CHAPTER XIV

PROTECTIVE SCANDALS AND OTHER DIVERTING HUMOURS OF A FASHIONABLE WATERING-PLACE

Once upon a time, by a chance of history, a small man was thrust into greatness of place.

Moulded in putty for a niche, he tottered and crumbled on a pedestal.

This pedestalled weakling, small in his great place, prayed for support. He got it on conditions--rather shabby ones. He was to acknowledge himself frightened, his niche in life a mistake. He was to deny his old views of right, and compromise away right for a novel view of ancient wrong.

When time came that he should remove, he was willing to stay and be a dough image in a high place; but a grateful people of a grateful republic did not invite him.

At another time, a grateful people rather scornfully declined him a re-invitation to the old place, though he prayed it in suppliant guise.

But a grateful people did as much as could be expected; they built a great hotel at Newport and named it by his name. It still lives, and its name is “The Millard.”

What they call the odour of respectability that hangs about an old institution is not always fragrance when that institution is a hotel. There, most people prefer the odour of new paint. So it was with our dramatis personæ. They chose the Millard, not from sympathy with its name, but with its newness.

Mr. Waddy preferred going with Granby and Ambient, whom they had adopted, to abandoning these friends and accepting the invitation of his ambassador kinsman. So these three gentlemen inscribed themselves upon the books of the Millard.

Miss Arabella Budlong had just returned from her bath. She was in the hair and costume of La Sonnambula in the bridge scene, and it was a little dangerous, her rush to the window to inspect the companions of Mr. Waddy. She might have been seen--in fact, she was seen, but not recognised, by Peter Skerrett, who had arrived that morning. He called Gyas Cutus and told him to look at Venus Anadyomene, drying herself in the sun.

“Anna who?” asked Gyas. “That’s Belle Bud. She’s always drying at this hour, and I believe doesn’t care who knows it. I say, Peter, who are those chaps just come in? You know everybody before he is born. A very neat lot they are.”

“That brown one with the cheroot is Ira Waddy,” replied Peter, “the partner of the great East Indian banker, Jimsitchy Jibbybohoy. The big man is the Grand Duke Constantine, come over to study our institutions, republican and peculiar, with a view to the emancipation of serfs. Number three is the eldest hope of the Pope.”

“Gaaz!” said Gyas, with indescribable intonation. “The Pope don’t have eldest sons.”

“I would be willing to have him the old gentleman’s youngest to please you,” replied Peter, “but historic truth is a grave thing. Apropos of boots and kicking, I significantly advise you not to call that young lady Belle Bud any more.”

Misses Julia Wilkes and Milly Center were in the Millard parlour with Cloanthus Fortisque and Billy Dulger. They saw the stranger gentlemen arrive, and Milly felt her _volage_ little heart expand toward Ambient, that rosebud of Albion. She had a lively imagination for flirtations and immediately built an ideal vista with a finale of a kneeling scene, Ambient, in tears, offering his heart and a dukedom. She was not quite decided whether to raise him from his entrancement by a tap of fan, as wand, or to leave him in that comical position and call in a friend to witness her disdained triumph.

“Go, Mr. Dulger,” said Milly, with the despotism of a miss in her position, “and find out who they are--particularly that handsome young man in the curious coat, lovely complexion, and mutton-chops. He looks so sweet.”

Poor Dulger, compelled to prepare the way for a possible rival, went off savagely.

“I’ll make her pay for all this sometime,” he murmured, with clenched fists.

Dulger was fast getting desperate. He had been with this young fair one a centripetal dangler or gyroscope for years. Milly had taken his bouquets all her winters, without regard to expense. But other bouquets she had likewise taken, to the dismay of his faithful heart. When cleverer men, or bigger men, or men with more regular features or less sporadic moustache, came, yielding to Miss Milly’s seducing attentions,--and she was not chary of them,--poor Dulger sat in the background, looking at his tightish new boots, and bit his thumb at these cleverer, bigger, handsomer. He could not understand the world-wide discursiveness of the clever men, nor in truth, did Milly, but she had tact enough to see when her locutor thought he had said a witty thing, and then she could give a pretty laugh; or when it was a poetical, sentimental thing, she could look down and softly sigh. A man must have flattery for his vanity as much as sugar for his coffee, and Milly was very liberal of that sweet condiment. Her charm lasted with the clever men days, weeks, months, according to their necessities for unintelligent flattering sympathy and the frequency of their interviews.

Billy Dulger had seen so many generations of such lovers come and go, more or less voluntarily, that he began to feel a pre-emptive, prescriptive, or squatter sovereign right to the premises; for there were premises, as well as a person--a house where one might willingly hang his hat. Miss Milly was an orphan and had a house--nay, many houses--of her own. Her lover was proceeding in the established manner of courtship by regular approaches and steady siege. It generally succeeds, this method, and is, after all, easier to the dangling man of no genius and safer than the bold assault of a hardy forlorn hope. So many campaigns--such constant cannonade of bouquets with great occasional bombardment of flower-baskets--missives proposing truce--shams of raising the siege--showers of Congreve rockets in the form of cornucopias of bonbons--parleys of no actual consequence effected by sympathising allies--cautious spying with lorgnette, followed by assault upon opera box--watchful pouncings when the garrison sallies forth for stores--patience, pertinacity, and final success: this was Mr. Dulger’s game. It was, however, no sport to him. It cannot be sweet for a man to be forever in the presence of a woman he loves or wants, he playing the triangle while a _gran’ maestro_ is leading at the apex of the orchestra. He cannot enjoy hearing her applaud another man for saying things he cannot possibly think of and does not quite understand. Billy, therefore, was not happy in his courtship. He knew his love was a flirt, and not particularly charming, except that she made a business of being so. But it had become with him a vice to love her, if such is love. Should he ever succeed, after his ages of suspensory dangling, he will not be brilliantly happy. This is experience which he will remember, and though a well-enough intentioned man, he will necessarily avenge with marital severities his ante-nuptial pains.

Have we dallied too long with Miss Milly and Master William? They are essentials in this history, and, though casually as it would seem, yet on them depends its event.

As Mr. Waddy turned after booking himself at the Millard, he found his hand suddenly seized by Mr. De Flournoy Budlong. The bloom on this gentleman’s cheeks had jaundiced to autumnal hues. His smooth, round, jolly face had shrunken and was veined with dry wrinkles like a frozen apple. Poor Bud, flowering no longer, seediness was overcoming him, to no one’s special wonder who saw the principal female of his family conducting herself very much indeed, and watched young Tim subscribing every night.

“Glad you’ve come,” said Budlong, with unhappy cordiality. “I got here this morning. Peter Skerrett said it was time for me to be on hand and gave me half his stateroom. Seasick all night; yes, sir, every minute. Peter says juicy men always are. Deuced rough off P’int Judith. Peter said it was the story in the Apocalypse, Judith, and whole infernos. Found Tim with his head very much swelled. Bad cold, he said. I told him he’d better stay in bed. He said he would till evening--had a small subscription party at nine. Asked him to take me--he said strangers had to be balloted for once a week for three weeks. I’m afraid it’s all poppycock. Mrs. B. has gone out to walk with that blasted Frenchman. Ah, here she comes now.”

Mrs. Budlong entered with Auguste Henri. She dismissed her escort with a whisper and walked up to her husband, very handsome, very well dressed, perfectly at her ease, and gave him two fingers of the hand which held her parasol.

“How d’ye do, pa?” said she. “You’ve left us to take care of ourselves so long that we thought you’d forgotten us. I’m sorry you didn’t let me know you were coming; you could have brought up another horse instead of Drummer.”

“What’s happened to him? He’s my best horse,” said the husband thus tenderly received as master of the cavalry.

“De Châteaunéant was riding him, and that rude young Dunstan, driving the Wellabouts, ran into him. Drummer was badly cut and Aug--De Châteaunéant had his--his clothes torn. He intends to punish Dunstan, who was very insolent.”

“I hope he will,” said De Flournoy, rubbing his hands and brightening up. “I should like to see the beggar well thrashed”--of course it was Dunstan he meant.

Mrs. De Flournoy had been quite conscious of Waddy’s presence during this colloquy. Waddy was a man whom she was willing to propitiate. She had even tried her fascinations on him early in the voyage--merely in the way of a flirtation, of course. But Ira was loyal, though not pretending to be a saint, and remained impervious to the darts which Mrs. B. shot at him from her expressive eyes. To Ira, therefore, Mrs. B. now turned, bowed gracefully and smiled pleasantly. She had the spoiling of a very fine woman in her.

“We were sorry to be deprived of your society on board,” said she, with easy suavity, “even for so heroic a reason. We were hardly willing to speak to Mr. Tim Budlong after his abandoning you. But he is so aristocratic. He said he thought the little beggar might as well drown. We, of course, did not think so. I hope to see you often while you are here. We will study American society together. One of the charms of hotel life is that we can see our friends so constantly and familiarly and form agreeable intimacies.”

All this was said in Mrs. De Flournoy’s most gracious manner to Mr. Waddy, and at him and his friends. She was determined to make a good impression--excessively determined, unfortunately. She wished to signalise her first summer after Europe by great social triumphs and courted everybody, except those whom she could venture to contemn. Still, men at a watering-place are not disposed to reject the advances of pretty women, and Waddy would have been placable, but that he did not care for intimacy with a person who could accept De Châteaunéant as _cicisbeo_, or even acquaintance. He could not forget signs of a complete understanding he had detected between him and the lady. However, Waddy said the civil nothings and Mrs. Budlong went upstairs, followed humbly by poor old Bud.

Peter Skerrett calls the stair at the Millard “Jacob’s Ladder,” because, says he, “the angels who have good tops to their ankles are continually ascending and descending.” Up Jacob’s Ladder, then, Mr. Waddy and his friends presently marched to their rooms.

When the trio, after their toilet, descended, they found the hall lined with people awaiting dinner. Peter Skerrett stepped up to greet Mr. Waddy.

“Come, Peter,” said the young nabob, introducing his friends, “sit down and tell us what you call the protective scandals. We are all green at Newport.”

“That is a new expwession to me,” said Sir Com, gaspingly as usual. “Pwotective scandals--what does it mean?”

“Strangers,” explained Peter oracularly, “before they are up to trap, are apt to put their foot in it. They need someone to inform them who are the people they must know, whom they may know, whom they may know under penalties, and whom they must not know. They need also a general guide to conversation--to know to whom they shall say, ‘Man is the architect of his own fortunes,’ and to whom, ‘It is a noble thing to be descended from a long line of proud and noble ancestors.’”

“Must we learn the pedigwee of evewybody here?” demanded Ambient, in consternation. “I shall have to cwam like a fellow going up for his gweat go.”

“Ah, there you’ve hit it,” replied Peter. “The actual pedigrees are almost none, thanks to republican institutions. Except a very few families, who have managed to hold together and keep pelf to their names, there are no pedigrees to remember. As a Nation, we have buried our grandfather. Parentage only of everyone is what you must know. We are a religious people,” and he turned his eyes upward whither the ceiling was between him and heaven, and motioned as if to cross himself. “Yes, fervently religious, and have read in Holy Writ that labour was a curse. We have agreed that it ought to be expunged. But as it is almost impossible in general powwow to avoid alluding to some trade or business, the great protective scandal is to know the individual one not to mention to each of these people. They do not wish to be reminded by what especial class of curse their papas were made miserable and millionaire.

“For example,” continued Peter, delighted to have the floor and so select an audience, “that rather long girl, walking with a race-horse stride, is Miss Peytona Fashion. Her parent began his fortune by betting against his own horse. It would be deemed uncivil if you, Sir Comeguys, should stand before her, and with a whiff at her circumambient atmosphere of odours, should ask her if her favourite perfume was Jockey Club.

“So there is hardly one subject that is not taboo with someone. Mrs. De Flournoy Budlong loves not to hear of flowery meads or breakfast called a meal--it seems to let the cat out the bag. Old Flirney, you know, began as a deck-hand on a barrel-barge, and has, turned to the wall in a lock-up in his garret, a portrait of himself shouldering a cask of flour; that portrait is her closet skeleton.

“Ah, I see you have spotted the Southern belle,” added he to Ambient, who was gazing at a dark, luxurious beauty opposite him.

“Spotted her!” echoed the youth, blushing pinkly. “I wouldn’t do it for the wowuld.”

“Oh, I mean remarked her. You’ll learn the language by-and-by. You’re looking at her foot--that’s the pretty one; the other’s enlarged in the joint by dancing. Well, that is Miss Saccharissa Mellasys, the creole belle from Louisiana. You’re an abolitionist, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said the Englishman: “isn’t evewyone who has no pecuniawy intewest in slavewy?”

“Of course,” replied Peter, “more or less so. But beware of talking anti-slavery to Miss Mellasys. You’ll bring an unhandsome look into those tranquil eyes. She’s here on the proceeds of one of her half-sisters. Success of abolitionism would knock off her summer trips to civilisation, and she knows that her amiable papa wouldn’t hesitate to sell her, as he does the scions of his dusky brood, without too much inquiry as to the purpose.”

“You call this a democratic republic, I believe,” said Granby.

“’Tis the land of the free and the home of the brave!” cried Peter, waving his hat. “Pardon this ebullition of national pride. I’m getting up my enthusiasm for a presidential stumping tour this fall. Well, Saccharissa is very pretty. I’m told they cultivate that startled expression of the eyes at the South by placing the girls, when they’re infants, on the edge of a bayou; the alligators come and snap at them, but the nurse runs them off just in time.”

“Will you allow me to make a note of that custom?” asked Ambient, who had listened open-mouthed.

“Certainly,” assented Peter graciously, “and I can tell you more of the same sort, if you wish,” but the sound of the dinner-gong prevented further recitals.

Tim Budlong appeared at dinner, all beauteous with raiment, but looking desperately roué. He had, too, the peculiarly anxious look of an amateur subscriber, so different from the cautious carelessness of the professional receiver of subscriptions.

Tim was disposed to dodge Mr. Waddy; but Ira had no quarrel with the hopeful youth, who had in the Halifax affair only done as most men do. It is not worth while, as Mr. Waddy knew, to be permanently disgusted with human beings for acting according to their natures; he knew that character is a compound of blood, breeding, and experience. So he gave Tim a glass of claret and said “_Pax vobiscum_, my lad!” very kindly.

Tim, pleased with the patronage of the distinguished stranger, who, with his two friends, and Chin Chin behind his chair, was an object of gaze at the Millard--Tim, elated by such good society, for twenty minutes resolved to reform. At the twenty-first minute, he caught a wink from Gyas Cutus, and with a knowing crook of the elbow, turned off his glass of what Millard called champagne and became a reprobate again.

After dinner, Peter Skerrett was besieged by speculators for information. “Who are your friends?” was the cry of many a hopeful mother. Peter forgot his previous story and now asserted that they were Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the Three Kings of Cologne. Peter was fond of mystification. But the hotel books and the Budlongs gave more authentic accounts. Henceforth patrols of marriageable daughters were about Ira’s path; but we shall regard them no more than did he.

De Châteaunéant, swaggering up the hall before dinner, had seen Sir Comeguys. He seemed to recognise and desire to avoid him, and had kept out of the way carefully. Miss Arabella was therefore solitary, as old Bud adhered to his wife, which, perhaps, accounted for the fact that she was not blossoming so luxuriantly as usual.

“Miss Arabella is not a bad girl,” remarked Peter Skerrett to Waddy at dinner. “The mother--such a mother!--is ruining her, as she has already spoiled poor Tim. I abhor that woman.” Peter was usually very cool and non-committal, but he grew quite excited at this moment. “Look now at her _étalage_,” he continued, referring to her low-neck. “What fun it is--a watering-place! I’m so romantic that I have to come here every year for a week to be taken down. I should positively be falling in love with women if I didn’t see them here occasionally.”

“Why not stay away and be romantic near cottages rose-embowered?” suggested Waddy. “The damsels who trim the roses are fresh as they are pure--what these others are doesn’t in the least matter.”

“Gammon! Pardon me,” said Peter quickly. “That observation was addressed to the waiter--ham, I meant. Can a man like myself seek his love among hollyhocks and marigolds? Really, whatever I may say, I’m not quite spoony enough for female society, except when the band is playing melting strains of passionate despair from some Italian opera, and I am far enough distant therefrom not to observe false notes and brassiness.”

“You seem to be sentimental now,” said Waddy, smiling. “Who is it? Can it be Miss Arabella? I am interested there, too, in a godfatherly way. I will help you to lynch hot nubbless, as Mr. Budlong calls him. What do you say?”

“No, thanks,” said Peter, his cheeks somewhat unnaturally bright. “He’ll take himself off when he’s won all he can from Tim and the other boys, unless he can marry some of the girls--and then, as Squire Western says, one would hate like the deuce to be hanged for such a rascal. I don’t believe Miss Arabella would allow him so much about her, if it were not for her step-mother. I think the infernal blackleg has the mother in his power and she intends to sacrifice the daughter to save herself!” and Peter took a draught of ice-water, against his better judgment, for he was growing quite unnaturally heated.

“Peter! Peter!” protested Waddy, “I’d be afraid your imagination had become perverted by dealing so much with the protective scandals--but I’d come nearly to the same conclusion myself. I saw too much on board the steamer. I said all I could to old Bud.”

It was on account of this conversation that Mr. Waddy, seeing Miss Arabella alone after dinner, joined her and chatted a while. Mr. Waddy, though he allows himself to swear in several distant languages, and is altogether perfectly independent in his conduct, will, I hope, already have shown himself a man of refinement in feeling and manner. Women have tact enough to adapt themselves to such men and often humbug them for a time. Miss De Flournoy’s altered manner, as she promenaded with Ira, was not humbug, but the unconscious effect of gentlemanly influence.

Long absence from Society, so called, had given Mr. Waddy a large appetite to taste whatever it might have to offer of nutriment or tidbit. He was not a gourmand for scandals, nor a gourmet for gossip. Food is food. Yet grub may not be ambrosia, and, _certes_, nectar is not swipes. On the whole, he remained a-hungered. Ecstasy he was not expecting; he had outgrown such hope by fifteen years. Amusement he found. He had banquets sometimes and sometimes feasts infestive; people dined him for various reasons; he was made rather a lion. Peter Skerrett was inexhaustibly amusing. Under his auspices, Mr. Waddy and his friends came judiciously to know all the delectable people and all the desirables not so delectable. When the autocratic gentlemen at the Nilvedere Hotel expended fifteen dollars in pink buckram for decorations and gave a ball, Ira was invited, of course. When soon after Mr. Belden’s arrival, that gentleman, after an unusually successful subscription night, persuaded Mrs. Aquiline to matronise a picnic, Mr. Waddy and his friends were of the party. Mr. Belden gave out publicly that this picnic was for Diana. To Mrs. De Flournoy Budlong he whispered that it was in honour of their acquaintance and rapid intimacy.

Mr. Belden would hardly have been willing that Diana should know how great this intimacy had become. She was not likely to hear the scandals of the Millard; and it is not to be denied that the intimacy soon became one of the most delectable of the said scandals. Julia Wilkes and Milly Center talked it over and knew quite too much about it. Mrs. Aquiline remembered that she was _née_ Retroussée, and with a subdued delight kept the rector of St. Gingulphus fully informed. Rev. Theo. Logge, who was by this time well into the Lee Scuppernong, smacked his lips over the flirtation and hoped to Mrs. Grognon that there was nothing wrong.

“A foo paw,” he said, “would bring terrible disgrace upon the congregation of St. Aspasia.”

And then Logge indited two letters to the _Preserver_. The religious letter bewailed the immorality of the fashionable world, in the pious style of generalisation, and referred to the “dreadful developments in the communication of our secular correspondent, Phylac Terry.” Phylac did not develop anything; he confined himself to liquorish innuendos.

Whenever Mrs. Budlong was out with her _étalage_ in the parlours, Mr. Belden might have been seen hanging over and inspecting it. There was no hour when they were not together. Belden’s bolter came into play for buggy drives at solitary hours, and though he was willing to conceal the qualities of that singed cat, Knockknees, he rode him cautiously by her side on the beach. The sun went down, dimmer grew the horizon where it met the sea, dusk and dim and far-away, falling upon the boundlessness of sea. With the glow and the glory of sunset, gay files of carriages had left the beach, struggled over the stones, and climbed the dusty hill. But Mr. Belden and his companion lingered. She was saying little and sometimes hardly listening, thinking perhaps of girlish escapades on horseback, stampedes upon a bareback pony over meadow or among the pumpkin piles of her father’s orchard long ago,--ah! how long it seemed!--when she was simpler and possibly purer than now. Purer? Ah! this seemed a thought she was willing to dismiss, and Drummer suffered for her wish to fly from it. He tore madly on through the dim twilight, she looking back almost fearfully. When that gallop was over, she was again ready to devote herself to her cavalier, letting him bend over the saddle and rearrange her dress.

Peter Skerrett did not like this at all and spoke to Mr. Budlong, who came and went every week. Old Bud told him that since his wife had frankly given up the Frenchman, she should have her own way. He trusted her fully, he said--good soul!

Peter had no right to interfere. Mr. Waddy had no right. No one had. No one ever has. Women and men go on ruining themselves, and the world winks and lets them.

Nor had Peter any right to interfere in Miss Arabella’s flirtation with De Châteaunéant. He therefore kept away and the flirtation intensified. Mrs. Budlong patronised it.

Peter could not interfere in Master Tim’s subscriptions. Tim was of age, his father’s partner. What if he chose to subscribe? Peter used to drop in at the subscription rooms and watch the young rake’s progress. The principal subscriptions were in private--it was then that De Châteaunéant made his heaviest collections. He was a most accomplished and successful collector. It may have been that he occasionally allowed Tim to get somewhat in arrears; it was well enough to have Miss Arabella’s brother under obligations.

Peter Skerrett inquired of Rev. Logge whether all his tract societies were supplied with agents.

“I could recommend you,” says Peter, “a most surprising beggar who gets money out of everyone, as Agent for the Society for Making Tracks.”

In fact, to both Peter and Mr. Waddy, the colour of the nobleman’s legs became daily more offensive. They were usually clad in violet cassimere, with a flowered stripe, as is the manner of noblemen of his particular rank. But to the two gentlemen they seemed dyed of darkest Stygian hues.

Peter Skerrett, to distract himself from these anxieties, though he denied that he felt any or was concerned for the Budlongs, otherwise than as an amateur of scandals, took Sir Comeguys under his protection. Like a European courier, he would allow no one to cheat that ingenuous youth but himself. Thus there is a Skerretty congruity in the wild legends of American life which luridly light the pages of “Tracks in the Trail of the Bear and the Buffalo.” Gyas Cutus and Cloanthus, when they were off duty with Miss Julia Wilkes, were constantly on the watch for Sir Com. They liked to be seen with the baronet, and were ardent to “sell” him, as they called it. But these mercantile transactions, more satisfactory to the seller than to the sold, Peter Skerrett interfered with.

“You’d better take care, Guy, you and old Clo,” he said, to the pair of pleasant knaves. “This son of perfidious Albion may be green, but he is plucky and you may get your heads punched. That wouldn’t do, because they are soft and the indentures caused by such punching would remain and make it hard to fit you with hats. Abstain and be wise!”

“Do let us have a shy at him, Peter,” pleaded Gyas. “His ancestors and mine fought at Bunker Hill--I wish to revenge the death of General Warren.”

“Your ancestors?” replied Peter. “Who told you that you ever had any? They may have been tadpoles or worse at that heroic period. Certainly, your grandfather, the first human Gyas Cutus I ever heard of, was only a grade above the tadpole when he kept the Frog Huddle Pond House, near what was then the village of Newark in Jersey. We allow you to associate with us because you’re not such a very bad fellow when you’re properly bullied; but don’t try to come the ancestor dodge--except in that neat and evidently inherited way you have of mixing drinks.”

“Well, don’t be too hard on a feller,” said Guy. “Come and make it seven bells--_tomar las once_, as the Dagoes say--I learned that from a sailor yesterday aboard of Blinders’ yacht.”

“You’re learning to mar all hours with tipple. I shall have to whisper to the fair Julia, unless you swear off,” threatened Peter.

“I swear enough, off and on, don’t I, Clo? But the tipple tap won’t stop. I believe I’ll knock off everything but bourbon, as you told me to do before.”

“Do,” said Peter encouragingly. “The deterioration in our race is completely checked since native wines and bourbon came in. Take plenty of bourbon, and if you ever have a son, possibly he may have a beard. Think of that!”