Chapter 10

"One isn't in the world to be a wet blanket," said Sally. "Besides, one isn't actively miserable every minute, for years, because one has thrown away one's chance of real happiness. One gets along contentedly enough, except in the bad hours, when, instead of being a mild grey, the world is ink-black. But I haven't told you this to get sympathy, dear. It hasn't been quite easy telling, for I don't talk much about the deep-down things in myself. I've told you in the hope that you'll remember me, and my wasted years, if _your_ chance comes to be happy--even if it should be a chance which you think, in a worldly way, wouldn't be prudent, or what your people would like. People have no _right_ to try and order our lives, no matter how near they may be to us. It's we who have to live our lives, not they."

For a minute we were both silent; and then Sally said quietly, as if she were glad to speak, "Here comes someone we've seen before. Do you recognise him? And shall you bow?"

Vivace gave such a leap that his leash, which I'd been holding carelessly, was jerked out of my hand. It was my brown man who was coming--Jim Brett.

My face did feel red! Vivace was making such a fuss over him, that Sally could hardly help guessing whose the dog had been before he was mine. But I made the best of it. "Of course I recognise him, and of course I shall bow," said I. "He was _very_ kind to me on the dock, when I was at letter B."

Sally didn't make any remark about Vivace's capers, though by this time he was wagging all over with joy at his master's feet, and jumping up to his knees. I was grateful to her.

In another moment we three had met, in the shady path, far away from everybody else, and Vivace began running back and forth between his master and me, as if he wanted to make us good friends, and not hurt either of our feelings.

"How do you do?" said I, holding out my hand. "What a coincidence, meeting you here. And my dear little dog that _somebody_ sent me, does seem to take an extraordinary fancy to you, doesn't he?"

Mr. Jim Brett laughed, and kept his hat off, which made him look very nice with the dappling green and gold light waving over his thick, short black hair, and his forehead, which is whiter than the rest of his face.

He had on better clothes than he had worn on shipboard, but they were blue serge, with the air of having been bought ready made at a cheap shop. In spite of them, however, he looked very handsome, and every inch of him a gentleman. I don't think many men, even in Stan's set, could wear those badly-cut things and look as he did in them, though he does have to travel in the steerage.

I asked Sally if I might introduce Mr. Brett to her, and she said yes, and smiled up so sweetly that I was delighted, because, for all her talk about Nature's noblemen, I felt I didn't know her well enough to be quite sure how she would take it. But she talked to him charmingly, and complimented him upon his bravery on shipboard. "Every one of us admired you for it," she said, "and I'm very glad to meet you this morning."

Mr. Brett thanked her, and of course said how pleased he was, too. "I am taking a holiday," he added, looking at me. I was glad to hear that, because, seeing him out at this time, the thought had occurred to me that he might have lost his employment at the club. But I only answered that it was a lovely day for a holiday, and that I didn't believe he could find a better place to spend part of it than in Central Park.

"Have you fed the squirrels yet?" he asked.

"Oh, no, can one do that?" I exclaimed. "I should love it."

"May I go and get some peanuts?" he said to Sally.

"Do," she said, in her pleasant, friendly way, which was just as nice for him as it had been for Stan, or nicer. "We will go on to the wistaria arbour and wait for you. There are always lots of squirrels there."

Vivace broke away from me again and followed him, but still Sally seemed to take no notice. "That's certainly a very handsome fellow," she said, "and we can be sure that he's worthy to be trusted, because the wrong sort of men don't jump overboard at sea to save the lives of children they don't know. That is why I feel perfectly safe in being nice to him, and letting you be nice. I reckon he is a Southern man."

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"Oh, a little by that good-looking brown face of his, perhaps, but more by his way of speaking. You English people lump us all together, for our 'American accent,' but we can tell whether a person is from Massachusetts, or New York, or Illinois, or Kentucky, and so on, just as you know Devonshire from Lancashire."

The wistaria arbour, which we soon reached, was like a fairy bower hung with thousands of amethyst lamps, burning perfume instead of oil; and the moment we sat down a troop of the fairy residents, cleverly disguised as grey squirrels, with adorable little faces, began excitedly to talk us over. With heads on one side, they criticised our features, our dresses, our hats, and finally approved of them so far as to decide that we were creatures they might know. They stole nearer, by twos, by fours, then raced away again, grey and soft as undyed ostrich feathers, blown by the sweet-smelling breeze, when they saw my brown man coming back with Vivace.

I was afraid that Vivace would make a dash and frighten them, but he evidently knows how to treat squirrels as equals, not as edibles, for he behaved himself like the little brindled gentleman that he is. Gravely he looked on as Mr. Brett produced six small, brown paper bags, crammed full of the most extraordinary objects. They looked something like wood carvings of unripe bean pods, but it appeared that they were peanuts. They smelt good, rather like freshly-roasted coffee, and when you shelled them out of their woody pods, they were large, fat beads, covered with a thin brown skin. I couldn't help feeling as if I had known Mr. Brett for a long time, as he sat by us on the bench under the wistaria, helping Sally and me feed the squirrels, and shelling peanuts for us to eat, too. I do believe there must be something special about peanuts, which gives you a homey sort of feeling, if you share them with people. They form a sort of bond of good fellowship, and I can't fancy ever being prim with a man, after you had eaten peanuts with him.

Mr. Brett didn't tell us much about himself, but from the few things he did tell, I gathered the impression that he has led an open-air, adventurous sort of life. He showed that he knows a great deal about horses, and I rather hope he has been a cowboy, like "The Virginian," in a delightful book I have found in Mrs. Ess Kay's library; indeed, I imagine the hero of that story must have looked like Jim Brett. It is a splendid type.

Sally and he talked about books; he spoke about some college in the West where he had been, and I was glad that he was a University man; though why I should care I don't know. Anyway, Stan would be at sea, and floundering, in the subjects which my brown man of the steerage and Sally Woodburn discussed while the squirrels frisked about their shoulders. But then, Stan doesn't care to talk for too long about anything except hunting, or shooting, or polo, or motoring;--not even bridge, at which Vic says he loses a great deal of money.

We stopped in the wistaria arbour for more than an hour, as I knew by my bracelet watch, when Sally said suddenly we must go--though I hadn't dreamed till then that we had been half as long. I shook hands with Mr. Brett for good-bye, and so did Sally; but nobody spoke about our meeting again, as perhaps we should if he were in Mrs. Ess Kay's set. It seemed very sad, and irrevocable, somehow, and I had a heavy sort of feeling that life can be full of hard things.

His eyes looked wistful, and I said what I couldn't have said to a man of my own rank. "I've kept those roses you sent me by that dear, funny little black boy, all this time in water, and they are fresh still, though a lot of others I have had since are faded," I told him; and in that mood I didn't care whether Sally heard or not.

The brown man's face flushed up, and the wistful look in his eyes brightened into something which I felt was gratitude for my rather silly speech. "I think those roses will hate to die," he said.

"Perhaps I shall press them in a book," I answered, "to remind me of my first hours in America."

Then we parted, and there was a fuss with Vivace, who had to be taken up in my arms, or he would have choked himself with his collar, in his desperate struggles to get free. He whimpered even then for a few minutes, but soon he was comforted, and visibly made an effort to content himself with the fact that he was my dog.

I set him down on the ground, and Sally and I walked on together without speaking. But at last she said, "Penny for your thoughts, deah?"

"I was wondering about--class distinctions in America?" I answered. "I think--oh, I _do_ think it's very silly of you to have any at all. I always supposed, till I knew you and Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, that one person was considered just as good as another in America. And it ought to be like that, in a new country, where you haven't an aristocracy."

"We have two aristocracies," said she. "We go one better than you, for you have only one. We have our Old Families (maybe they wouldn't seem very old to you) and we have Wealth. They both think as much of themselves as your aristocracy does--and mighty little of each other."

"I could understand an aristocracy of brains, in a land like America," I went on, quite fiercely, "but it's no good breaking off from the old country at all if you're to hamper yourselves with anything else. Now if I hadn't heard Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox and Mrs. Van der Windt talking, I should have supposed that in America a man like Mr. Brett, for instance, could be received _anywhere_. As it is, I suppose--no, nobody could despise him. For myself, I'm _proud_ to know such a brave man. But--but of course we're not likely to meet him again, are we?"

"In Society?" laughed Sally. "Poor fellow, it doesn't look much like it now, does it? Though I believe he's a man in a thousand, and worth six of any of those that Cousin Katherine will let you know--counting Potter, though he _is_ my relative."

"It seems a pity," I said, with a sigh for the mistakes of the whole world--or something.

"What's a pity?"

"Oh, I hardly know. Everything. Isn't it?"

"Yes. And I'm sure that's what our poor, handsome friend is thinking."

"Do you suppose he--minds?"

"I reckon he would like to go on being acquainted with you, Betty, and have the chances of other men. You're not an unattractive girl, you know--or maybe you don't know. And he's human. I have a sort of idea he'll try and make some change in his way of life, so that it may be possible to meet you again."

When Sally said this, I had the oddest sensation, like a prickling in all my veins. I longed to ask her if she were joking, or if she really did think that Jim Brett was enough interested in me to take so much trouble. But the words came only as far as the tip of my tongue, and stuck to it as if they had been glued there.

VII

ABOUT SKY-SCRAPERS AND BEAUTIFUL LADIES

In the afternoon Mrs. Ess Kay and I in our thinnest muslins went out in the motor. We whizzed up Fifth Avenue for several "blocks" (as she called them), turned into an expensive-looking side street and stopped before one of the most enormous buildings I ever saw in my life. It seemed only half finished, for the steel columns of its skeleton were still visible around the ground floor and the street before it was still cluttered with bricks and boards and rubbish. In the hallway men were working like active animals in an immense cage. Suddenly from amongst them I saw emerge a beautifully dressed little girl foaming with lace frills, led by a trained nurse in a grey and white uniform. They were actually being let out of the lift, which had swooped down with appalling swiftness, by a man in livery.

"Good Heavens," I exclaimed, "what a queer place for a child and its nurse to be in."

"My dear girl, they live there," said Mrs. Ess Kay rather scornfully. "That is Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour's little Rosemary with her nurse."

"People live on top of those poles like Jack in a beanstalk!" I exclaimed. "How appalling."

As I looked through the hallway up sprang the lift once more, fierce and swift as one of the rockets which I used as a child to be afraid might strike the angels. A minute of suspense and it swooped down again with two girls in it. I felt as if it were a thing I oughtn't to be seeing somehow; it was so much like spying on the digestive apparatus of a skeleton.

"You see," explained Mrs. Ess Kay, "the Taylours and other people were frightfully anxious to get in. The rest of the building will be finished soon, and this is going to be one of the swellest apartment houses in New York."

"This an apartment house!" cried I, thinking of the dull streets in London, where almost every door has "Apartments" printed over it in gilt letters, or else hanging crooked and dejected on a card. "But, oh--perhaps you mean it's _flats_."

"For goodness sake, don't say 'flats' to Margaret Taylour," exclaimed Mrs. Ess Kay, marshalling me into the mammoth skeleton. "Over here, only common people live in flats; our sort have 'apartments.'"

"It's just the other way round with us," I explained. "Those who have flats would be furious if you said they lived in apartments."

"You English are so quaint in some ways," remarked Mrs. Ess Kay, and though I didn't answer, I was surprised. It's all well enough for us to think Americans odd, and we are accustomed to that, for everybody says they are; but that they should think _our_ ways comic does seem extraordinary, almost improper.

By this time we were in the lift, which shut upon us with a vicious snap, and then tossed us up towards the roof of the world. I do hope one doesn't experience the same sensation in dying; though in that case it would be worse going down than up.

Before I had time to do more than gasp, we were at the top; and as we waited for an instant outside Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour's door, I should have liked to pinch my cheeks lest my fright had left me pale.

Vic has a friend who lives in a flat near the Park for the Season, and once I was taken there. I thought it quite beautiful, but though the friend's a Countess and very rich, the flat is poor compared with this topheavy nest of Mrs. Taylour's.

In a white drawing-room where the only spots of colour were the roses--masses of pink roses in gold bowls--a Madonna-like being was reclining in a green and white billow of a lace tea gown, on a white sofa. She held out both hands to Mrs. Ess Kay, and looked at me, apologising for not getting up.

When you come to examine her, the only thing really Madonna-like about Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour is her way of doing her hair. It's parted in the middle, and folds softly down in brown wings on either side of rather a high forehead, white enough to match her drawing-room. She has gently curved eyebrows, too; but under them her dark eyes are as bright and sharp as a fox-terrier's. She has pale skin, red lips, and thin features, with a stick-out chin, cut on the same pattern as Mrs. Ess Kay's though it isn't as square yet, because she is years younger--perhaps not more than twenty-eight.

Mrs. Ess Kay introduced us, in a more precise way than we have at home, and Mrs. Taylour said that she was very happy to meet me, which I should have thought particularly kind, if I hadn't found out that it's a sort of formula which Americans think it polite to use.

She talked to me a good deal, and wanted to know how I liked America, of course; I was sure she would do that.

Then Mrs. Ess Kay explained that I was interested in her apartment being up so high, and thought her plucky to live in it before the house was finished. This amused Mrs. Taylour very much.

"We are just thankful to be in it," she said. "I was tired out with housekeeping, the servant question is too awful."

"I see you've a trained nurse-maid for Rosemary," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "We met them going out."

"Isn't Rosemary a pet?" Mrs. Taylour asked me, as if she were speaking of somebody else's little girl.

"Sweet," I said. "Has she been ill?"

"No. Do you think she looks delicate?"

"It was the hospital nurse----" I began; but Mrs. Taylour laughed.

"Oh, I suppose that _would_ strike you as funny. But we often have them for our children. We poor New York women have so much to do socially, we have to be relieved of _all_ feeling of responsibility, if we don't want to come down with nervous prostration. I shall hang onto this same nurse for years if she'll stay; she's _so_ good, and only ten dollars a week. When Rosemary grows up and comes out, she will be her maid, you know, Lady Betty. Do you ever have trained nurse-maids in England?"

"No," I said. "Fancy!"

"Oh, it's a splendid thing for a girl--nothing like it. You see the woman looks after her like a maid and a nurse both; makes sure her bath's the right temperature, takes care of her if she gets the grippe; sits up and gives her beef tea or chocolate after balls, massages her, and things like that. I used to have one myself, but a woman after she's married is different from a Bud. She _must_ have a French woman for her hair if she respects herself."

I said meekly that I supposed so; and then Mrs. Taylour left me to myself for a few minutes, while she talked to Mrs. Ess Kay. They compared notes about appendicitis, which they called the fashionable complaint, and Mrs. Taylour suddenly exclaimed:

"Oh, my dear, I have had just _the_ smartest idea. As soon as Doctor Pearson will let me go to Blue Bay I tell you I mean to wake them up there. What I'll do, is to have an appendicitis lunch. It'll be rather _conducive_, won't it?"

"You _are_ the most original thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Ess Kay. "How are you going to manage?"

"Oh, nobody shall be invited except those who have had it; and the great feature will be the decorations; operating instruments, you know, and hospital nurses, and--oh, I don't know what all yet, but I'm thinking it out. It was Cora Pitchley's Cat Lunch that put it in my head." She turned to me. "In America we give Women's lunches," she said. "Only women are asked, or a Cat Lunch couldn't be worked. Is it so with you, too?"

"I'm afraid our women would think it a bore if there were no men," I answered. "Anyway, there always are some, I believe. I'm not out yet. Do tell about the Cat Lunch."

"Oh, it was only a pretty smart trick of my friend, Mrs. Pitchley's. She was a rich young widow from the West, with millions, and very pretty and lively, so some of the old cats snubbed her and tried to keep her out of New York society, when I was introducing her around. But she got her foot in at last, so tight they couldn't help themselves, for the Van Tortens took her up, and she was _made_. So what did she do but give a big lunch, inviting all the women who had been the meanest to her, and not another soul. The _whole_ table decoration consisted of cats; vases made of cats; flower-arrangements shaped like cats; and a little gold cat with emerald eyes for each woman to take away with her, so she wouldn't forget the lunch in a hurry. And would you believe it, not one of them saw the joke till _Smart Sayings_ got hold of it, and published an account of the function next week."

"What did the women do?" I asked.

"Nothing, but feel cattier than before. She's richer than ever now, for she's married a man worth twenty millions, and the first thing he did was to give orders to Céleste, her dressmaker, to turn out two new dresses for his wife, every week of the year without fail, not one of them to cost less than two hundred and fifty dollars. It was such a strain on Céleste, thinking of new ideas, that she had to give it up after the first year, though it nearly broke her heart."

"I should have thought it would be a strain having the dresses to wear," said I. "Fancy getting passionately attached to one frock, but never being able to wear it more than once or twice, on account of your duty to the new ones always coming towards you in a long, relentless procession, down the years. I should hate it."

"I wouldn't," said Mrs. Taylour. "I can't have too many new things, and I always change each scrap of furniture and decoration in my own rooms every year, so that Mr. Taylour won't get tired of them. He's such a nervous man. But you'll meet Cora Pitchley at Newport. Her house is there. She's a type of an American woman, just as bright as she can be. Her second husband was a wholesale dry goods man years ago, but most people have forgotten that, now he's worth his millions, and he's got the most gorgeous place, quite like one of your old castles. The worst of it is, his mother lives with them, and when she was showing the bride--Cora--over the house (which was decorated pretty weirdly for the first wife,) the old lady kept explaining: 'This is the Louis Seize room; this is the Queen Anne room.' Cora just looked at the things, and said: 'What makes you think so?' Smart, wasn't it? But Cora's changed everything inside the house now. She loves change. She's even changed her birthday, so as to have it in leap year; and as for her mind, she changes it entirely at least six times a day; says that's why women have nicer minds than men; they change them oftener. But I've gossiped enough about a person you don't know, Lady Betty. Let's talk about England. I run over to Paris for a month or two most years, but I've only been twice to England. I did all the sights, though, didn't miss anything. I gave four days to London alone. Candidly, I don't think your women dress nearly as well as we do, or hold themselves as well, but perhaps you're more _feminine_ looking, take you all in all. I don't mean anything _personal_, of course. But I _do_ think your men are lovely. I met a perfectly charming Member of Parliament, and he invited me to tea on the terrace. Such strawberries and cream. But I'm afraid I hurt his feelings. I said I couldn't help thinking 'House of Commons' a most insulting name, and if we called our Senate anything like that we couldn't get an American man who respected himself to go into it. But English people are so queer. They don't seem to mind admitting that there is a class above theirs."

"Betty doesn't need to know anything about that," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "She is on the highest pinnacle."

"Oh, dear no," said I. "There are the Royalties."

"Don't you think you are just as _good_?" asked Mrs. Taylour.

"I never thought about it in that way," I answered, stupidly. For of course I hadn't.

"Surely you don't bob to them?"

"Indeed we do," I protested.

"Well then, I _wouldn't_," said Mrs. Taylour, firmly. "I'd have my head cut off first, especially before I'd curtsey to a Man."

Quite a colour flew into her face as she asserted her independence, and Mrs. Ess Kay must have seen that the invalid was getting excited, for she rose quickly to go.

"Come, Betty," said she, and I came.

The lift plunged us down through the inner workings of the skeleton. I had the sensation that it was dropping away from under my feet, and that as I dangled above it like a wobbly little balloon my head had been left behind somewhere near the top. But I didn't leave my heart behind in Mrs. Taylour's flat.

VIII

ABOUT NEWPORT AND GORGEOUSNESS

I was anxious to travel in an American train, so Mrs. Ess Kay said we might go by rail to Newport, instead of by boat as she had intended.