Part 9

“I’ll find what I’ve found in the East, no doubt--perhaps in a little different form. I’m visiting Western people at Washington--after I’ve stopped at the Embassy a few days--some people I’m meeting through an American acquaintance of ours in England--Charles Sidney.”

“Sidney!” Wallingford laughed. “He’s my second cousin. Ain’t he a shouting cad?”

“Oh, I think he’s a well-meaning chap--most obliging.”

“I should say so--to anybody he crawls before. And who are these Westerners he’s sending you to?”

“The Ballantynes. I think Mr. Ballantyne’s a Senator, is he not?”

Wallingford laughed again. “That’s one on me,” he said. “Yes, they’re from the West. But for everything that isn’t American they lay it over anybody you’ve seen in New York. Ballantyne! I sha’n’t say any more. It’s of no use to tell you you’re going round and round in a circle that’s in America but not really of it.”

“Do you know the Ballantynes?”

“I’ve met Mrs. Ballantyne--and the daughter that’s married to a Spaniard--the Duke of Almansa. They were at Monte Carlo three years ago when I was there. A handsome woman--amusing, too. She spent most of her time in the gambling rooms--used to come in always dressed in something new and loud--and what tremendous hats she did wear! She’d throw on the table a big gold purse blazing with diamonds. Then she’d seat herself and open the purse, and it would be stuffed with thousand-franc notes. She’d plunge like a Russian. Every once in a while she’d go out on the balcony and walk up and down smoking a cigarette. She forbade her husband the Casino unless she was with him; even then he wasn’t allowed to stake a single louis. He’d slip away and play in one of those more private rooms upstairs.”

Frothingham smiled reminiscently.

“You know, the play’s higher there,” continued Wallingford. “But the crowd of spectators was too small and indifferent for Her Grace of Almansa. When she found out what he was up to she made a scene right before everybody--‘How dare you squander _my_ money?’ she said, and she led him off like a spaniel on its way to a whipping.”

“Charming person,” said Frothingham. “Must have been amusing.”

“Indeed she was. They’d talk of her all day without growing tired--and always a new freak. You’ll be amused by her.”

“Ah--she’s here?”

“Yes--left the Duke two years ago--paid him off and came home to her father. She’s quite quiet now, they say--educating her children.”

Frothingham’s three days at the British Embassy were to him days upon an oasis in the desert. It was literally as well as legally part of the British domain--Britain indeed, as soon as the outside door were passed. The servants at most of the houses at which he had been entertained were direct and recent importations from England, yet they had already lost an essential something--even his faithful Hutt was not the docile, humble creature he had been. But here in the Embassy the servants, like the attachés, like the Ambassador’s family, like the Ambassador himself, were as English in look, in manner, in thought, as if they had never been off the island. The very furniture and the arrangement of it, the way the beds were made and the towels were hung in the bathrooms, represented the English people as thoroughly as did the Ambassador.

From this miniature Britain Frothingham on the third day was transferred to the international chaos beneath the turrets and battlements of the Ballantyne castle. When the house was finished, twelve years before Frothingham saw it, the various suites were furnished each on a definite scheme--French or English or Italian of different periods, classical, Oriental, Colonial American. But the Ballantynes had the true American weariness of things that are completed. They were not long interested in their house after it was done. They felt like strangers in it, lived in it only for the sake of show, were positively uncomfortable. More through carelessness and indifference than through ignorance, the movable objects in the suites had become changed about--a gradual process, imperceptible to the inhabitants. There were now specimens of every style and every period in each suite; and Frothingham, who knew about interiors, seeing this interior for the first time, thought it the work of an eccentric verging on lunacy.

“Awful, isn’t it?” said Madame Almansa, as she was called. She had noted Frothingham’s glance roaming the concourse of nations and periods that thronged the walls and floor space of the vast parlour--the Ballantynes used the American term instead of the British “drawing room.”

Frothingham looked at her inquiringly. “What?” he said, pretending not to understand.

“Do you wonder I refuse to live here?” she went on, as if he had not spoken. “There’s some excuse for the great houses on the other side. At least the present tenants didn’t build them and can put the responsibility upon their ignorant semi-barbaric ancestors.”

“That _has_ struck me as a bit queer,” replied Frothingham. “Over on our side we’re cursing our ancestors for having burdened us with huge masses of brick and stone--beastly uncomfortable, aren’t they?”

“Worse--unhealthful,” she answered. “And as dwelling places for human beings, ridiculous.”

“Yes--and it takes an army to keep ’em clean, and then it isn’t half done. And it does cost such a lot to keep ’em up. And there’s no way of heating them. We don’t build ’em any more--except new people that must show off.”

“That’s the trouble here,” said Madame Almansa. “The new people who know nothing of the art of living build palaces as soon as ever they can afford it. It’s supposed to be the badge of superiority. Instead, it’s the badge of ignorance and vulgarity. I refuse to permit my children to live in the midst of such nonsense. You must come to see us, Lord Frothingham, in our little house just through this square.”

Her sister, Isabella, who called herself Ysobel because she fancied it more aristocratic, laughed queerly--almost a sneer, though good-natured. And when Frothingham went away to her father’s sitting room, she laughed again. “It’s all very well for you, Susanna----”

“Susan,” interrupted Madame Almansa.

“Well, Susan, then--though I hate to pronounce such a common word in addressing anyone above the rank of servant. It’s all very well for you to talk in that fashion. You’ve established yourself. You can afford to affect simplicity, and to insist on being called Susan, and on dropping your title, and on living in a plain little house, and on bringing up your children as if they were tradesmen’s sons instead of the sons of one of the proudest nobles in----”

“You know Almansa,” interrupted “Susan.” “How _can_ you speak of him as proud or a noble?”

“He _is_ a weazened, oily creature,” admitted Ysobel, delighted to make her sister wince by agreeing with her and “going her one better.” “And I jumped for joy when you shook him, because I shouldn’t have to let him kiss me any more. But, all the same, he’s a great noble. And you know perfectly well, Madame Almansa, that if you had it to do all over again you’d marry him--yes, if he were ten times worse----”

“Don’t, Bella--please!” exclaimed “Susan” in a large, tragic way. “Mon Dieu!” She clasped her hands and in heroic agitation swept magnificently up and down the small, clear space. “When I think of the heritage of my boys--my Emilio and my Alfonso----”

“My Prince Rio Blanco and my Marquis Calamar,” mocked Ysobel. “Cut it out, Sue. I loathe--_cant_!”

“Instead of filling your head with these false notions of nobility,” said “Sue,” sarcastically, “you would better look to your English, at least. But the vulgar speech you and your girl friends use nowadays is in keeping with your vulgar ideas of aristocracy.”

“Yes, Madame la Duchesse,” said Ysobel, her good nature unruffled. “And when I’ve married a title and then shaken the man I’ll talk in the same top-lofty way that you do.”

Madame Almansa raised and lowered her superb shoulders and changed the subject to dress--she affected an extreme of simplicity, and that required a great deal more time and thought than her former easily gratified craze for the startling. Presently her father came with Frothingham. “You’re going to Senator Pope’s to dinner, aren’t you?” he said absently. Frothingham thought he looked like the pictures of “Brother Jonathan,” except that his white chin whiskers were rooted in a somewhat larger chin space.

“Not I,” replied Madame Almansa. “You know, father, I’m to stay here and do the honours at your dinner.”

“Yes, yes, Susie--I remember.” Senator Ballantyne seemed pleased, but uneasy. “But you must be careful--very careful. Your grand airs will frighten ’em.”

Ysobel laughed. “Mamma and I are going to Mrs. Pope,” she said, “and Lord Frothingham, too. And then we all go to the White House dance afterward.”

“No, the White House dance is to-morrow night,” said Madame Almansa. “I am going.”

“Well, well--no matter,” interposed Senator Ballantyne. “All I want is to be sure that you get out of the way before my constituents come. Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself to desert me. But I suppose they won’t mind it so long as Sue is here.”

“What time’s your dinner, pa?” asked Ysobel.

“Half-past six,” replied the Senator, and he turned to Frothingham: “At home they have dinner--no, they call it supper--at five o’clock.”

“That’s ’way, ’way out West, Lord Frothingham,” explained Ysobel, “where papa and mamma come from.”

“And you, too, young lady,” said her father teasingly. “You were born there.”

“Yes, but I was caught young and taken to France,” retorted Ysobel. “I spoke French before I spoke English.”

Senator Ballantyne frowned, became abstracted, was presently sighing. His eldest daughter heard it and gave a theatrical sigh of sympathy. Ballantyne seemed not to hear, but _something_ had irritated him, for he frowned heavily.

Mrs. Ballantyne came in from her drive. She was a fine-looking woman, had all the outward appearance of the _grande dame_, and acted the part so well that not even herself had caught her in a slip for many years--a notable triumph in the art of pose when it is considered that she was a country-school teacher until she was twenty-four and had never seen a city or been east of the Alleghenies until she was past thirty. Frothingham helped her relieve herself of a great sable-lined cloak which he handed to a servant. The servant bent double in a bow--Mrs. Ballantyne paid well for obsequiousness. “When do those people of yours begin to come, Samuel?” she asked, framing her sentence and her manner to impress Frothingham.

Ballantyne looked annoyed, and, with a furtive glance at him, said: “Lord Frothingham will carry away a strange notion of democratic institutions as represented by Senators, mother.”

Mrs. Ballantyne permitted him to call her mother because it was the only word of address that did not rasp her aristocratic nature. Her name was Jane--that she could not endure even before the days of her grandeur. She had made him call her Mrs. Ballantyne before people until she discovered that it was “shocking bad form.” She decided upon mother because the old Austrian Ambassador, whose title was of the oldest and whose blood was of the thin and pale bluest, said to her one day, “I like your American fashion of husbands and wives calling each other mother and father. It has a grand old patriarchal ring. My wife and I have adopted it.”

“You must get out of the way by six o’clock,” continued Ballantyne, addressing himself to “mother.” “Several of them said they’d come round early for half an hour’s chat before supper.”

“I’m sorry we’re to be driven out,” said Frothingham. “I fancy I’d like to see your constituents.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Lord Frothingham,” Mrs. Ballantyne answered him--for his benefit she was “laying it on with a trowel,” as Ysobel would have said. “They’re--but you know how it is in politics. I wish Samuel would leave public life.”

“What!” exclaimed Ballantyne, in mock horror. “And have all our poor relations that I’ve got nicely placed at the public crib bounced in a body, and come grunting and squealing to me to be supported! One of the objects in getting public office in this country, Lord Frothingham, is to relieve one’s self of the support of one’s poor relations and friends. The late President Arthur said to me when he was at the White House: ‘The degradation of it! That I should have to lower myself for six hours every day to keeping an employment agency!’”

“But we can’t dress and drive round the streets from six o’clock until eight,” said Ysobel.

“They’ll be in the reception room by eight,” replied her mother, “or else they won’t be through dinner. We can get out unseen.”

Frothingham maintained his look of blank indifference, but underneath he was vastly amused--“And they’re quite unconscious what cads they are,” he thought. As if in answer to this, Senator Ballantyne said to him, in a tone of humourous apology: “Our constituents are plain people, Lord Frothingham--honest, simple. They lead quiet, old-fashioned lives. I always send my family away or make them ‘come off their perch’ when I have to receive anyone from home--that is, any but my regular political lieutenants. To tell you the gospel truth, I’m ashamed to have my old friends see how absurd we’ve become.”

At six o’clock Frothingham was idling in a small smoking room in the rear of the great parlour--it was on the second floor. Senator Ballantyne came in and grew red in the cheeks. “Oh, I didn’t expect to see you,” he said, with an embarrassed laugh.

Frothingham pretended not to notice, but he instantly saw the embarrassment, and the cause of it as well. The Senator was not in evening dress, nor even in his uniform of “statesman’s frock.” To combat the unfavourable impression his great castle would make upon the excursionists from his distant State he had got himself up in an old blue sack suit with torn pocket and ragged cuff, in trousers bagging at the knees and springing fantastically where they covered his boot-legs.

He seated himself and talked absently until there was a ring of the front doorbell. He started up. “I must go,” he said. “That’s the first ones.” And he hurried away.

Frothingham waited a few seconds, then went into the hall and leaned carelessly on the banister where it commanded a view of the front door. He chuckled. Not the pompous and liveried butler was opening it, but Senator Ballantyne himself in his impressive livery of the “plain people.” And Frothingham grinned as his great hearty voice--how different, how much more natural, than his usual voice--rolled out a “Why, hello, boys! Hello, Jim! Hello, Rankin. How d’ye do, Mrs. Fisher. Glad to see you, Miss Branigan. The maid wasn’t about, so I thought I wouldn’t keep you waitin’. Come right in and take off your things. Ladies, I’m sorry to say my wife’s run off and left me--had to go to a dinner where the President and his wife are to be. You know, we ain’t allowed to decline. But we won’t miss her. My oldest girl Sue’s in the parlour. You remember Sue?”

They all went into the “parlour”--that is, the little first-floor reception room, which had been partly refurnished, or rather, dismantled, for the occasion. The bell rang. Frothingham chuckled again, as he saw, not butler nor manservant nor Senator, but a neatly dressed upstairs girl, without a cap, hasten to open the door. As he heard the rustle of skirts on the stairway leading to the sleeping rooms, he prudently strolled into the smoking room.

When he went up to dress Hutt said to him: “Beg pardon, my lord, but my, it’s queer, the dinner party they’re ’avin hin the little back room.”

Frothingham went on shaving. Hutt took silence as permission to gossip.

“They’ve sent hoff hall the servants, hexceptin’ the maids, my lord. They’ve got heverythink on the table at once and they’re waitin’ on themselves.”

“Last night,” said Frothingham, “you gave me a shirt with a spot on the collar. You’re getting careless and impudent, Hutt.”

When he reached the parlour Mrs. Ballantyne and Ysobel were waiting--Mrs. Ballantyne ablaze with rubies and diamonds, Ysobel slim and white and golden in an expensively plain white dress with golden spangles. Mrs. Ballantyne rang for a servant. “See that the doors leading into the hall downstairs are closed,” she said.

The servant returned and announced that the way was clear. The three descended the grand stairway rapidly, entered the carriage, and drove away--“with two on the box.”

Presently Ysobel laughed. “You should have seen Susan, Lord Frothingham,” she said. “She was rigged up in a black alpaca made with a basque.”

“Alpaca?” asked Frothingham. “What’s that? And what’s a basque?”

“Alpaca is--well, it’s a stuff they wear out West in the country when they dress up. I suppose they wear it because the country is so dusty, and black alpaca catches and shows every bit of dust. And when you touch it it makes your teeth ache and the gooseflesh rise all over you. A basque--it’s a sort of waist, only it’s little and tight and short on the hips and low in the collar, and it pulls under the arms--I can’t describe a basque. It has to be seen. My idea of future punishment is to dress for a thousand years in black alpaca made with a basque, and to have to rub your hands over it every five minutes.”

XII

Pope, as Mrs. Ballantyne explained to Frothingham, was an Eastern Senator--a multi-millionaire, sent to the Senate because he practically supported, that is, “financed,” the machine of his party in his State, besides making large contributions to its national machine. “So the ‘Boss,’ as they call the leader of the party in that State,” she said, “sold Mr. Pope one of the Senatorships, keeping the other for himself. Mr. Ballantyne is the leader, the master, of his party in _his_ State and, while he’s too modest to tell it, is one of the masters of the party in the nation. He could be President if it weren’t for the disgusting prejudice among the people against all who happen to have a little something”--“a little something” being Mrs. Ballantyne’s modest way of speaking of their millions. “But,” she went on, “old Mr. Pope is a nonentity. He sits in his seat and votes the way they tell him to and is nice to everybody. Mr. Ballantyne suspects he’s getting ready to buy the Vice-Presidency.”

“How much does that cost?” asked Frothingham.

“It’ll cost him half a million if the chances of our party’s carrying the election are good; if they’re not so good, perhaps he can get it for a quarter of a million. But they may not dare nominate him. They may have to take some popular poor man. The ‘many-headed monster,’ as Shakespeare calls it, has been grumbling of late. We have a hard task in our country, Lord Frothingham, to keep the people with property in control.”

“It’s the same all over the world nowadays, I fancy,” said Frothingham. “One has to apologise for being well born or for living in decent style. The trouble with the lower classes at home is that they don’t have to work hard enough. They used to be too busy to look about and make themselves and everybody uncomfortable by doing what they call thinking.”

“That’s the trouble with our lower classes, too,” answered Mrs. Ballantyne, in her grandest manner. “We educate too much.”

The carriage rushed into the brilliantly lighted entrance of Senator Pope’s house. Frothingham saw Ysobel’s face, saw that she was having a violent attack of silent laughter. And he understood why. “The young ’un has a sense of humour,” he said to himself. “It’s ridiculous for these beggars to pose and strut before they’ve had time to brush the dirt off their knees and hands.”

As they entered the drawing room Frothingham’s attention riveted upon two gilt armchairs ensconced in a semicircle of palms and ferns. “For the President and his wife,” said Ysobel. “They’re dining here to-night, you know. This is the first President in a long time who has accepted invitations below the Cabinet circle. He comes to Senator Pope’s because they’re old friends. It’s quite an innovation and has caused a great deal of scandal. But I don’t blame him. Where’s the use in being President if you can’t do as you please?”

Mrs. Pope, stout and red and obviously “flustered,” came bustling up. After she had greeted them she said: “Lord Frothingham, you’re to take my daughter Elsie in to dinner.” Then to Mrs. Ballantyne: “Oh, my dear, why didn’t you warn me of the quarrel between the Cabinet women and the Speaker’s family. Whatever _shall_ I do? Mrs. Secretary Mandon’s here, and so are the Speaker and his wife.”

“I’d send Grace Mandon in ahead of the Speaker’s wife, if I were you,” replied Mrs. Ballantyne. “I’ve no patience with the pretensions of the House. It’s distinctly the commonest branch of the Government, while the Cabinet is next to the President.”

“But,” objected Mrs. Pope plaintively, “the Speaker is _so_ influential and really fierce about precedence, and his wife has _such_ a tongue and _such_ a temper, and neither he nor she _ever_ forgives.”

“Do as you like, of course,” said Mrs. Ballantyne stiffly. Being of the Senate it exasperated her that the House should be placed ahead of it.

Just then a murmur ran around the room--“The President! The President!” Those who were seated rose, conversation stopped, and the orchestra began to play. “Bless my soul,” muttered Frothingham, “they’re playing ‘God Save the King’!” And then he remembered that the Americans had, as he put it, “stolen our tune and set a lot of rot about themselves to it.” The President and his wife entered, he frowning and red and intent upon the two gilt chairs. Mrs. Pope curtsied, her husband contracted his stiff old figure in a comical half-salaam. All bent their heads and a few of the young people, among them Ysobel, curtsied.

“See him looking at those chairs?” said she to Frothingham.

Frothingham nodded.

“He’s awfully sour at the etiquette here,” she went on. “I suppose he’s afraid the country’ll find out about it and cut up rough. He’s smashing right and left, and everyone’s wondering when he’ll throw out the gilt chairs.”

But his courage apparently failed him, for he and his wife advanced to the “thrones” and seated themselves. No one else sat, the men moving about to get the partners indicated on the little gilt-edged crested cards they had found in envelopes addressed to them and laid upon the tables in the coat-rooms. Frothingham examined Elsie Pope and saw that she was small and slight, square in the shoulders, thin in the neck, her hair of an uncertain shade of brown, her eyes commonplace, her features irregular. “She looks a good-tempered soul,” he said to himself, searching resolutely for merits. And then he noted that her hands were red, and that she had flat, rather wide wrists. “A good, plain soul,” he added. He sat silent, waiting for her to begin to entertain him--he hadn’t got used to the American custom of the men entertaining the women; and the New York and Boston women, acquainted with the British way, had humoured him. But he waited in vain. At last he stole a glance at her, and noted a gleam in the corner of her eye, the flutter of a humour-curve at the corner of her mouth. “A shrewd little thing, I suspect,” he thought. And he said to her, “No--really, I don’t bite.”

Her eyes twinkled. “I was beginning to be afraid you didn’t bark, either,” she said.

His expression retired behind his eyeglass. “Nor do I, unless I’m bid.”

“I like to be talked to--I’d so much rather criticise than be criticised.”

“What do you like to hear about?” he asked.

“About the man who’s talking. It’s the only subject he’ll really put his heart into, isn’t it?”

Frothingham smiled faintly, as if greeting an old and not especially admired acquaintance.