Chapter 4

"I guess you don't know the American disposition yet, as well as you will after you've wrestled with it on its native heath for a few months," remarked Mr. Doremus in his quaint way. "That chap down in the steerage _is_ an American, whatever else he may be, or I'll eat my best hat; and I wouldn't for five cents be in the deputation to present him with the something 'not fulsome but nice' on a little silver salver. I should expect him to give me the frosty mitt."

This expression struck me as being so funny that I burst out laughing, though I had to stop and think for a second before I could quite see what Mr. Doremus really meant; but I wouldn't forget my point in a laugh.

"Perhaps it wouldn't do to offer money," I went on. "Suppose we got up a subscription to buy him a second-class passage for the rest of the way. That would show appreciation, wouldn't it?"

"It would," replied Mr. Doremus, gravely, "and if you'll start the subscription, Lady Betty, it'll go like wildfire."

"Very well, then, I will," said I. "Though I'd rather someone else did it."

"It wouldn't be so popular from any other quarter. I'll help you. We'll go floating around together and pass the plate; and if you like, I'll do the talking."

I agreed to this, and if I'd thought about it at all, I should have supposed that Mrs. Ess Kay would be as pleased as Punch with such an arrangement, because Mr. Doremus, as a relative of Mrs. Van der Windt's, is the only man on board to whom she makes herself agreeable. It appears that he has started several fashions in New York, the most important being to drive in some park they have there, without a hat. But probably if the truth were known, he lost it, like the fox that tried to make his friends chop off their tails.

Mrs. Ess Kay had gone to her stateroom soon after lunch, as the motion of the ship had given her a headache, and I didn't happen to be near Sally Woodburn; so I said "yes" to Mr. Doremus on the impulse of the moment, without stopping to think whether I ought to ask permission first.

We had great fun going about, for Mr. Doremus was so witty and said such amusing things to the people he begged of, that I could hardly speak for laughing, and everyone else laughed too. I wished that he wouldn't put me forward always, and say it was my idea, and I had started the subscription; but he argued that I must sacrifice myself for the success of the Charity, just as I would at home, if I had to work off damaged pincushions or day before yesterday's violets at a bazaar. Of course, not being out, I've never sold anything at bazaars, but Victoria is continually doing it in the Season, and she makes quite a virtue of forcing perfect strangers to "stand and deliver," as she calls it. This seemed much the same sort of thing to me, and so I felt nice and virtuous, too, as Vic does when she comes home with a new frock torn and stepped on, and lies in bed late next day, with Thompson to brush her hair, and me to read to her.

People were very kind, and though they laughed a great deal, they gave so much that before we'd been half the rounds, Mr. Doremus said we had more than enough for our friend. He wanted to know if I would like to "hit the nail on the head" and settle matters at once, by arranging with the purser for a second-class cabin to be put at the hero's disposal. I wanted him to do that part alone, but he pretended to be shy, and said he had grown to depend so entirely on my co-operation, that he felt unequal to undertaking any responsibility without it. He told the same story to the purser that he had told others, about my being the one to start the subscription, and he wanted me to sign a kind of letter which he wrote, to the effect that the passengers had chosen this way of testifying their appreciation of a gallant deed, and so on; but I wouldn't, and he stopped teasing at last, when he saw that I was going to be vexed.

After the business was what Mr. Doremus called "fixed up," he took me back to my chair on deck. Sally wasn't in her place, and as I was wondering what had become of her, the dressing-for-dinner bugle went wailing over the ship like a hungry Banshee. I said to myself that Sally must have gone early because her frock was to be particularly elaborate. I felt conscious of having heaps of interesting things to tell, and I understood exactly what Victoria means when she says she's in one of her "pretty and popular moods."

I danced into our stateroom, where only a drawn curtain covers the open doorway. No one was there, and the cabin was so quiet that it seemed to greet me with a warning "S-sh!"

Down fell my spirits with a dull thud, though I didn't know why. My joyousness changed to what storybook writers describe as a "foreboding of disaster"; but when I have it, it's generally connected with a lecture from Mother, so I know it only as a sneaky, "I haven't eaten the cream" sort of feeling.

Just as I had begun to take off my frock, Louise appeared at the door which leads into the little drawing-room. She said that if I pleased, Madame would be glad to see me in her cabin. I hurried across to the other state-room opposite ours, and there found Mrs. Ess Kay, in a gorgeously embroidered pink satin Japanese thing, which she calls a kimona. She was sitting in a chair in front of the makeshift dressing-table, putting on her rings, and clasping bracelets on her wrists with vicious snaps. Sally, who hadn't begun to dress, was standing up, looking almost cross; that is, with different features from hers, she might have succeeded in looking cross.

"Sit down, Betty, please; I want to talk to you," said Mrs. Ess Kay.

Somehow, it always makes me feel stiff when she "Betty's" me, as my old nurse says it does with your ears if you eat broad beans.

"If I do, I shall be late for dinner," said I, just as if a minute ago I hadn't been dying to pour out my news.

"Never mind dinner, my dear girl," replied Mrs. Ess Kay, with an air which I do believe she tried to copy from Mother. "What I have to say is more important than dinner. I hope what I have been hearing isn't true."

"That depends upon what it was," I retorted, disguising my pertness with a smile.

"Don't think I've been tattling," said Sally. "Whatever my faults may be, _I_ haven't a Rubber Neck."

I didn't know in the least what she meant; but afterwards she explained that if your neck is always pivoting round, to pry into other people's affairs, it is a Rubber Neck, and I shall remember the expression to tell Stan when I go home. He will like to add it to his collection of strange beasts.

Mrs. Ess Kay partly turned her back upon Sally. "The dear Duchess" (she always speaks of Mother in that way,) "the dear Duchess has entrusted you to my charge, Betty, and I don't know what I shall do if you take advantage of me by playing naughty tricks whenever I am incapacitated from chaperoning you for half an hour."

One would have thought I was a trained dog! I simply stared with saucer eyes, and she went on. "Mrs. Collingwood came in to enquire for my headache, and she told me that you have been running about begging for money to give to a common man in the steerage. I sent instantly for Sally, but she either knows, or pretends to know nothing."

I rushed into explanations, sure that when Mrs. Ess Kay understood, I should be pronounced "not guilty." But to my surprise, her chin grew squarer and squarer, and her eyes harder and lighter, till they looked almost white.

"I don't want to be harsh," she said at last, in the tone people use when they're walking on the ragged edge of their patience, "but for the Duchess's sake, I must be _firm_. It was very wrong of Tommy Doremus to let you make yourself so conspicuous. This may lead to your being dreadfully misunderstood and putting yourself and all of us in a false position. The man may be a _butcher_ for all you know."

"His complexion isn't pink and white enough for a butcher's," said I. "Besides, I thought that in America one man was as good as another."

"You were never more mistaken in your life, my dear girl; and the sooner you correct such an impression the better, or you may get into serious trouble from which I can't save you. If the steerage man isn't a butcher, he's probably a professional swimmer, and the whole thing was a _scheme_, to advertise himself. In fact, I am pretty certain from what Mrs. Collingwood said, it _was_ that. And I want you to promise me solemnly that you will _not_ go around helping to advertise the creature any more. If you say you admire such a person, people will think you're like the Matinée Girls, who wait at stage doors and run after actors."

I was so angry, that I "talked back"; and it finally ended in our relations being somewhat strained at dinner, which ruined my appetite, until a peculiarly soothing iced pudding came on.

Afterwards, Mrs. Ess Kay was cool to Mr. Doremus, and would have been cold, I think, if he weren't Mrs. Van der Windt's cousin. He lounged up to our place on deck to give me the news that the Third Class Hero (as he calls the bronze young man) refused to be Second Class. He had asked permission to give the cabin offered him to the child whose life he had saved, and the mother.

"It's for you to say yes or no, Lady Betty," announced Mr. Doremus, "because it's your show; you set the top spinning."

"She is to have nothing more to do with the affair," Mrs. Ess Kay answered for me quickly. "She is very sorry she commenced it, and has lost the small interest she felt in the beginning. I do hope that tramp, or beggar, or whatever he is, hasn't gotten it in his conceited head that Lady Betty Bulkeley has bothered herself about his insignificant affairs, or he'll be thrusting himself upon her notice in some way which will be very disagreeable for _Me_, as her guardian."

"Well, he has sent a message of thanks to everyone concerned," said Mr. Tommy Doremus. "I don't know whether he put Lady Betty at the top of the list or not, and if that's the way you feel about our nice little stunt, I expect it's just as well not to enquire further."

All the rest of the trip has been spoiled for me, by the hateful way in which the excitement of that day ended, and it does seem too bad, for everything might have been so nice.

Whether people really do make ill-natured jokes or not, I don't know; but anyhow, Mrs. Ess Kay keeps hinting that they do, which is almost as disagreeable for me. She says that they have nicknamed the bronze man "Lady Betty's Hero"; and this has made me so self-conscious that I can't bear to go near the part of the deck where you look over into the steerage, for fear some silly creatures may think I'm trying to see him. I feel as if I had been a conspicuous idiot, and I'm so uncomfortable with Mrs. Ess Kay now, that I expect to be wretched in her house. I can't talk it over even with Sally, because, after all, she's Mrs. Ess Kay's cousin. I wish I had a nose two inches long, and green hair, and then perhaps Mother and Vic would have let me stop at home.

Still, I can't help taking an interest in ship life, and now that it's the morning of the last day on board, I look back on it all as if it ought to have been even more fun than it was.

I enjoyed hearing about the Marconigrams when they came; it seemed like living in a tale by Stan's favourite, Jules Verne, to have messages come flying to us in mid-ocean, like invisible carrier pigeons. I enjoyed having Mr. Doremus tell me about his luck in the big pools, when the men bet on the day's run; and I'm afraid I rather revelled in seeing a row on deck one evening, when one man accused another of being a cheat and a professional gambler, and almost cried about some money he'd lost. If I had been the first man, I wouldn't have trusted the other in the beginning, because he had fat lips, greasy black curls, and wicked eyes so close together you felt they might run into one, if he winked too hard on a hot day. But if I _had_ been so stupid as to trust him, I would have been ashamed to make a fuss afterwards. I think people ought to be sporting.

I liked the "Captain's dinner," too, in honour of the last night on board, with the flags and paper-flower decorations, the band playing military music, the dishes on the menu named after famous generals, and the stewards filing in, in a long procession, when the salon had been darkened, each carrying a bright-coloured, illuminated ice, and cake with tiny English, and American, and German flags stuck into the top.

Yes, I liked everything, except--but now it is nearly over. America is just round the corner of the world.

III

ABOUT NEW YORK

After you have seen nothing but water for days, it's odd how excited you are on seeing a little land. Just a little, little land, and not at all interesting to look at; a strip of grey sand, or a patch of green grass; and you have been only a few days away from such things, yet somehow you want to jump up and down and shout for joy.

More than half the first-class passengers on our ship were Americans, coming home, and I suppose they had gone away because they wanted to go. If they had liked, they could have stopped in their own country as well as not; and I heard some of them saying during the voyage that if they could, they would spend nine months out of the year in Paris; but they made as much fuss over the first lump of sand we saw as if we were discovering the North Pole. Some of them had taken this trip a dozen times or maybe more, but anyone would have thought it was as new to them as to me.

It seemed as if I were sailing, in a dream, to a dream land, and everything would be a dream, till I found myself waking up at home. If anyone had pinched me, I hardly believe I should have felt it, as I stood by the rail, while we steamed towards New York. We passed a big fort, and some neat little houses, which looked like officers' quarters. There were Long Island and Coney Island, which Mr. Doremus said I must be "personally conducted" to see, some day when I felt young and frivolous; and by and by I heard people exclaiming "There's Liberty--there she is! Bless the dear old girl!"

While I was wondering whether they were talking of a lady, or a ship, I caught sight of a majestic giantess, obligingly holding a torch up to light the world. Then I knew it was the Statue which I had read about.

"What do you think of her?" asked Mr. Doremus.

"She's a _grande dame_," I said. "Now I know why your girls hold themselves so well. They're trying to live up to the Ideal American Woman. But she isn't as big as I thought she would be. Nothing ever is as big as you think it's going to be, especially when Americans have told you about it; for one has been brought up to believe that their big things are bigger than anybody else's in the whole world."

"So they are," said Mr. Doremus, "only where all the things are big, you don't notice them, for the high grass. And over there's some of the grass."

He pointed, and I saw a great number of enormous objects, shaped like chimneys, and apparently about a mile high, scattered aimlessly along the horizon, which was a brilliant, limpid blue.

"What are they?" I asked. "Great, strange, factories of some sort?"

"No. Houses where pretty women live, and offices where men make the money for them to live on."

"You must be joking. Women would be afraid to perch up there in the sky. Besides, it would take too long to go up and down."

"Nothing takes long in America. And it comes natural to our women to perch up high. Statues aren't the only things we buy pedestals for, this side of the porpoise-tank. You just wait and see."

"I don't need to wait to see that American men are nice to women," said I; "perhaps no nicer than Englishmen, really, only you seem to take a great deal more trouble. Fancy all the men at Mrs. Van der Windt's table drawing lots every night for the right to sit by her and the two Miss Eastmans; I don't believe it would have occurred to Englishmen. The ones who _really_ wanted to sit there, would have tried to get to their places first, that's all. I do think it was pretty of you."

"Wasn't it? especially supposing none of us particularly wanted--but never mind. Talking of pretty things, here are the docks."

They were big enough to satisfy even my expectations, and I wished that I'd insisted on being taken by someone long ago, to visit the London docks, so that I might know whether ours were better or worse. One never thinks of going to see things at home; but I began to suspect that I might some day be stabbed with jealous pangs and need to be stuffed with a lot of facts about England--though until I knew Americans I've been in the habit of thinking facts the least interesting things in the world. They seemed like chairs to sit on or floors to walk on without noticing what you were doing; but I suppose it might be awkward without chairs and floors.

Soon we were near enough to New York to see the tremendous chimney things clearly, and they sharpened the impression that I was sailing straight into a dream. There could be no such things in the real world; they wouldn't be possible. But the dream felt very interesting and intense all of a sudden, and I didn't want to wake up from it just then, in spite of Mrs. Ess Kay.

The tall shapes were bright and vivid now, as giant hollyhocks growing in irregular rows. Still, they did not look one bit like houses, or offices where people could work without going stark, staring mad. I got a queer idea in my head that the houses themselves must be buried deep underground, like bulbs, with only their towers sticking up.

The next thing that happened in the dream, was slowing majestically into our own dock, and that was wonderful. The whole place was alive with faces, mostly pretty girls' faces, under fascinating hats, gay as flowers in a flower-show; parterre above parterre of brilliant blossoms; and they had all been grown in honour of us.

There was a wild waving of handkerchiefs on the ship, and a frantic fluttering of white among the flowers, as if a flock of butterflies had been frightened up into the air. Still we were a long time getting in, and I grew quite impatient; but finally Louise, who had attended to my packing, took charge of my handbag, my sunshade and coat, with her mistress's and Miss Woodburn's things. The moment had come to bid the ship good-bye.

"Now," said Mrs. Ess Kay, slipping her arm into mine, "I wonder, dear child, if you would mind being left alone to deal with the custom-house people? You'd stand under your own letter 'B,' of course."

"Oh, Katherine, do you think even Letter B, which sounds so like a warning to young men, a proper chaperon for a Duchess's daughter?" exclaimed Sally Woodburn.

I laughed, but Mrs. Ess Kay didn't. She evidently considers things connected with the American Custom House no fit subject for frivolity. She went on, without answering; "I'm under 'K,' and Sally 'W.' We'll both have all we can attend to wrestling with our own Fiends, and Louise will be just as busy. But you're a British subject, on a short visit to this country, and they won't be as diabolical to you, dear. I did all the swearing necessary for you in the saloon, with my own, when the tiresome man came on board, and there's really nothing left for you to bother with on the dock, except to open your boxes and say you have nothing to declare."

I was glad that since profanity had been called for in the saloon, owing to the tiresomeness of a man, it had been Mrs. Ess Kay who was obliged to give vent to it, not I; but I felt rather defrauded that I couldn't have heard, and I wondered if she had gone so far as to mention "damn." All I said out loud, however, was that I was sure I could manage very well in the docks, and Mrs. Ess Kay appeared much relieved. "That's perfectly sweet of you, Betty," she said, launching a daggery glance at poor, inoffensive Sally, for some reason which I couldn't understand. "I hope you won't think I'm horrid not to have asked you to label your baggage 'K,' so it could go with mine. It's better not, for _everyone_ concerned; I'll explain afterwards _why_; and Louise shall take you to 'B.'"

Louise did take me to "B," which they had thoughtfully printed very large and black on a wooden wall of the dock, in a row with all the other letters of the alphabet. A good many people from the ship were collecting beneath theirs, as if they were animals getting ready to join the procession for the ark, under the heading of Cat or Elephant, as the case might be; and they all seemed worried and apprehensive, as you do at the dentist's, even when you try to distract your mind by looking at the pictures in _Punch_.

Louise put my bag on the wooden floor, and folded my coat on it. "Miladi will do well to sit down," said she. "It may be that the baggage do not come _immédiatement_." With this she bustled away to the Louise rabbit warren, wherever it was, leaving me to the tender mercies of fellow "B's," who began to swarm round me and buzz distractedly.

I subsided on the bag, which was very like sitting on the floor; but it was stifling down there among people's feet; besides, mine soon got "pins and needles"; so presently I popped up like a Jack out of his Box, and almost knocked off a man's nose with the crown of my hat.

I said "I _beg_ your pardon!" though what the nose was doing so near the top of my head I couldn't conceive, until its owner (fumbling with one hand for his handkerchief to staunch a drop of blood, and snatching off his straw hat with the other, already full of notebooks and things) blurted out abruptly: "Are you Lady Bulkeley?"

I _was_ surprised!

"No," said I. "I'm Lady Betty Bulkeley."

"That's all right," said the nose man, as if he forgave me for being myself. "I didn't know but you'd want to be called Lady Bulkeley by strangers."

"It isn't my name," I said, more puzzled than ever. I would have tried to be dignified, as he was a perky-looking young man in an alpaca coat; but when you have just made a person's nose bleed with your hat, it would seem unfeeling to be too frigid,--though I believe an application of ice is supposed to be beneficial.

"Shall I call you Lady Betty then?" asked the man, patting his nose with his handkerchief, which luckily for my nerves had already a pattern of pink dots on it.

"I don't see why you should call me anything," said I.

With that, he produced a card, with a whole string of words printed on it, and poked it under my eyes. "I was just going to introduce myself," he said. "I represent _The New York Flashlight_, and I've been sent by my paper to get something from you, if you'll oblige me."

"Something from me?" I repeated, bewildered. "Is it anything to do with the Customs? I've nothing to declare."

"Just tell me, please, something about your family. Your brother's the Duke of Stanforth, isn't he?" (He pronounced it "Dook.")

"Yes, but----"

"Thanks. Young and unmarried, isn't he?"

"Yes. But----"

"Ever been on this side?"

"No. But----"

"He'll come some day, won't he? Most unmarried Dukes do."

"I don't know, I'm sure. Really, I think----"

"Excuse me. You're going to stay with Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, I believe. Will you make a lengthy visit?"

"I don't----"

"You must have met one or two of our smartest young men on board. What do you think of them as compared with Englishmen?"

Long before this I had made up my mind that he couldn't have anything to do with the Customs, or if he did, that it was no wonder Mrs. Ess Kay had been driven to swearing in the saloon. I was glad now that his nose was bleeding, and I turned my back upon him, because it was the most emphatic gesture I could think of. But as I faced round the other way, wondering if my luggage would ever come, another man pushed through the "B's" who had got their boxes, and almost bounded into a foot of unoccupied space in front of me.