Part 4

"I thought so, daddy," the girl said, with a tender sigh. "And though I wasn't quite ready to do what he asked me, I couldn't say no. So when he said you and his father had always wanted us two to be married, some day, and would I consider myself engaged to him, until he was ready to give me a home in New York, I just asked him to wait till the next day, and I would telephone my answer before the steamer sailed. And I did. That's what I was doing when you called to me that the carriage was waiting to drive us to the pier. I was shut up in the telephone booth at the hotel saying 'yes' to John."

"And you never gave the poor lad a chance to see you face to face again?" exclaimed her father, every wrinkle of his face luminous with satisfaction at the news.

"Ye-es," said Posey, "I saw him for a minute over the rail of the steamer. He just rushed down from his office the minute he could get off. I'd told him I'd write him all the usual things by the pilot-boat, and from Queenstown; and he'd laughed and said he'd have to be satisfied with that! You mustn't expect John and me to be silly, father, for we aren't a bit, either of us. I ought to tell you that he's been in love with another girl, and it didn't turn out well, and he put her out of his thoughts forever."

"So that was what ailed the lad last Spring when I went North on that business of the mine? I might have guessed it, poor boy, he was blue as indigo. Well, it was handsome of him to tell you, daughter, and, my word for it, your marriage will be just as happy as if he hadn't taken that other little notion before he saw that you were the real girl for him. It'll all be blown away like the steamer smoke yonder, and he'll wonder at himself for ever thinking he could have put up with the idea of any wife but you. For that's a man's way, my dear, since the world began."

"Was it your way, daddy?" asked Posey archly.

"My child, I was ready to put myself before the mouth of the first cannon I met up with when I went into service, and be blown to atoms, through calf-love for a young lady of our neighborhood. She jilted me to marry a widower, a Baptist preacher by the name of Simkins; no, it was Lawson, I think--but never mind. She had nine children when I saw her next, and we didn't recognize each other. When we did, she talked to me about Simpkins'es (it really was Simkins) asthma, without a break for fifteen solid minutes, and I got away, thanking the Lord it wasn't my asthma, and my fat wife, and my nine children, howling and doing stunts all over the house--yet I lived to be happier than any king with the real angel of my life! But, dearie, it isn't the time to be talking of anything but you and John Glynn, and the joy you've given me in promising to marry each other some day. He is the finest young man I know, and the one of all in the world I'd choose to share what--there, you do the talking, I can't trust myself."

"Daddy, do you want me to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the way I always have? Then here it is. What I've promised to do, I'll do. I think just as much of John as you do, in a way, and I was proud to have him ask me. But I felt he was doing it because he had made up his mind it was the thing of all others to please you; also, because it was safe and right to anchor his life to a girl who belonged to his own class, and had no ideas beyond the plain, homely things she had been brought up to. But he doesn't know me, in the least. I'm not the girl he thinks, only a vain, conceited creature who loves admiration and flattery and pretty things, and all the luxuries I see other people having on this voyage, and the high-up places of the world. I want to live, to have my fling, and what's worse, I want to be loved--really, as I think it ought to be!"

Her voice dropped with her eyelashes; a burning blush ran up and overspread her face. Old Herbert Winstanley asked himself if this were, indeed, his little girl, his romp in pinafores of a year or two back? Whence had come the blooming vision of young womanhood who had supplanted the Posey of his recent lean and struggling years? What were these obsessions controlling her? He could not tell, and meekly bent before the blast.

"I reckon you know best, daughter," he said, clearing his throat in some embarrassment. "But this much I'm as sure of as that the sun is in the sky. You've done a wise thing, and a good thing, in engaging yourself to John. Be true to him and to yourself, and the rest'll all come right. Only, it's fair to tell you that you and John aren't a-going to begin as poor as poverty's back door, the way we did. I've had a little streak o' luck lately, and there's cash enough to give you your fling in Europe, and start you and John to housekeeping in New York in pretty decent style. He's a luckier fellow than he knows, is John, only I don't mean to tell him so yet a while, or anybody else, and neither must you, my girl."

"Could I have a cabin de luxe, and a French maid and a chaperon to travel with, daddy," she asked with a glowing countenance, "instead of half a stateroom with a horrid woman who drenches herself with scents, and lectures me about keeping the light turned on while I do my hair? Could I have a little string of real pearls, and one lovely pearl ring, and a rug for my steamer-chair lined with otter, and tailor-made suits that fit adorably--like Miss Carstairs, who's just my ideal, though she'll hardly look at me?"

"We'll see, we'll see," mumbled Mr. Winstanley, looking as much alarmed as did the fisherman in the "Arabian Nights," when he had let the Genie escape and soar from the Magic Bottle. "Seems to me you spent a good lot shopping in New York the week we were there."

"I wish I could throw all that trash I bought overboard," said the girl, gritting her teeth in vexation. "Nobody but an idiot from Alison's Cross Roads would have chosen such things and thought them stylish."

"It may be so," said her father, resignedly, "but putting one fact alongside another, it looks as if you'd had as good a show as any young lady on board, daughter."

"Daddy, you are the dearest old bat!" cried she, revealing to his astonished gaze her eyes full of big, bright, childish tears. "How can't you see that I'm only a peep-show, an amusement for all these people, and that most of the women on board hardly speak to me? I don't care a bit about that horrid old war-horse of the Scripture that snorts and champs--Miss Bleecker! I consider her beneath my notice, and she may insult me all she pleases. And Mrs. Vereker is another, and all their set--dull, stiff women, with nothing but their wealth to recommend them."

"Well, if it comes to that," murmured Mr. Winstanley, involuntarily clinking the sovereigns he carried in a buckskin pouch in his breeches pocket, then checking himself and saying no more.

"They may say I'm a chorus girl all they're a mind to. I know I'm not, and that you are one of the most honored citizens of our town, and we came of good old stock. I don't deny I've wanted to go on the stage. Till lately, I've simply yearned for it. But that, and all sorts of notions I had seem to have vanished away since I came aboard--since I've known Miss Carstairs."

"That's the young woman sits at our table? Can't say I blame you, Posey, I kinder took a shine to her, myself, the first evening out; but she chilled on me afterward, and I'm never for troubling folks with my attentions."

"She chilled on you because of me, poor dear; for any nice girl in her senses must see you're a heavenly angel, if you do wear rusty tweeds. She thought I was crude and aggressive and cheap, and so I am, maybe, but I don't mean to stay so; and if ever I get to be anything better, it'll be Helen Carstairs that's started me. But she won't know it, and won't know me, and that's really what's bothering me so dreadfully, daddy."

"Her father's the great Carstairs, isn't he? Didn't I hear John say he'd indirectly given him a lift last year, and said some good things about the way the boy managed a certain office job that came under Carstairs' eye?"

"Did he? There now, daddy, is just the girl John would have been wise to get, if he could. She might have helped him up the ladder by just putting out a finger-tip. And he is so ambitious, so fastidious. I could see that little trifles about me jarred on him constantly--the very things these lords and grandees aboard admire the most it seems. He called them provincialisms, and Lord Channel Fleet says they're simply delicious. Who am I to believe?"

"Ah, my little girl, I can't tell you, and that's the truth. But John's apt to be right, only whether or not Miss Carstairs is his ideal, you just be yourself, and don't put on any frills. You can't help being lively, thank God, nor true, nor generous, for you're your own mother's child. You'll make friends, never fear, the only trouble to my mind is lest they should be those who care for you only because----"

"Why, daddy, one would almost think I am something in disguise. You needn't be afraid of any one on this trip, however. They'll all forget me the day the ship touches Liverpool."

"Well, it don't matter much when we've got John behind us, does it, daughter? I reckon he'll be proud as I am to hear what a belle you've been. There's only one thing it's crossed my mind he mightn't fancy over-much--your going around with that lord fellow that's been so much talked about--that Clandonald man, I mean."

"Oh! daddy, _don't_!"

Mr. Winstanley had thought himself, through experience, prepared for most of the idiosyncrasies of femininity as developed by his daughter, but he could not have reasonably counted upon the look that came into her face as she made this protest. It caused him to stare, shake himself like a wet dog, scrutinize her again narrowly, then utter an exclamation familiar to him only under stress of strong emotion.

"Stonewall Jackson, daughter! I want to know!"

*CHAPTER IV*

The measure of Mr. Winstanley's curiosity was, however, not to be satisfied on this occasion; since, almost immediately, the colloquy with his daughter over the "Baltic's" rail was destined to interruption by Lord Clandonald in person, who came up to ask if Miss Winstanley were ready for their walk.

Since the first evening of their meeting, he had fallen into the habit of seeking her out in a half-shy, wholly unemotional manner, and of spending a half hour or so in her company listening to her merry chatter and insensibly lightening and brightening out of the heavy lassitude that had possessed his soul for so many weary months. With returning animation, the real beauty and high distinction of his face revealed itself. Posey, who had thought of his title merely as a pleasing toy, who had as yet acquired none of the prevalent worship of her average countrymen for the glamour of a place among the hereditary nobility of the lands they affect to surpass in achievement, liked to be with him because of three things--viz., the great strength and beauty of his body, his gift of beautiful diction, and the melodious speech that rang upon her ear like a chime of perfect bells. She also enjoyed his way of brushing his hair and putting on his clothes, and not caring in the least what anybody on board thought of him or said of him. At least, that is what, had she possessed a confidante of her own sex, Miss Winstanley would have admitted concerning her indifferent admirer.

He had come to her as a man who at thirty considers himself to have done with life, and consents to take up incidental diversion by the way. He had never met a girl so ignorant of the world, so inexhaustibly interested in things and people, so fresh and healthy, yet innately refined, so daring, yet so sure of herself that no man might take a liberty with her in speech or action; and above all, so pretty.

So deliciously pretty! The woman whom he had ruined his life by marrying, five years before, had been accounted a beauty, and was a gentlewoman by tradition and association. As he had seen Ruby Darien last, in the divorce court, she seemed a mere made-up creature who would go to pieces at night in her maid's hands, a thing of artifice and stimulant, of base passions and shallow emotionality, already a has-been, although barely his own age. At what time of her existence was it that she had made his pulses thrill with her loveliness? Could he have ever considered Ruby the peer in looks of this stray maiden come upon by chance to be soon parted with, and never seen again? He hated to think he had believed himself Ruby's lover during the time before he had found her out. He loathed the days before he put her away, when, for his boy's sake, he had kept on terms with her outwardly. After his child died, and he had taken his opportunity to be a free man, he often thanked God, that following that voyage of his wife's to South Africa he had never thought of her as beautiful.

But except for the somewhat languid admiration excited in him, the young American had not yet stirred the deeper fountains of Clandonald's feeling. Mariol, observing the progress of affairs, was quietly content. He really considered the acquaintance with Posey a species of mild cure, like a visit to a German health-place where one eats brown bread and baked apples, and goes to bed at ten o'clock. If it had been Miss Carstairs, now, upon whom these desultory attentions of his lordship had been bestowed, Mariol, having ascertained this lady to be the daughter of the world-famous financier, would have been much more actively concerned in forecasting for her a place among the white peacocks at Beaumanoir.

It was about Beaumanoir that Clandonald now found himself obliged to talk with Miss Winstanley. With the lightning-like rapidity of growth in steamer intimacies, they had all come to discourse of one another's domiciles and surroundings, and Mariol, whose aestheticism rejoiced in his friend's noble old forsaken home, had shown the girl a photograph of it. Posey, like every Southerner, had an instinctive love and reverence for the historic element in English country homes, and the ancient moated dwelling in whose grounds monarchs had taken their pleasure appealed keenly to her otherwise concrete and contemporaneous view of things. To see it was like stepping out of a modern railway station into an old-world garden of ripe delights. And to be actually walking up and down decks with the owner, albeit he looked like other men and had his hands thrust in the pockets of an indifferently shabby ulster, was a fillip her imagination had not previously known.

A little teased, a little flattered by her queries on the subject, Clandonald yet felt assured that her interest was impersonal and genuine. When he remembered how Ruby had hated to stay at Beaumanoir, preferring any small stuffy hotel in Paris or Rome, or on the Riviera, Miss Winstanley's real enthusiasm was refreshing. It almost made him want to go back himself to that spot, haunted by the ghosts of dead beliefs, near which the poor little boy slept, under a tiny mound in the churchyard that he was always trying to forget.

Strange, now it always came to him when alone in a balmy wood, with birds singing and sun filtering through the branches; or on Sundays when a church bell rang; or if he awoke suddenly in the middle of the night; or in looking at a field of haymakers and distant grazing sheep! It was not a keen pain any longer, but only a sobering, tender thought, and the man was better for it afterward. Now, again, as he thrust his hands deeper in his pockets and strode up and down beside the girl, dodging other walking pairs, and wishing there were not so many people in the world who wanted to do what he did, the image of the little green mound arose across the waste of wide Atlantic. Was it Posey who inspired his one sacred remembrance? He could not tell, but went on letting her draw him out about his lovely impoverished Beaumanoir, until she was touched and astonished at the feeling he revealed concerning it.

"Oh! I am sure you will have it all once more, and be able to enjoy everything as of old," she exclaimed impulsively.

"Perhaps you don't know why this is impossible," he answered, gulping down the bitter fact, "It is quite hopeless for me to live decently there, on all I am ever likely to have in the way of income."

"And I, like a goose, keep always ignoring the money question in connection with those beautiful entrancing old English places. I've read about them so often in a book we have of 'Dwellings of the Aristocracy and Gentry,' and also in 'Country Life.' They seem to have been created to go on for ages by themselves, in a state of suspended animation, like the Sleeping Beauty's palace. If you won't think me silly, I'll tell you that when I get hold of a copy of 'Country Life,' I imagine myself living in one house after another of the illustrations, and I want to buy all the horses and dogs and sheep and everything in the advertisements, except, maybe, incubators, which are horrid unnatural things, and the smelly stuff they put upon the grass and flowers that can't say 'don't'!"

Clandonald laughed.

"Rather my own idea. But I supposed all you people of the South owned large estates and many acres to experiment upon."

"Oh! dear, no! We personally never owned anything bigger than a back-yard, until my father was persuaded by a man to go shares with him in some land I never saw, where they found both coal and iron. Last year the man died, and my daddy, who had paid up most all the purchase money, came into possession of the whole property. I believe it's turned out better than he thought, and he's lately got something good out of it, else certainly we'd not have had this trip to Europe. I'm glad you never saw Alison's Cross Roads, Lord Clandonald. It's just the homeliest, pokiest little place in Alabama, and the people are good and kind, but commonplace to a degree. The houses are all of wood with jig-saw trimmings and the paint half worn off. Nobody thinks it necessary to improve anything, and the negroes swarm over everywhere, and rule the land."

"Then I suppose you'll call me jolly impertinent," said he, "if I wonder how you grew up as you are in the middle of it."

"I don't know! I just did. People have grown tired, down there, of holding up their hands over me. My teacher at school, who was born North, was the only one that ever understood why I wanted anything different from the rest. She took several magazines, and told me about others, that I persuaded daddy to subscribe to. She lent me books and talked to me, but two years ago she decided to marry in New York, and I lost her. She lives there now, dear soul, in an awfully little flat. Her husband is in the insurance business, and she edits a column of 'Advice to Girls.' She says she fairly hates some of the idiots who write to her asking the most drivelling questions. But to please the editor, she has to dissemble, and call them dears and answer like a guardian angel when she had rather choke them and be done with it--because the work pays the butcher's bill and half the gas!"

"Has she taught you that such poverty is evened by the good to be acquired from the married state?"

"I think so. At least, she and Mr. Bartley have a good deal of fun out of things. Their greatest treat, when their maid's cooking gets too impossible and Mr. Bartley is growing thin, is to go to dinner at an Italian restaurant, a dollar each, with wine, and to eat enough spaghetti to last another little while. Mrs. Bartley got fifteen dollars for looking up facts and dates in the Astor Library for a fashionable lady, who was allotted to read a paper on something she never heard of before, at a meeting of her literary club. Mrs. Bartley ended by doing the whole thing, and the lady was so fascinated by herself in typewriting, that she sent a check for fifteen instead of ten; so the Bartleys took me to their restaurant for dinner, and afterward to the play, in cheap seats. Yes, I think the Bartleys are all right. If their kitchen door could be kept shut, and the smell of cooking be banished from the parlor, I believe they'd be as happy as most people who are married, anyway."

"Perhaps, if you and your father are to be in London, you would let me take you out to dinner and cheap seats at the play?"

"Wouldn't I love it? But you can't drag daddy to the theatre, and I'm not like Miss Carstairs, blessed with a chaperon. Do you notice that, as we are getting 'half-seas over,' Miss Bleecker's English accent becomes more pronounced? She is forever talking about when we are 'in town,' and regretting that it is out of the season, because so few of their great friends will be there to welcome them. She calls all the American duchesses by their first names, and the other United States peeresses that she didn't play with in infancy, she must have brought up by hand."

"I am afraid I am too lowly a personage to claim the lady's acquaintance in future," said Clandonald, indifferently. "But I confess I should like, for my friend Mariol's sake, who has conceived a vast admiration for her charge--to manage to ask Miss Carstairs and himself to join you and your father in a run down to Beaumanoir for luncheon, while you are 'in town.' It is pretty, there, in autumn, and there are sure to be some good peaches on the garden wall."

"How adorable!" exclaimed Posey. "Daddy might go to that, if I beg him, but Miss Carstairs--! There's the difficulty. She won't more than look at me. I wonder why you, who are born really higher up in the world than Miss Bleecker and Miss Carstairs, never let me feel that I am only a druggist's daughter!"

"In Athens, they tell you Aristotle kept a chemist's shop," answered Clandonald, laughing. "And I have always understood that some of the most illustrious of the families in New York's Four Hundred were founded upon drugs."

"If it wasn't pills, or capsules, or hair tonic, it was some other kind of merchandise!" said Posey, viciously. "And, anyhow, what does it matter? There was a sentence I copied out of a book of Maarten Maartens, that Mrs. Bartley lent me, about there being no other way of living than either on the money you have earned for yourself, or on the money that other people have earned for you. As long as that simple fact remains, the question will also remain whether money-making is so very contemptible!"

"Try any man living, with an honest chance, and see what he'd answer," said Clandonald with a sigh. "I'd give anything I own for a respectable business that would bring in the cash and the knowledge of how to run it, _bien entendu_."

"You poor thing!" exclaimed Miss Winstanley, guilelessly. "Why weren't you born in dear America? Of course if you _could_ go stalking around in chain-armor like those ancestors of yours at Beaumanoir, it wouldn't seem so appropriate. But just to look at you as you stand, to-day, I should judge there were the makings of a fair business man in you. Look here, Lord Clandonald, I don't know that I was ever better pleased in my life than by that idea of yours of our going to lunch at Beaumanoir with Miss Carstairs. I don't mind telling you I just adore that girl--and the combination of her company with a moat and yew trees, and wall-peaches, and the chance of seeing English rooks--and Miss Bleecker not 'in it,' I'll be eternally obliged."

"It seems to me the host counts for unflatteringly little," said Clandonald, somewhat piqued.