real thing.”

“It’s very confusing. How shall I know this American when I see him?”

“When you see a man or a woman who looks as if he or she would do something honest and valuable, who looks you straight in the eyes, and makes you feel proud that you’re a human being and ashamed that you are not a broader, better, honester one--that’s an American.” And then he smiled with his eyes so queerly that Frothingham could not decide whether or not he was jesting.

At the club Wallingford introduced him into a large circle of young men, seated round two tables pushed together, and covered with “high balls,” and bottles of carbonated water, and silver bowls of cracked ice. He said little, drank his whiskey and water, and listened. “It’s the talk of stock brokers and tradesmen,” he said to himself. “Yet these fellows are certainly gentlemen, and they don’t talk business in the least like our middle-class people. It’s very confusing.”

After he left the others were most friendly, and even admiring, in their comments upon him.

“He’s monotonous, and poor, and will never have anything unless he marries it,” said Wallingford. “If he were a plain, poor, incapable, rather dull American, is there one of us that would waste five minutes on him?”

There was silence, then a laugh.

V

Wallingford and Frothingham developed a warm friendship. Wallingford was extremely suspicious of himself in it, but after a searching self-analysis decided that his liking for the Earl was to a certain extent genuine. “He doesn’t know much--at least, he acts as if he didn’t. But he’s clever in a curious way, and a good listener, and not a bit of a fakir. No doubt he’s on the lookout for a girl with cash, but English ideas on that subject are different from ours--that is, from what ours are supposed to be. He’s a type of English gentleman, and not a bad type of gentleman without any qualification.”

When he expressed some such ideas to Catherine Hollister, at a dance given for her by Mrs. Carnarvon, she went so much further in praise of Frothingham that he laughed. “So that’s the way the wind blows, eh?” he said, grinning at her satirically.

She coloured, and put on the look of an offended saint.

“Countess of Frothingham,” he went on, undisturbed. “That _would_ sound romantic, wouldn’t it? Catherine, Countess of Frothingham!”

“How can you be so coarse-fibred in some ways, Joe, and so fine in others?” she said reproachfully.

“I don’t know, dear lady. I suppose because I’m human--just like you.”

“Let us dance,” was her only reply. She had known Joe so long that she couldn’t help liking him, but he certainly was trying.

Later in the evening, remembering Joe’s cruelty and sordidness, she said to Frothingham: “You don’t know what a pleasure it is to the finer women over here to meet foreign men. They are so much more subtle and sympathetic. They are not coarsened by business. They are not mercenary.”

She raised her dreamy eyes to his as she spoke the word “mercenary,” He reddened and stumbled--they were dancing the two-step. “I wish _you_ wouldn’t look at me like that,” he said, with an ingenuousness wholly unconscious. “It reminds me of my sins, and--and--all that.”

She trembled slightly, as he could plainly feel in his encircling arm. He looked down at her--she always was ethereally beautiful in evening dress. In his admiration he almost forgot how rich she was; he quite forgot how oppressively intellectual she was. “Do you--do you----” he began. Then he stopped dancing and led her into the hall, through the hall to the library. Two other couples were there, but far enough from the corner to which he took her.

“May I smoke?” he asked.

“I love the odour of a cigarette,” she replied, in a voice that encouraged him to resume where he had abruptly left off.

“Perhaps you will smoke?”

“No,” she said, in a tone that was subtly modulated to mean apology or reproach, according as he liked or disliked women smoking.

“Do you really like England?” he began nervously, seeing to it that his glass was firmly adjusted.

“I adore it!” Usually she would have gone on into poetical prose unlimited. But this, she felt, was a time for short answers.

“Would you--mind England--with--with----”

He halted altogether, and she slowly raised her heavy lids until her eyes met his.

“Catherine!” He seized her hand, and the thrill of her touch went through him. “You are so lovely. I--I’m horribly fond of you.”

She sighed. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “This lovely dance--these fascinating surroundings--the music--the dim lights--and--and----” She lifted her eyes to his again.

He murmured her name, threw away his cigarette, looked round to see where the other eyes in that room were, then clasped her round the waist for an instant. “Will you? Will you?” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” she replied, in a tone so faint that he barely heard.

“You have made me happy.” And he meant it.

“How satisfactory she is in every way,” he was saying to himself. “Looks, money, everything. I’m a lucky dog.” And she was saying to herself, “Countess of Frothingham! How strong and fine and simple he is. I love him!” But when he suggested speaking to her father at once she would not have it. “No--I want it to be just our secret for a little while,” she pleaded. “Don’t _you_?” He did not see any reason for it, but he said “Yes” with a surface reflection of her earnestness.

“It’s a pity the world ever should know anything about it, don’t you think so?” she went on.

“I’m very impatient to claim my countess,” he answered.

She liked the “countess,” but the “my” jarred slightly in her sensitive ear--she was “acquiring” an earl, not he a countess.

“Not too long,” he remonstrated. It was all very well for her to be romantic--he wouldn’t have liked it if he had not inspired some romance. But why should either of them wish to delay ratifying the bargain that was the real purpose in view? Certainly he wished no delay. And there was much to be arranged--settlements, a trousseau, a host of time-consuming preliminaries. Not a day should be lost in getting under way. His creditors, impatiently awaiting the event of his American adventure, might become ugly. He hated ugly letters and cablegrams almost as much as he hated ugly “scenes.” No, he felt strongly on the subject of long engagements.

His heart was full of her beauty--he had drunk a good deal at supper half an hour before. His head was full of her dowry--he never drank so much that he forgot business. “How could I evade if anyone should congratulate me?” he asked. And then he wished he had not said it, but had made that the excuse for not obeying her.

“You must deny it, as I shall. You know, we’re not really fully engaged until I’m ready to have it announced. Besides, as Joe Wallingford says, a lie in self-defence isn’t a lie. And self-defence isn’t either a crime or a sin, is it? I think self-defence against prying is a virtue, don’t you?”

A man came to claim her for a dance. She smiled sweetly at him, plaintively at Frothingham, and went back to the ballroom. Frothingham stood in the doorway watching her for a few minutes, then went away from the dance to walk and think and enjoy. But his mind was depressed. “Too much supper,” he grumbled. “I ought to be tossing my hat. I don’t deserve her and my luck. Her cash will put us right for the first time since my great-grandfather ruined us by going the Prince Regent’s gait. We shall restore Beauvais House and take the place in Carlton Terrace again. Gad! what a relief it will be to feel free in my mind about cab fares, and not to claim commissions from my tailor when I send him customers. I shall be able to live up to the title and the traditions----” He painted vividly, but in vain. He caught himself looking away from the glowing pictures and sighing. “Yes, she’s pretty--devilish pretty--and a high stepper, but--Gwen would be so comfortable, so _d----n_ comfortable!”

Honoria suspected their secret, yet doubted the correctness of her intuitions. “She’d parade it,” she reflected, “if she were really engaged to him. There must be a hitch somewhere.” And her wonder grew as the report of their engagement spread only to be strenuously denied by Catherine.