V
WALLINGFORD and Frothingham developed a warm friendship. Wallingford was extremely suspicious of himself in it, but after a searching self-analysis decided that his liking for the Earl was to a certain extent genuine. “He doesn’t know much—at least, he acts as if he didn’t. But he’s clever in a curious way, and a good listener, and not a bit of a fakir. No doubt he’s on the lookout for a girl with cash, but English ideas on that subject are different from ours—that is, from what ours are supposed to be. He’s a type of English gentleman, and not a bad type of gentleman without any qualification.”
When he expressed some such ideas to Catherine Hollister, at a dance given for her by Mrs. Carnarvon, she went so much further in praise of Frothingham that he laughed. “So that’s the way the wind blows, eh?” he said, grinning at her satirically.
She coloured, and put on the look of an offended saint.
“Countess of Frothingham,” he went on, undisturbed. “Thatwouldsound romantic, wouldn’t it? Catherine, Countess of Frothingham!”
“How can you be so coarse-fibred in some ways, Joe, and so fine in others?” she said reproachfully.
“I don’t know, dear lady. I suppose because I’m human—just like you.”
“Let us dance,” was her only reply. She had known Joe so long that she couldn’t help liking him, but he certainly was trying.
Later in the evening, remembering Joe’s cruelty and sordidness, she said to Frothingham: “You don’t know what a pleasure it is to the finer women over here to meet foreign men. They are so much more subtle and sympathetic. They are not coarsened by business. They are not mercenary.”
She raised her dreamy eyes to his as she spoke the word “mercenary,” He reddened and stumbled—they were dancing the two-step. “I wishyouwouldn’t look at me like that,” he said, with an ingenuousness wholly unconscious. “It reminds me of my sins, and—and—all that.”
She trembled slightly, as he could plainly feel in his encircling arm. He looked down at her—she alwayswas ethereally beautiful in evening dress. In his admiration he almost forgot how rich she was; he quite forgot how oppressively intellectual she was. “Do you—do you——” he began. Then he stopped dancing and led her into the hall, through the hall to the library. Two other couples were there, but far enough from the corner to which he took her.
“May I smoke?” he asked.
“I love the odour of a cigarette,” she replied, in a voice that encouraged him to resume where he had abruptly left off.
“Perhaps you will smoke?”
“No,” she said, in a tone that was subtly modulated to mean apology or reproach, according as he liked or disliked women smoking.
“Do you really like England?” he began nervously, seeing to it that his glass was firmly adjusted.
“I adore it!” Usually she would have gone on into poetical prose unlimited. But this, she felt, was a time for short answers.
“Would you—mind England—with—with——”
He halted altogether, and she slowly raised her heavy lids until her eyes met his.
“Catherine!” He seized her hand, and the thrill of her touch went through him. “You are so lovely. I—I’m horribly fond of you.”
She sighed. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “This lovely dance—these fascinating surroundings—the music—the dim lights—and—and——” She lifted her eyes to his again.
He murmured her name, threw away his cigarette, looked round to see where the other eyes in that room were, then clasped her round the waist for an instant. “Will you? Will you?” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” she replied, in a tone so faint that he barely heard.
“You have made me happy.” And he meant it.
“How satisfactory she is in every way,” he was saying to himself. “Looks, money, everything. I’m a lucky dog.” And she was saying to herself, “Countess of Frothingham! How strong and fine and simple he is. I love him!” But when he suggested speaking to her father at once she would not have it. “No—I want it to be just our secret for a little while,” she pleaded. “Don’tyou?” He did not see any reason for it, but he said “Yes” with a surface reflection of her earnestness.
“It’s a pity the world ever should know anything about it, don’t you think so?” she went on.
“I’m very impatient to claim my countess,” he answered.
She liked the “countess,” but the “my” jarred slightly in her sensitive ear—she was “acquiring” an earl, not he a countess.
“Not too long,” he remonstrated. It was all very well for her to be romantic—he wouldn’t have liked it if he had not inspired some romance. But why should either of them wish to delay ratifying the bargain that was the real purpose in view? Certainly he wished no delay. And there was much to be arranged—settlements, a trousseau, a host of time-consuming preliminaries. Not a day should be lost in getting under way. His creditors, impatiently awaiting the event of his American adventure, might become ugly. He hated ugly letters and cablegrams almost as much as he hated ugly “scenes.” No, he felt strongly on the subject of long engagements.
His heart was full of her beauty—he had drunk a good deal at supper half an hour before. His head was full of her dowry—he never drank so much that he forgot business. “How could I evade if anyoneshould congratulate me?” he asked. And then he wished he had not said it, but had made that the excuse for not obeying her.
“You must deny it, as I shall. You know, we’re not really fully engaged until I’m ready to have it announced. Besides, as Joe Wallingford says, a lie in self-defence isn’t a lie. And self-defence isn’t either a crime or a sin, is it? I think self-defence against prying is a virtue, don’t you?”
A man came to claim her for a dance. She smiled sweetly at him, plaintively at Frothingham, and went back to the ballroom. Frothingham stood in the doorway watching her for a few minutes, then went away from the dance to walk and think and enjoy. But his mind was depressed. “Too much supper,” he grumbled. “I ought to be tossing my hat. I don’t deserve her and my luck. Her cash will put us right for the first time since my great-grandfather ruined us by going the Prince Regent’s gait. We shall restore Beauvais House and take the place in Carlton Terrace again. Gad! what a relief it will be to feel free in my mind about cab fares, and not to claim commissions from my tailor when I send him customers. I shall be able to live up to the title and the traditions——”He painted vividly, but in vain. He caught himself looking away from the glowing pictures and sighing. “Yes, she’s pretty—devilish pretty—and a high stepper, but—Gwen would be so comfortable, sod——ncomfortable!”
Honoria suspected their secret, yet doubted the correctness of her intuitions. “She’d parade it,” she reflected, “if she were really engaged to him. There must be a hitch somewhere.” And her wonder grew as the report of their engagement spread only to be strenuously denied by Catherine.
Catherine was almost tearful in lamenting this “impertinent gossip” to her. “Isn’t it hateful, Honoria,” she said, “that a young man and a young woman can’t be civil and friendly to each other when they’re visiting in the same house, without all the busybodies trying to embarrass them? Did you see the papers this morning? Howdarethey print it!”
Honoria smiled at this mock indignation. “Where’s the injury to you in crediting you with landing an earl?” she asked.
Catherine gave her a look of melancholy reproach. “Do you know,” she said dreamily, “I don’t think of him as an earl any longer? His character makeseverything else about him seem of no consequence. Don’t you think he is aremarkableman?”
“A little less remarkable than a marquis, a little more remarkable than a viscount—and in comparison with a baronet or a plain esquire, a positive genius!” replied Honoria.
Frothingham was more and more uncomfortable. Catherine took him everywhere in her train and, with seeming unconsciousness of what she was doing, fairly flaunted him as her devoted attendant. Yet only when they were alone did she ever betray that she had more than a polite, friendly interest in him. He would have got angry at her, would have made vigorous protest, but how was it possible to bring such sordidness as mere vulgar appearances to the attention of so innocent and high-minded a creature? He restrained himself, or, rather, was restrained—until Horse Show week.
Those afternoons and evenings of dragging at the divine Catherine’s chariot wheels before the eyes of the multitude were too much for him. It was one of the years when the Horse Show was the fashion for the fashionable. Not only the racing set and the hunting set, but also the dancing and the dressing and theliterary and artistic sets, and the fadless, but none the less frivolous, set, flocked there day and evening to crowd the boxes with a dazzling display of dresses, wraps, jewels, and free-and-easy manners. At first Frothingham gaped almost as amazedly as the multitude that poured slowly and thickly round the promenade, eyes glued upon the occupants of the boxes, never a glance to spare for the ring from the cyclorama of luxury and fashion. “And at a horse show!” he muttered, as he noted the hats and gowns made to be shown only in houses, or in carriages on the way to and from houses, but there exhibited amid the dust of the show ring. “What rotten bad taste!”
He was astounded to find Catherine outdone by none in extravagant out-of-placeness of ostentation—as he regarded it. Day after day, night after night, she showed herself off to her friends and to the craning throngs of the promenade in a kaleidoscopic series of wonderful “creations.” And she insisted that he should always be in close attendance. As he sat beside her he heard the comments of the crowd—there was always a crowd in front of Longview’s box: “That’s the girl.”—“Yes, and the fellow beside her, with the eyeglass, he’s the Earl.”—“I don’t know how much—somesay a million—some say two or three.”—“He looks dull, but then all Englishmen look that.”—“I’ll bet he could be a brute. Look what a heavy jaw he’s got.”—“She’ll be sick of him before she’s had him a year.”
Did Catherine hear? he wondered. Apparently not. He never surprised in her face or manner a hint of consciousness of self or of being stared at and commented upon. “But she can’t avoid hearing,” he said to himself. “These asses are braying right in her ears. And why should she get herself up in all these clothes, if it ain’t to be stared at?”
And, between performances, the performers in the Longview box dined in the palm garden at the Waldorf, with their acquaintances at the surrounding tables, and gossip of their engagement flying, and curious glances straying toward them over the tops of wine-glasses, and whispers and smiles—and Catherine soulful and unconscious. On Friday night, as they drove from the Waldorf to the Garden—she had given him her hand to hold under cover of the lap-robe—she said, with a sigh: “I’m so glad it’s nearly over. Only to-night and to-morrow night.”
“Not to-morrow afternoon?” asked Frothingham. “Why do we miss a chance to exhibit?”
“Only the servants and the children go to-morrow afternoon,” replied Catherine sweetly. “I’m worn out and sick of it all. So many go merely for self-display; so few of us, not to speak of those dreadful people in the promenade, care anything about the dear, beautiful, noble horses.”
“Why look at horses,” said Honoria, “when there’s a human show that’s so much more interesting? It may be vulgar, but it’s amusing. I’m afraid my tastes are not refined.”
Frothingham looked at her with the expression of a thirsty man who is having a glass of cold water. “That’s what I think,” said he. “And I’m fond of horses.” A faint sneer in his satirical drawl made Catherine give him a furtive glance of anxiety—was the worm thinking of turning?
When they were in the box and the others were busy she said to him, in her tenderest tone: “You’re dreadfully bored by all this, aren’t you? And I thought it would give you pleasure for us to be together so much.”
“As if we were a pair of new chimpanzees in a zoo”
The surliness cleared from his face somewhat. “No,I’m not bored. But I hate to be shown off. And, while you’ve been unconscious of it, the fact is that you and I have been sitting here in this cage five or six hours a day, gaped at as if we were a pair of new chimpanzees in a zoo.” As he remembered his wrongs, his anger rose upon the wine he had freely drunk at dinner. “It’s what I call low—downright rotten, Catherine,” he finished energetically.
“I wish you wouldn’t use that dreadful word,” she said, tears in her eyes, but a certain sting in her voice. “I know it’s all right in England—some of us use it here. But it—every time you or anyone says it I feel as if someone had thrust a horrid-smelling rag under my nose. You don’t mind my saying so, do you, dear?”
“Beg pardon,” he said. “We do use rowdy words nowadays. I’m so accustomed to it I don’t notice.”
Just then up to his ears from the promenade and the crowd gaping at the “new chimpanzees” came a voice: “They’re fighting—look! look! Hasn’t he got an ugly scowl? And she’s almost crying.”
He flushed scarlet and sent a glowering glance down into the crowd. He turned upon Catherine: “Just hear that! They think I’m rowing you. By—beg pardon, but—well—I sha’n’t endure it another instant.”And he rose, brushed past Catherine’s mother and Longview, Honoria and two men hanging over her, and stalked along the aisle down into and through the recognising crowd, and out of the Garden.
The boxes ate greedily of this sensation, and the crowd in the promenade scrambled frantically for the crumbs. It was presently noised round that the Englishman had become angered, had struck someone. Rumour at first said it was Catherine; but the crowd by the use of its legs and eyes, and the boxes by the use of their glasses, learned that this was false. There sat Catherine, calm, absorbed in the ring, applauding the jumpers, and turning now and then to her companions with outbursts of ladylike enthusiasm for some particularly clever performance. However, crowd and boxes saw that the Englishman was gone, felt that he must have gone in anger.
The Longview party stopped at the Waldorf for supper, and Frothingham, calmer and a little embarrassed, joined them. Catherine received him as if nothing had taken place, and the next night they appeared together at the Garden as usual.
Late in the evening she said to him: “I’ve told mother of our engagement. Do you mind, dear?”
His face lighted up.
“She wishes you to come down to the country with us on Sunday to stay a week or two. It is beautiful there, and we shall be very quiet. Shall you like that?”
“And I may speak to your father?” he asked. “In my country it wouldn’t be regarded as honourable for me to act as I’ve been acting with you. I can’t help feeling uncomfortable because I’ve said nothing to your father.”
“I’ll speak to him first, Arthur. He lets me do as I please. And he’ll be contented with whatever makes me happy. He’ssucha dear!”
Frothingham looked faintly annoyed. It was not in his plan to include “father” in their romance. Romance with daughter, business with father—that was the proper and discreet distribution of the preliminaries to the formal engagement. He had, deep down, a horrible, nervous fear that he might be drawn into matrimony without definite settlements—the father might be as difficult to pin down in his way as was the daughter in her way. “I must take this business in hand,” he said to himself, “or I’ll be in a ghastly mess.”
Catherine, her mother, and he went down on the one-o’clock train. The Hollister country place—Lake-in-the-Wood—was a great pile of brick and stone, impressive for size rather than for beauty, filled with expensive furnishings and swarming servants in showy livery, and surrounded by a handsome, well-ordered park, with winding walks and drives, and romantically bridged streams flowing to and from a large lake. They lived with more ceremony than did Surrey at Heath Hall—but there was an air of newness and stiffness and prodigal profusion about it all, a suggestion of a creation of yesterday that might find a grave to-morrow. This impression, which had often come to him in the palaces of New York, began to form as the porter opened the huge gates between the park and the highway. It grew stronger and stronger as he penetrated into the gaudy, if tasteful, establishment. Everything was too new, too grand, too fine. The daughter alone was at her ease; the mother was not quite at her ease; the father was distinctly, if self-mockingly, ill at ease.
The two women left Frothingham alone with him, and the old man soon vented his dissatisfaction. “I supposeyoulike this sort of thing,” he said, with awave of the arm to indicate that he meant the establishment. “But I don’t. If I had my way we’d be simple and comfortable—no, I don’t mean that exactly. I suppose at bottom I’m as big a fool as the women. But, all the same, French cooking gives me indigestion. That infernal frog-eater in the right wing has it in for me. He’s killing me by inches. And I’m so afraid of him and the butler and all the rest of ’em that I don’t kick the traces more than once a week.” He laughed. “My wife and daughter have got me well trained. Whenever they tell me to, I sit up on my hind legs and ‘speak’ for crackers and snap ‘em off my nose.”
Frothingham liked him at once—he was a big, handsome old fellow, with keen, steel-grey eyes, and the strong look of the successful man of affairs. “I fancy he’s almost one of those Americans Wallingford talked about,” he thought.
After a smoke with Hollister he went to his rooms—a suite of vast chambers, like the show rooms of a palace, with a marble bathroom that had a small swimming pool sunk in the middle of it. He looked out upon the drive and the park and the half-hidden streams glittering in the sunshine. “These peoplewill beat us out at our own game when they get used to the cards,” he said.
There was the sound of wheels and horses—many wheels and many horses. He looked down the drive—one after another came into view a three-seated buckboard, a stylish omnibus, a waggon with the seats taken out to make room for a huge pile of luggage. In the buckboard and the omnibus he recognised men and women whom he had met in New York—the Leightons, the Spencers, the Farrells, the Howards, Mrs. Carnarvon, Wallingford, Gresham, Browne, a man whose name he could not recall, Miss Lester, Miss Devenant. “I thought Catherine and I were to be ‘very quiet,’” he muttered.
There were thirty-two people at dinner that night, sixteen of whom, including himself, were guests in the house for stays of three days, a week, ten days. “You said you were to be alone,” he said to Catherine, with ironic reproach.
She gave him her pathetic, helpless look. “I did hope so. But I asked some, and mamma asked others, and the rest asked themselves.”
The days passed, and he had only fleeting glimpses of her. Everybody was hunting, riding, driving, goingto luncheons, teas, dinners, through a neighbourhood ten miles square. Every moment from early until late was more than occupied—it was crowded, jammed. His idea of country life was the quiet, lazy ease of England; a week of this rushing about fagged him, body and mind. He ceased to try for a moment alone with her; he saw that it was hopeless to expect so much in a place where he could not get a moment alone with himself.
“You never rest in this country?” he said, addressing the men in the library at midnight, as they were having a final nightcap.
“Why should we?” replied Browne. “Why anticipate the grave’s only pleasure?”
“You see,” explained Wallingford, “on this side of the water we take our pleasures energetically. When we work, we work hard; when we play, we play hard. If we’re having a good time, we crowd our luck, in the hope of having a better time. If we’re bored, we hurry, to get it over with.”
“Do you keep this up the year round?”
“Except on ocean steamers. But we’ll close that gap when we get the ‘wireless’ installed, with a telephone to the head of every berth.”