IX
ABOUT a week after he met Lord Frothingham at Mrs. Staunton’s, Edward Allerton left his bank an hour before luncheon time and went to the Public Library. His look as he entered was undoubtedly furtive; and as he drifted aimlessly round the reading-room, declining the offers of assistance from the polite and willing attendants, his manner was such that had he been a stranger he would have been watched as a suspicious character. He took several reference books from the cases, finally and most carelessly of all, a Burke’s Peerage. Half concealing it with his overcoat, he bore it to a table and seated himself. He turned the pages to where “Frothingham” appeared in large letters. There he stopped and read—at first nervously, soon with an attention that shut out his surroundings:
Frothingham—George Arthur Granby Delafere Gordon-Beauvais, seventh earl of Frothingham, Baron de Beauvais, b. at Beauvais House, Surrey, March 9, 1865, s. of Herbert Delafere Gordon-Beauvais, sixth earl of F., and Maria Barstow, 2nd dau. of theMarquess of Radbourne. Succeeded on the death of his father, Aug. 4, 1890.
Frothingham—George Arthur Granby Delafere Gordon-Beauvais, seventh earl of Frothingham, Baron de Beauvais, b. at Beauvais House, Surrey, March 9, 1865, s. of Herbert Delafere Gordon-Beauvais, sixth earl of F., and Maria Barstow, 2nd dau. of theMarquess of Radbourne. Succeeded on the death of his father, Aug. 4, 1890.
Allerton studied the coat of arms, which originated, in part, in the tenth century, so Burke said. He read on and on through the description of the secondary titles and other honours of his sister-in-law’s guest, into the two columns of small type which set forth the history of the Gordon-Beauvais family—its far origin, Godfrey de Beauvais, a great lord in the time of Charlemagne, so Burke declared; its many and curious vicissitudes of fortune, its calamities in old France through the encroachments of the Dukes of Burgundy, which finally drove it, in poverty, but with undiminished pride and unabated resolution to live only by the sword and the tax-gatherer, to England in the wake of William the Conqueror; its restoration there, and long and glorious lordship, so glorious that it scorned the titles a mere Tudor, or Stuart, or German nobody could give until 1761, when it condescended to receive from George III the Earldom of Frothingham. There were places in the narrative so weak that even the adroit and sympathetic Burke could not wholly cover them. But the Milk Street banker saw them not. No child ever swallowed a taleof gnomes and fairies and magic vanishings and apparitions with a mind more set upon being fooled. He read slowly to prolong the pleasing tale. And when he came to the end he read it through again, and found it all too short.
He started from his trance, glanced at his watch, noted that no attendants were in sight, and stole hastily away from the scene of his orgie. But in his agitation he was guilty of the stupidity of the novice—he left the book on the reading-desk; he left it open at the second page of “Frothingham.” An attendant was watching afar off; as soon as Allerton had slipped away he swooped, full of idle yet energetic curiosity.
When he saw that the book was a Burke’s Peerage he was puzzled; then he turned back a page, and his eye caught the name “Frothingham.” Like all Boston he knew that the Earl was in town, was staying attheMrs. Staunton’s, “on the water side of Beacon Street.” And like all Boston, he had heard the rumour that the Earl was trying to marry “Celia” Allerton, the second heiress of Boston. Thus, the sight of that name caused a smile of delight to irradiate his fat, pasty face with its drapery of soft, scantgrey whiskers. He looked round for someone to enable him to enjoy his discovery of a great man’s weakness by tattling it. He saw Gilson, industriously “loading up” for a lecture on “colour in Greek sculpture and architecture.”
He hastened to him and touched him on the shoulder. “Come with me,” he whispered.
Gilson, a natural gossip, had not lived four years in Boston without becoming adept in the local sign language of his species. He rose and followed to the table whereon was spread the damning proof of Allerton’s guilt.
“Look at this,” whispered the attendant, pointing to the name “Frothingham.”
Gilson looked, first at the page, then at the attendant. His expression was disappointment—he cared not a rap about Frothingham or about Burke’s genealogical romances.
“But who do you think was sitting here?” whispered the attendant, his eyes sparkling. “Sitting here, reading away at this for more than an hour?”
“Frothingham?” said Gilson, in the reading-room undertone. “Those adventurers are always crazy about themselves.”
“No—it was—Edward—Allerton!” As he hesitated on the name the attendant shot his big head forward; at the climax he jerked it back, regarding the artist with delighted eyes.
“You don’tsayso!” exclaimed Gilson, and then they had a fit of silent laughter.
“Don’t givemeaway,” cautioned the attendant.
By nine o’clock the next night there was not a member of the Beacon Street set, whether living in Boston or in Brookline and the other fashionable suburbs, who had not heard the news; and the mails were carrying it to those at a distance. And wherever it was repeated there was the same result—derision, pretended contempt of such vulgar snobbishness, expressions of wonder that an Allerton had descended to such low trafficking. Of course none dared tell the Stauntons and the Allertons or Frothingham. But Frothingham, who saw everything through that monocle of his, noted the covert smiles that now peeped at him, the grins and nudgings and cranings when he and Cecilia Allerton appeared in public together.
One of the many rules which Mr. Allerton had ordained for the guidance of his household in the lines he regarded as befitting the establishment of a gentlemanof family and tradition was that Cecilia must be at the half-past seven o’clock breakfast with her father. Usually he did not speak after his brief, formal salutation—a “Good-morning, Cecilia,” and a touch of his dry, thin lips to her forehead. But he might wish to speak, and it would be a grave matter if he should wish to speak and no one were there for him to speak to. Besides, he always gave his orders at breakfast—his comments on the shortcomings in the servants, or in Cecilia’s housekeeping; his criticisms of her conduct. These “breakfasts of justice” were not held often, because Cecilia made few mistakes, and the maids—Allerton kept no men servants but a coachman—had been long in the family service, and had therefore been long cowed and trimmed and squeezed to the Edward Allerton mould for menials. But when a “breakfast of justice” was held it was memorable.
Toward the end of the second week of Frothingham’s Boston sojourn Mr. Allerton laid aside his paper at breakfast and looked at Cecilia. Agnes, the second waitress, who always attended at breakfast, understood the signal, and at once left the room, closing the door behind her. Cecilia gave a nervous little sigh,dropped her eyes, and put on the pale, calm expression behind which she hid herself from her father.
“You were at Dr. Yarrow’s lecture yesterday afternoon, I believe?” Allerton began.
Cecilia’s nerves visibly relaxed as she noted that his voice was not the dreaded voice of justice. “Yes, sir,” she replied.
“It was on the evidences of communication with the spirit world, was it not?”
“Yes, sir—the fourth in the series.”
“Who accompanied you?”
“Aunt Martha and Lord Frothingham.”
There was a pause, then Mr. Allerton coughed slightly and said: “How do you like the young Englishman, Cecilia?”
Cecilia lifted her eyes in a frightened glance that dropped instantly before her father’s solemn, rigid gaze. “He’s—well-mannered and agreeable,” she replied. “I like him as much as one can like a foreigner.”
“I’m surprised at your speaking of him as a foreigner. He—in fact, he seems to me quite like one of our own young men, except that he lives upon a higher plane, and shows none of the degeneration, the vulgarisation,I may say, with which our young men have become infected through the overindulgence of their parents and contact with New York.”
Another long pause, and when Allerton spoke there was a suggestion of combating opposition in his voice. “I have been much impressed with the young man. Titles are very deceptive. As you know, I have no regard for them, or for the system which produces and maintains them. But, his title aside, the young man comes of a family that has the right sort of blood. You must have noticed the evidences of it in his face, and in his manners and character?”
As the statement was put interrogatively, Cecilia knew her duty too well not to reply. “He has a strongly featured face,” she said. “But it seemed to me to indicate rather a race that had been great, but was now—small.”
Allerton frowned. “I am sure that, properly established, he would have a distinguished career.” He paused, then went on in a tone Cecelia understood and paled before: “It would be most satisfactory to me to have my daughter married to him. I should regard it as satisfactory in every way. You would be establishedin an honourable and dignified position. You would exert in society and the wider world the influence to which your birth and breeding entitle you. You would maintain the traditions of your family and strengthen his.”
Cecilia shivered several times as he was speaking; but when she spoke her low voice was firm. “But, father, you know my heart is with Stanley.”
Her father looked steadily at her—the look she felt like a withering flame. “I requested you more than two years ago—months before he died—never to mention his name to me, and never to think of him seriously again. I repeat, it would be gratifying to me if you were to marry Lord Frothingham. When is he leaving your Aunt Martha’s?”
“Next Monday, I believe. He goes down to Brookline—to Mrs. Ridgie.”
“You are invited for the same time?”
“Yes.”
“I shall expect you to go.” Mr. Allerton rose. “I trust, in thinking the matter over, you will appreciate that I am more capable to judge what is best for you than you are, with your limited experience and the narrow views of life and duty not unnatural inyouth.” He left the room, severe and serene, master of himself and of his household.
The Allertons were traditionally Chinese in their beliefs in the sacredness of the duty of obedience from children to parents, and the duty of despotic control by parents over children.
Theirs was one of the old houses in Mount Vernon Street—a traditional New England home for a substantial citizen. There was no ostentation about them—the carriage in which they drove forth was deliberately ancient in style and in appointments, looked modest even among the very modest or, if you choose, “badly turned out,” equipages of the Boston “aristocracy.” Mr. Allerton’s public expenditures—on an art gallery, in partial support of an orchestra and a hospital, in subscriptions to colleges, lectures, charities—were greater by thirty thousand a year than his private expenditures. Cecilia had few clothes, and, while they were of the very best, and were in good taste and style, they modestly asserted that in the Allerton conception of dress for a lady conspicuousness for inconspicuousness was the prime requirement. Mrs. Ridgie, who often complained that she “hated to live in a town where the best people didn’t weartheir best clothes every day,” called Cecilia a “dowd”; but that was unjust, because Cecilia was most careful in her dress, and adapted it admirably to her peculiar charms.
If Honoria had not forewarned Frothingham he would have been deceived by the modesty and frugality of the Allerton establishment. After New York, it seemed to him most un-American for people of great wealth to live thus obscurely. But, having been pointed by Honoria, he soon discovered that Allerton was indeed enormously rich. And he also discovered that he was favourably inclined to a titled son-in-law. But Cecilia——
“There’s some mystery about her,” he reflected. “She acts as if she were walking in her sleep. But if I could get her, I’d do even better than if I’d taken a wife from among those nervous New Yorkers. She’s meek and a stay-at-home. She’d not bother me a bit, and she and Evelyn would hit it off like twins. She’s not exactly stupid, but she’s something just as good. It doesn’t matter whether one’s wife is stupid or absent-minded—the effect’s the same.”
But he walked round and round the fence between her personality and the world in vain. He found nolow place, no place where he could slip under, no knot-hole or crack even. They went down to Brookline together—he was more puzzled than ever by her attitude toward him that morning. She was less friendly, but also less forbidding. She seemed to him to be awaiting something—he suspected what. He tried to muster courage to put his destiny to the touch when a chance naturally offered; but he could not—her expression was too strongly suggestive of a statue.
Instead, he said: “What do you think about—away off there—wherever it is?”
“Think?” She smiled peculiarly. “I don’t think—I feel.”
“Feel what?”
She looked mocking. “Ah—that’s my secret. You would stay where I do if you could go there and it made you as happy as it makes me.”
“You’re mysterious,” he drawled. “I’m a block-head at riddles and all that.”
But she did not assist him.
Mrs. Ridgie herself was waiting for them in a two-seated trap with a pair of exceedingly restless thoroughbreds. Halfway to the house they shied at an automobile and started to run. She got themunder control after a struggle, and glanced round at Frothingham for approval—he looked calm and seemed unconscious that anything disturbing had happened. “Ridgie told me not to take this pair out,” she said. “But I make it a rule never to obey an order from him. In that way we get on beautifully. He loves to give orders—and I never object. I love to disobey orders—and he never objects.”
The Ridgie Stauntons lived in what seemed to Frothingham little more than an exalted farmhouse, though it was regarded in that neighbourhood as a sinful flaunting of luxury, the worst of Mrs. Ridgie’s many sins of ostentation and extravagance. These were endured because she was married to a Staunton, and because she was from New York, and therefore could not be expected to know what was vulgar and what well bred. But Frothingham was more comfortable than he had been since the day before he left Lake-in-the-Wood. Mrs. Ridgie would live in free-and-easy fashion—one could smoke through all the house; there were drinks and plenty of good cigars and cigarettes available at all times; and the talk was the unpretentious gossip and slang of fast sets everywhere—intelligent people intelligently frivolous.
Frothingham thought Ridgie Staunton “a harmless sort, a bit loud and noisy,” but well-meaning, and good enough except when he had his occasional brief spasmodic fits of remembering his early training, and feeling that his mode of life was all wrong. He was, in his wife’s opinion, a perfect husband, except that he hung about so much.
“What do your English women do with their husbands, Lord Frothingham?” she said. “It’s a horrible nuisance, having a man—a husband—round all day long with nothing to do. I try to drive Ridgie out to work. But he’s a lazy dog. He goes a few steps and then comes slinking back. I’m opposed to a leisure class—of men.”
“And you said only yesterday,” complained Ridgie, “that Englishmen make better lovers than Americans because they have leisure and the sense of leisure, while Americans are forever looking at watches and clocks.”
“Did I? But that was yesterday,” retorted his wife. “Besides, I said lovers—not husbands. Give me an English lover, but a hard-working, stay-away-from-home American husband.”
“Do you wonder that I watch a wife who talks like that?” said Ridgie cheerfully.
Frothingham and Cecilia rode the next morning. Getting away from the staid old house in Mount Vernon Street seemed to have revived and cheered her. There was colour in her cheeks, life in her eyes, and she showed by laughing and talking a great deal that she was interested in the earth for a moment at least. Ridgie had given Frothingham a difficult horse, but as he rode well he succeeded in carrying on a reasonably consecutive conversation with Cecilia. She asked him many questions about country life in England, and drew him on to tell her much of his own mode of living. And he ended with, “Altogether, I’d be quite cheerful and happy if I were properly established.”
Cecilia became instantly silent and cold—and again he had the feeling that she was expecting something to happen.
“What the place needs,” he went on boldly, “what I need, is—a woman—such a woman as you.”
His horse reared, leaped in the air, tried to bolt. It was full a minute before he got it under control. “Nasty brute,” he said, resettling his eyeglass, and turning his face toward her again. He thrilled withhope. “Is there a chance for me?” he asked. “I have not spoken to your father—that isn’t the American way, is it? And I sha’n’t trouble you with a lot of—of the usual sort of talk—until I know whether it’s welcome. You’re not the sort of girl a man ventures far with unless he’s jolly sure he knows where he’s going.”
“Thank you,” she said simply. “I shall be frank with you. My father wishes me to marry you. If his will were not stronger than mine I shouldn’t think of it. It is only fair to tell you why.” She was looking at him tranquilly. “I loved a man—loved him well enough to have, where he was concerned, a stronger will than my father. But he died. I love him still. I shall always love him. When my father told me that he wished me to marry you, I asked my lover—and he—said that I ought to obey. He has been urging me to marry—except occasionally—ever since he died.”
Frothingham stared at her in utter amazement. “Do you mind——” he began, but again his horse tried to throw him. When he got it under control he saw that she was much amused—apparently at him. She rode up close beside him, laid her hand on his horse’s neck and said, “Please, Stanley, don’t!” in acuriously tender tone. The horse instantly became quiet.
“You were saying?” she asked.
“Do you mind if I admit that—— Really, I’m not sure that I heard you aright a few minutes ago.”
“You mean when I spoke of talking to Stanley after he was dead?”
“Stanley——” Frothingham regarded her quizzically. “Is this horse named after—him?”
“No—I don’t know what the horse’s name is. The reason it was so restless was that Stanley was teasing him to make him a little troublesome for you.”
Frothingham paled and glanced round.
“The second night after he died,” she went on, a far-away look in her eyes, “he came to me in a dream. He assured me that he was happy, and that I must be so, too, and that he would always be with me, nearer, in more perfect communion, than if he had remained alive. It was just when Dr. Yarrow was beginning his experiments to establish communication with the other world. Stanley and I had been most interested. And when he appeared to me after his death he explained that he had been able, through the intensityof his love for me, to pierce the barrier and bring his soul and my soul face to face.”
Frothingham showed that he was profoundly moved. “When I was a little chap,” he said in a low voice, “I ran bang into the ghost of an ancestor of mine—old Hoel de Beauvais. He has paced a hall in the east wing of Beauvais House the night before the head of the family dies, for hundreds of years. They laughed me out of it, but, by gad, I knew I saw him—and my grandfather was thrown from his horse and killed the next day. I pretend not to believe in that sort of thing, but I do—all we English do.”
“Nothing could be more certain,” said Cecilia, radiant at this prompt acceptance of what she expected him to try to laugh her out of. “I have told no one—I shouldn’t have told you if it hadn’t seemed the only course I could honestly take.”
“Can you see him now?” asked Frothingham in an awe-stricken voice.
“No—Iseehim only in dreams—and sometimes when I go to Mrs. Ramsay. But we talk together at any time. You noticed how he stopped teasing the horse?”
The horse was, indeed, perfectly quiet. Frothinghamnodded. His habitual look of vacancy and satire had given place to earnestness and intense interest. “And does he wish you to marry?” he asked.
“Yes—he has said it, and he has written it—in one of the first letters he sent me through Mrs. Ramsay. I’ve only asked him verbally about you, and he consents and approves. I’ll take you to Mrs. Ramsay, and we’ll get his written permission.”
“But why does he consent?” asked Frothingham. “Is there no—no jealousy—there?”
“Jealousy? Impossible! Don’t you see, he can look into my soul—he knows that I am his. And all the interest he has in this gross mortal life of mine is that it shall be honourable and that I shall do my duty as a daughter and as a woman.”
Frothingham said no more. He was overwhelmed with a sense of the imminence of an unseen world—that world which had been made real to him by his nurses, bred in the legends and superstitions of England, and by his similarly trained companions at school, at the university, and ever since. It was a shock, but nothing incredible to him, this revelation of a daily and hourly commerce with that other world of which, he was certain from his own childhood experience,everyone had glimpses now and then. From time to time he looked at Cecilia, now returned to her wonted expression of abstraction. She seemed the very person to have such an experience. He was filled with awe of her; he was fascinated by her; he began to feel the first faint, vague stirrings of jealousy which he dared not express, even to himself, lest the spirit eyes of Cecilia’s lover should peer into his soul, and see, and punish.