Chapter 9

They explained, too, when they saw how stupid I was, that you were an "officers' lady" if you danced with them, and walked with them, and flirted with them, and didn't bother with cadets; or vice versa. Then I decided at once that I would be a cadets' lady, though I was sorry I had only one night to be it in. They were sorry, too, and showed their sorrow in so many nice ways that I enjoyed myself immensely, and quite saw how nice it must feel to be out, if you are a success. They wanted to draw lots for which cadet should take me to Flirtation Walk, but I said I had to go with Mr. Parker.

He must have been listening from a distance, (though he ought to have been talking with a pretty girl who had no hat,) for he came up to me at once, and announced that it was time to go now. He rather put on airs of having a right to tell me what I must do, and I didn't like it much, especially before those dear cadets, but it would have been childish to make a fuss. Besides, I was his guest.

I went, like a disagreeable lamb sulking on its way to the slaughter; but, thank goodness, I was engaged already for nearly all the dances, and most of them had to be split in two; there were so many cadets for them. (I think, by the by, I shall try to get Stan to take me to Sandhurst some day, to see if it is at all like West Point, and whether they have hops.)

Potter made fun of the cadets, and called them "white meat," and "little things that got in the way"; but when I asked a straight question he had to confess that he had been one himself only six years ago. "I was twenty-two when I graduated," he said. "One of the youngest men in my class." Which was the same as telling me that he is twenty-eight now. Ten years older than I am! It makes him seem quite old.

Somehow, although he is so nice to me in most ways, he stirs me up to feel antagonistic, as though I wanted to contradict him, and not like things that he likes; and I believe it is the same with him about me, for I make his eyes look angry very often. I felt he was disappointed because I admired the cadets so much, and had promised so many dances, and I was in a mood to tease him. But I fancy he isn't the kind who would take teasing well; and the scenery he was showing me was so beautiful that presently I resolved to be good.

We saw Kosciusko's monument, and I would insist upon his telling me things about Kosciusko himself, though Potter didn't seem to think him important; and then we began winding our way along a most exquisite path overhanging the river, always shadowed by trees. Sometimes it was cut through a green arbour, with a light like liquid emeralds; sometimes it ran high on the rocks; sometimes it dipped down close to the water; but invariably there was just enough room for two, and no more, to walk side by side.

We met several couples--cadets and girls; young officers and girls;--sauntering or sitting down close together in out of the way places. But by and by we seemed to have passed beyond the inhabited zone. Then Potter asked me if I were not tired from so much walking, and if I wouldn't like to rest. I said no, and he promptly pretended to be done up, which I thought very silly; but of course I had to sit down by him on a rock with a green, moss-velvet cushion.

"This is what I've been longing for all day," said he.

I hadn't; and I was thinking about the cadets. But I agreed that it was beautiful.

"Yes, it is," he answered, looking at me. "I never saw anything so pretty. Say, Lady Betty, you're an awful flirt."

I did open my eyes at that. "A flirt!" I exclaimed. "I never had a chance to try being it."

"I guess you don't need to try. There's some things girls like you are born knowing. I've been miserable all the afternoon. Couldn't you see my agony?"

"I didn't notice," said I.

"Ah, that's the trouble. You weren't thinking of me. Of course, I oughtn't to have cared for those little boys," (some of them were inches taller than he) "but I couldn't help it. I kept saying inside, 'This is a foretaste of what I've got to suffer when she's staying with Katherine at The Moorings.' I don't know when I've been so unpopular with myself. I don't see how I'm going to get along unless you'll be nice to me; right now."

"I am nice to you," I said. "As nice as I know how to be."

"I could teach you to be a lot nicer. Say, Lady Betty, let me, won't you?"

His eyes, though they are such a pale blue, had that silly, melting look in them that my cousin Loveland's have when he talks to me. "Let you do what?" I asked, almost snappishly, for a person sitting in such a lovely place.

"Teach you to like me. I fell all over myself in love with you the first minute I saw you."

"Day before yesterday!" I exclaimed. "What nonsense. You're poking fun at me. I don't believe in love at first sight--at least, I don't think I do. Anyhow, nobody could fall in love with _me_ in that way."

"Couldn't they, though? That's all you know about it, then. All Americans will fall in love with you like that, and it's just what I want to guard against. I want you to be engaged to me before you go to Newport. Then I shall feel kind of safe."

"Dear me, are you really proposing, and it isn't in joke?" I asked. "I do wish you wouldn't."

"Would I propose to Lady Betty Bulkeley in joke?" he reproached me.

"The idea of proposing to any girl when you've only seen her three times!"

"What did I tell you about my friend in San Francisco? I was working slowly up to this, even then."

"_Slowly!_"

"Yes, very slowly. I think I've shown a great deal of patience. American girls--the beauties, I mean--are quite hurt if a fellow doesn't propose somewhere along in the first day or two. They think he can't appreciate their real worth, and that he deserves what he gets if some other chap walks away with them. Now, I'm not going to sit still on my perch and see anything else walking off with you."

I couldn't help laughing. "I'll call for help if I think there's any danger," said I; "but I can't promise more than that. I didn't come over to America to pick up a husband."

He looked at me rather queerly when I said that, almost as if he thought I had come for that express purpose, and was trying to conceal it. But, of course, he couldn't be so horrid as to suppose such a thing really, and I must have imagined the strange expression. If he only knew, I came away so that another girl might be sure to get a husband, and I'm not allowed to go back until he has been got.

"They're just growing around on blackberry bushes and in strawberry patches for you to pick and choose," said Potter, "and that's what worries me. I'm a wildly jealous fellow. I've got two month's leave so as to be with you at Newport, and I tell you I shall see a bright, beautiful crimson, if too many dudes come fooling around the shanty. Say, won't you just _play_ we're engaged, anyhow, and see how you like it?"

But now I was really cross, and wouldn't hear a word more of such nonsense, so I jumped up, and he had to scramble up, too.

"If you've really proposed--which I doubt--" said I, "you must please understand that you've been formally refused. But I forgive you because I believe you must have been chaffing, and because it's my first proposal; so at all events I can't die without having had at least one. Now, do be sensible and take me back, or I shall have to find my way alone,--or else ask a strange cadet to pilot me."

That threat found a vulnerable spot; and he was not half bad on the way home--perhaps no worse than the name of the Walk allowed.

I was a good deal excited about the ball, as it was my very first. Sally Woodburn had looked at my things, and told me what to bring. Not that it was a hard choice, for I have only four frocks with me, in which I could go to a dance. The one Sally wanted me to wear at West Point is a little white thing, of embroidered India muslin. Thompson made it after one of Vic's, and it is a rag compared to Sally's and Mrs. Ess Kay's gorgeous things. But when Sally had done my hair in a new way, (they had left Louise behind, as there was no room for her), and fastened round my throat a lovely string of pearls she brought on purpose, I looked quite nice.

The "hop" was in a great big room which the cadets use for something or other, I forget what; and it was decorated with quantities of American flags. There were lots of girls--the youngest things! hardly any of them could have been out--but there were even more men; counting officers and cadets, at least two for each girl.

The card which my particular cadet had talked about making for me, was a programme, with all the dances and the men's names, and illuminations which he had put on himself. It was beautiful, and I told him that I would always keep it. I danced every dance, with two partners for each, and there was a cotillion afterwards with favours to remind the girls who got them, of West Point; little flags, and buttons, and bits of gold lace; but I was very lucky, for some of the friends I had made in camp had smuggled me special things, and I shall have quite a collection of sergeant's stripes and corporal's chevrons, belt buckles and beautiful bright bell-buttons with initials scratched on them.

I don't believe Vic had half so much fun at her first ball as I had at mine, although hers is so many seasons ago now that I can't remember what she said about it. I was only a little girl then, and she wasn't in the habit of telling me things, as she is now.

Although I didn't get to bed till after two, I was up early next morning, because I had promised my best cadets that I would be at morning parade, or whatever they call it, to say good-bye. Sally went with me, and it was quite an affecting parting. I shall never forget those dear boys if I live to be a hundred, though I can't remember any of their names, as after all I lost the card I meant to keep always.

VI

ABOUT THE PARK AND LOVE STORIES

All the preparations that Mrs. Ess Kay had to make for Newport kept us two more days in New York; and it was terribly hot, but I was not sorry to stay, because we did so many amusing things.

Mr. Doremus was detained too--by his tailor, he said--so we saw a good deal of him, as Mrs. Van der Windt had left for her Newport cottage. We did go to a roof garden entertainment, after all, and it was most fascinating, but quite without the feeling that you might fall off, which I had expected to have. I saw the moon coming up, and gilding thousands of roofs, and I couldn't help wondering which was the roof of that club where poor, handsome Jim Brett was employed; though of course it was impossible to speak of him to anyone except Vivace.

We lunched one day at an enormous and very fashionable red brick hotel called the Waldorf-Astoria, and went into a Turkish Room, and had delicious things to eat in a beautiful restaurant, which had not at all an out-of-season air, though Mrs. Ess Kay said that most of the well-groomed looking people whom I suspected of being leaders of the Four Hundred were only "trippers." I do wonder, by the way, why one always has an innate sense of contempt for trippers, and longs to be sniffy and show one's own superiority? We must all be trippers somewhere and sometimes, or we would never see anything of the world; indeed I suppose I am by way of being a tripper now. But one never seems to regard one's self in such a light, or imagine that anybody else could be so undiscerning.

I hadn't known that a hotel could be as big as the Waldorf-Astoria, though Mrs. Ess Kay says there are several just about as large in New York, and she has heard there are one or two in Chicago, but she thanks Heaven she doesn't know anything personally about _that_. When she made this remark I remembered what Sally had told me in confidence about Mrs. Ess Kay's life before she began to qualify for the Four Hundred. But of course I did not make any allusion to the subject, for fear it was a skeleton in her closet. And Sally says that well-regulated Chicago people think New York a one-horse place compared to their town, which is really wonderful and most interesting, as I shall find out if I see it. I wish I could, but I suppose I shan't, as I came over to visit Mrs. Ess Kay, not to do sight-seeing.

The second day after we came back from West Point, as I went downstairs the first thing in the morning, I heard Mrs. Ess Kay at the telephone, which is in a little room, along a corridor off the fountain court.

She was having a long conversation with someone, laughing and chatting just as if she were talking to a visitor; and presently my name came in. "Yes, Lady Betty Bu----, no, not pronounced that way, my child. As if it were spelt B-U-C-K-, yes, that's right. Such a pretty girl, a perfect dear. I expect the men will be wild about her at Newport. Potter _raves_ over her. Ha, ha, ha! Do you think so? Well, perhaps. I've known stranger things to happen. No, it's not her father, but her brother, who's the Duke; awfully good-looking. I wish he could have come too. But you see Sally wouldn't--you know what Sally _is_. No, she's never got over that old affair. Southern women are so romantic. Yes, I'll bring dear little Betty with me if it won't tire you. She----"

Then I began to think I ought to let her know I was there, for one hates to eavesdrop. So I yelled at the top of my lungs that I was in the hall, waiting to go to breakfast, and couldn't help hearing every word she said. However, she didn't mind a bit, and called to me to come into the telephone room.

"I'm talking to a friend of mine who has just been moved back to her own apartment after getting over appendicitis," she explained. "Poor thing, she's such an indefatigable society woman, and she does so hate being stuck in the city at this season. I've just been promising to run in and see her this afternoon, and I'd like to take you if you'll go. She'd love to see you. I'll introduce you now by 'phone."

With that, she began to chat into the thing again, in a chummy sort of way which seemed quite uncanny, as I have always looked upon a telephone as an official kind of machine which you prepared for with fasting and prayer, and only had recourse to when strictly necessary for important business. "Here's Lady Betty," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "I'm going to introduce you. Now, Betty, take hold of the----"

"Oh, I can't. I don't know how. I never did," I objected, feeling as if she were going to force me into taking gas against my will.

She would have me try, so I did, as it's very difficult to oppose Mrs. Ess Kay even in the smallest thing. But I couldn't hear a word, only a horrid buzzing, so she had to let me off, and just tell me that the lady we were to call on was Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour.

"If you're going to stay long in America, you'll have to get used to the 'phone," said she. "We do half our shopping, and some of our calling, and make about all our appointments that way. If we didn't, there'd be more cases of nervous prostration than there _are_, and goodness knows there are enough now, even since Blue Rays have come in. Many love affairs are carried on practically entirely by 'phone, and I've heard that in case of necessity, marriage ceremonies can be performed by it."

"How about divorces?" I asked. And I was quite serious, but Mrs. Ess Kay didn't seem to think the question worth an answer. So she switched off her friend, and rang up two or three tradespeople of whom she ordered scent, and chocolates, and some new books, and told a manicure to call. Then we went in to breakfast.

It appears that the manicure person is a great catch, and you are very lucky to get him without making an appointment long beforehand. He does things to your feet, too, though I dared not ask what; and Mrs. Ess Kay intended to stop in for him all the morning.

While she was talking about this, Sally was glancing over letters, and there was one in which she seemed particularly interested. She looked up from it suddenly, when Mrs. Ess Kay said she was not going out, and exclaimed, "Oh, then I may have Betty. How nice, I do so want to show her the Park."

"I'll go with you," Potter broke in quickly, but Sally shook her head.

"No, I want her to myself, thank you--just for this once."

Potter looked cross, but said no more, and it was arranged that Sally and I should start in about an hour. Mrs. Ess Kay thought we ought to get off at once, as it would be cooler; but for some reason Sally did not like that idea. Meanwhile, she ran out herself on an errand, but did not offer to take me.

Even people who have absolutely nothing to do except to amuse themselves appear to like waking up and having breakfast much earlier than we do. This morning, as usual, we had finished breakfast by half past nine, and by a quarter past ten Sally had come back to fetch Vivace and me for our walk.

I hadn't yet been shown Central Park. Mrs. Ess Kay said it was horrid out of season; but Sally didn't agree with her; and I thought it lovely, more like the Bois de Boulogne than our Park, and yet with an extraordinary individuality of its own. There were only a few people of our sort, riding or driving, but lots of children were playing about, and it was wonderful that the trees and grass and flowers could have kept so fresh through such tremendous heat. I'm sure if we had weather like that in England the whole vegetable kingdom would go on strike.

Whether it was the beauty of the Park, or whether it was something in herself, I don't know, but Sally Woodburn was in a sentimental mood. She is generally full of fun, in her soft, quiet little way; but this morning she was all poetry and romance. She quoted Tennyson, and several modern American poets, whose names I was ashamed to say I didn't even know, as their verses seemed charming; and when she had found a certain narrow, shady path which she had been looking for, suddenly she said, "Let's talk about love. What do you think about love, Betty?"

"I don't know anything about it yet, except from books," said I. "Mother doesn't like my reading modern novels much, and we haven't many in the library, for Vic reads French ones and hides them. But there are other books besides novels that tell about love--some heavenly ones."

"I should think there were," said Sally. "But I didn't ask you what you knew; I asked what you _thought_. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be in love?"

"Yes," I had to admit, shamefacedly, for as she is not a man, luckily it wasn't necessary to tell a fib. "Have you?"

"I _know_, once for all," said Sally, in a changed voice. "That is why I wanted to talk about it to you, before you really begin life over here. Perhaps--it depends on your opinions of love--I'll tell you my little story. I don't tell it to people. But maybe I will to you, this morning. We shall see."

"Is it a sad story, dear?" I asked.

"Yes. It's sad."

"Perhaps it may end well yet, though," I tried to comfort her.

Sally shook her head. "It can't, in this world. And the saddest part of all is that it was my own fault. But I didn't understand the relative value of things when I lost the _one_ thing in the world that can make real happiness for a woman. I should like _you_ to understand them while you still have time."

"And I should love to hear your story, if it won't make you too sad thinking of it," I said.

"Oh, I am always thinking of it. It's never really out of my mind for a minute. It's there, you know, like an undertone; just as when you live near the sea, there's always the sound of the waves underlying every other sound, though you mayn't be listening for it."

"Then tell me," I said.

"Not yet. I haven't asked you the questions yet, which will show me when you answer them, whether you need to hear the story or not. Could you imagine yourself marrying without first being in love?"

"No-o," I said thoughtfully. "Not when it really _came_ to it. But Vic says that's all nonsense; that no woman, no matter how much she thinks herself in love, ever stops in love with her husband. The thing is to marry a man who will let you do as you like; and of course he must be rich."

Sally sighed. "Well, dear, she's your sister, and I'm just nothing to you at all, but I'd like to tell you to forget about her advice, and not care whether a man is rich or poor, or even well born, if only he's _made_ himself a gentleman, body and heart and soul, and is strong and clever enough to take care of you."

The minute she said that, the image of Jim Brett rose up before my eyes. I think, though he is poor, and perhaps of humble birth, that the girl he marries will be happy--and well taken care of.

"You'll hear a lot of talk about money at Newport," she went on, "too much. Among some of the people you'll be with, money's of more importance than anything else. Two or three rich young men are certain to ask you to marry them--very nice fellows they may be, and they will show you heaps of attention--all those that Cousin Katherine will let come near you--and as you're so young and inexperienced, you may lose your head a little bit. But do remember that losing your head and being flattered and amused, isn't falling in love. A man must be able to make you love him for himself, and that self must be worth loving; for nothing else is any good in the end. And now I'll tell you my story--just in a few words--because it will give you something to think about.

"I'm thirty-two now. When I was nineteen--a year older than you--I cared for a man, and he for me. We cared for each other--terribly. But he was poor; and not only that, he came from people whom mine looked down upon. We loved each other so much, though, that I would have married him in spite of all; but my relations thought it would ruin my life, and they advised, and persuaded, and implored and insisted, until I was weak enough to give the man up. They took me to Europe, and because I had some money an Italian prince we met in Rome wanted to marry me. They almost argued me into consenting, and though they didn't quite, the news went home to Kentucky that I was engaged. The man I really loved--loved dearly all the time, though I was trying to forget him--believed it. Why shouldn't he, since I'd given him up for the reasons I had? He was Catholic, and he went into a monastery we have in Kentucky, and became a monk. No one ever wrote to me about it. All my friends thought the less I heard of him the better. And two years later, when I went back home--_not_ engaged, and thinking in my heart that there was, and always would be, only one man for me in the world--it was to learn that that man had taken the final vows which would separate him from earthly love for ever.

"Oh, Betty, you don't know what I suffered. I'd been saying to myself that when I saw him again--as I meant to--I would know by his eyes at the first glance whether he still cared as much as ever, and if he did, I would _ask_ him to marry me. But I never saw him again, except with the eyes of my heart; and I always see him so. Not an hour passes that I don't see him so."

"You poor darling!" I exclaimed. And there was a note in her voice that made my eyelids sting. "How little I guessed. And you seem so cheerful and even merry."