"Miladi and the Lieutenant will meet at dinner," explained Louise. "It is an American custom that the Messieurs send always flowers to the ladies. Madame, and Mademoiselle Woodburn have received bouquets also, but these roses for Miladi are the most beautiful. Is it Miladi's wish that I untie the ribbon, and take out one or two for her to carry?"
I was on the point of saying "yes," because the flowers were so lovely, and because it would please Mrs. Ess Kay; but on second thoughts, I said "no," thanking Louise, and asking her to put the creatures' feet in water. Perhaps it would be as well, I reminded myself, to see this brother of Mrs. Ess Kay's (of whose existence I'd never heard) before I went about armed with his roses. I had already tucked the white bud, which had come to me on the dock like a dove with an olive branch, into the low neck of my frilly white muslin frock, and I gave it no rivals.
"Has Madame gone down?" I asked; for it occurred to me that it would be awkward to find myself alone for nearly half an hour with a strange man.
"I think Madame will be in the hall," said Louise, and satisfied, I descended in a stately way suited to the house, into the fountain court. Nobody was there, however, except a young man in evening dress, who jumped up from a chair, and set down a small glass out of which he had been drinking.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said he. "I know you must be Lady Betty Bulkeley. My name is Potter Parker."
I couldn't help wondering whether his friends called him "Pot," for short, and the thought made me smile more than I would have smiled at a stranger if it hadn't popped into my head. This seemed to encourage him, which I regretted; because you can see at once by his face that he isn't the kind who needs encouragement. It is something like Mrs. Ess Kay's face, only younger, with her square chin, and bold blue eyes as pale as hers. The likeness is all the stronger because Mr. Parker wears no moustache or beard, and his dark hair, which falls in two straight, thick blocks over his forehead, is parted in the middle. You would know, if you saw him riding a white bear at the North Pole, that he was an American young man. Why, or how, I'm not experienced enough in Americans to tell, but I'm beginning to think that all American men, and all American women, have a dim sort of family likeness to each other. With the girls, it's their chins and the way they do their hair; but with the men it's more mysterious. They look less lazy and more feverish than our men, yet at the same time more humorous; and their clothes seem always to be new.
Mrs. Ess Kay's nose turns down, and her brother's turns up, which is the principal difference in their features, and his makes him look very impudent, though rather clever and amusing.
"My sister wrote me about your dimples, Lady Betty," said he, when I smiled; and I screwed my mouth into prunes and prisms as quickly as I could.
"I should have thought such things were hardly worth writing about," said I.
"My impression is that they're worth about a million dollars an eighth of an inch," he replied, "and I bet they'd fetch that in a bear market."
I began to wish that Mrs. Ess Kay or Sally would come, for I'm not used to having persons who have just introduced themselves make remarks on my dimples or other features.
"Don't be mad with me," he went on, "or I shall think I've estimated them too low. On mature consideration, as we soldier chaps say at a court-martial, I should be inclined to set them higher. If you'll just show them again——"
"I think, if you don't mind," said I, "that I'd rather speak of the weather."
"I'm afraid you're not used to Americans," said he.
"I've met several, crossing, but none of them talked to me about--such things," I replied, rather primly.
"If they had, I should have challenged them," he retorted. "While you're staying with my sister, I consider myself a sort of guardian of yours, and part of my duty will be to keep off men--other men--with a stick, you see."
"No, I don't see," said I. "Not that there will be the least necessity for you to do anything of the sort."
"Oh, won't there? Well, you just wait till you get to Newport, and you'll find out differently. I've applied for leave on purpose to help Kath protect you, and I expect to put on a suit of chain armour under my clothes. But first, you're coming to visit me, at West Point."
"I don't think I am," I said.
"Oh, but you are. It's a promise of Kath's. And shan't I be proud to show you around? You shall see Flirtation Walk the first thing. It's what the ladies admire the most, at the Point. Perhaps you've heard of it?"
"No," said I. "And I never heard of West Point. Is it a suburb of New York?"
"Not much. It's our American Sandhurst. But you English people don't know anything about this side. I guess, now, you think that Florida is in South America?"
"I haven't thought about it yet," I replied.
"That's right. I don't ask anything better than to teach you the geography of the United States. We'll begin with Flirtation Walk. But see here, Lady Betty, that rose you've got on isn't a good sample of what we can grow over here. Didn't that maid of my sister's take you something a little better from me?"
"Something much bigger and grander," I said, feeling loyal to my poor white bud. "I was meaning to thank you."
"Don't do that; the things aren't worth it. I only wanted to know whether that French female had played me false or not. But here comes my sister. I wish she'd taken longer to do up her back hair. Now, I'll give you your wish, and talk about the weather. Mighty hot day, isn't it? Won't you have a cocktail? I'd just finished mine when you came down."
"Of course Betty will have a cocktail; we all do before dinner," said Mrs. Ess Kay, sailing towards us in a trailing white film of lace.
But Betty didn't have one, though at this moment several little glasses appeared on a tray. I was sure that Mother would not approve of cocktails for me, as it sounds so fast for a young girl who isn't yet out. When I excused myself, Mrs. Ess Kay laughed, and said, "Then what about that sherry cobbler?"
While I was trying to think what she meant, Sally came into the hall, and immediately after I was surprised by a kind of musical moaning which began suddenly and kept on for a long time.
"That's the Japanese gong," said Mrs. Ess Kay, when I looked round to see where the sound came from. "It's for dinner. Potter, give Betty your arm."
I was glad she didn't use that nickname I'd been thinking of, for if she had, I should certainly have laughed.
We began dinner by eating pinky-yellow melons cut in half and filled with chopped ice. I thought at first that it must be a mistake, and they ought to have come in at dessert, but everybody else ate theirs without appearing disconcerted, so I did mine, and it was good. So were all the other things that followed in a long procession, though they were very strange and some of them I shouldn't have known how to eat if Mr. Parker, whose place was next to mine, hadn't told me.
We had bouillon partly frozen, instead of soup; and then came the most extraordinary little fried animals which quite startled me, they were so like exaggerated brown spiders, done in egg and breadcrumbs. "Soft shell crabs, dear child," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "and you eat every bit, down to the tippiest end of his claw."
I should never have managed the green corn, which grows like lots of pearls set close together in rows on a fat stick, if Mr. Parker hadn't scraped all the pearls off for me, with a fork, and put butter and salt on them. I liked him a little better after that, for he did the thing with great skill. When I had got so far, nothing could surprise me, and I didn't turn a hair when I found that I was expected to eat pears cut up with salad oil. But they were alligator pears, and when you tasted them, it appeared that they had nothing whatever to do with the fruit kingdom. Best of all, I liked the watermelon which came at the end, cut in little balls, looking like strawberry water ice, and soaked in champagne. I hope that all the things to eat in America won't be so nice, or I may grow stout before I go back; and Vic says it is better for a girl to hang herself.
It was very trying, too, to find that I was keeping every course waiting. I've never been accused of greediness at home, though I've often been made to feel guilty of most other sins in the calendar, but I did feel queer when I began to realise that everybody else had finished what was on their plates, when I'd just about discovered what the thing was. It made me so uncomfortable to see them all leaning back waiting for me, after their plates had been whisked away, that I took to bolting the rest of my food, and by the time we'd got rid of nine courses in about half an hour I felt qualified to write the autobiography of an anaconda.
As for the iced water, I had intended to refuse it at any cost, because Vic and Mother both solemnly warned me that it madeallthe difference between a complexion and mere skin. But the minute I landed, I began thinking hard about iced water, and I soon discovered that when you are in America a comparatively small consideration like a complexion would never keep you from drinking it. In fact, nothing would. You feel as if you must drink iced water, pints of iced water, in rapid succession, if not only your complexion, but your whole face were to be swept away in the deluge. Once you have got the taste nothing can quench it but iced water, more iced water, and still more iced water!
After dinner, while we were having heavenly Turkish coffee in the fountain court, who should come but Mr. Doremus. It seemed to me a funny time to call, but apparently the others didn't think it out of the way. He wanted us to go to some theatre on a roof, and I should have loved it, especially when Mrs. Ess Kay said you didn't get smudges on your nose as you would if you sat on a roof in London--a thing which I never heard of anybody except cats doing. But she was tired, and I suppose it would have been ladylike for me to be, only I was much too excited. So Mr. Doremus stayed, and he and Mr. Parker talked more slang in an hour than I think I ever heard in my whole life, though I have always considered Stan talented in that way.
But Stan's slang, and Vic's, are quite different from American slang. In America, you build up your whole conversation out of it, and it's wonderful. I longed for a notebook while those two men were talking, to put everything down, and I felt, if people were often going to be as funny as that, I should need to go home soon to rest my features. I'm not sure whether Americans really think funnier things than English people do, but their funny ideas are startlingly unlike ours. Somehow they seem younger and more bubbling. When I go home, I shall probably have collected so much slang in my pores that I shall talk about putting on my "glad rags" when I'm going to dress for dinner; my life will be my "natural"; I shall call Stan's motor car the Blue Assassin or the Homicide Wagon; I shall say my best frocks are "mighty conducive"; I shall get bored by poor Mr. Duckworth, our newest curate, and tell him he's "the limit"; I may even take to abbreviating my affirmatives and negatives by saying "Yep" and "Nope" when I'm in a hurry; but if I do fall into these ways, I tremble to think what may be the effect on Mother.
IV
ABOUT SHOPPING AND MEN
"Why, Betty, you never told me you were interviewed on the dock." These were the first words Mrs. Ess Kay said to me as I walked in to breakfast, a little late because of a wrestle I had had with a different and even more exciting kind of bath.
"I wasn't," said I, on the defensive; though I couldn't be perfectly sure what connection, if any, interviewing had with the Customs. "You told me not to declare anything, and I didn't."
Mr. Parker, looking as if he had been melted, poured into his clothes, and then cooled off with iced water, burst out laughing.
"You're a daisy, Lady Betty," said he.
"Is it invidious to be a daisy?" I asked.
"I guess I must look in the dictionary for 'invidious'; but a daisy's a flower that has budded in the green fields of England, where there aren't any newspaper reporters or other strange bugs."
"Potter!" exclaimed Mrs. Ess Kay, "don't tease her; and when you've been in the green fields of England you'll sayinsects, not--er--what youdidsay, if you don't want ladies to faint all around you on the floor." Then she turned to me. "He means you're very innocent, because you don't know what it is to be interviewed. But you must havebeenit, all the same, for see here, in this dreadfulFlashlight." And she handed me a newspaper, with one page folded over, and huge headings dotted about at the tops of paragraphs, like the lines of big print that oculists keep to make you try your eyesight. In the middle column I saw my name, but I couldn't believe it was really there, in an American paper. I began to think I wasn't awake yet, and that this must be part of the dream I was dreaming all yesterday.
"BONNY--BETTY--BULKELEY," I read out aloud. "A Duke's Daughter on the Dock. Call Her by Her Front Name, Please. What Lady Betty Thinks of Our Boys."
There was more, but when I had got so far, I simply gasped.
"Howdarethey?"
"There isn't much they don't dare, except to go back without a 'story'," said Mr. Parker, laughing. But I didn't laugh. I was too angry.
"If my brother were here, he'd kill them," I said.
"Then he hasn't got a sense of humour," replied Mr. Parker; "I don't see how a Duke could have, and be a Duke nowadays; but I guess I wouldn't mind swopping my sense of humour for a dukedom, all the same. See here, Lady Betty, you'll get to like our newspapers before you've been over here a month. They sort of grow on you. They're as interesting as novels, and almost as true to life."
"This isn't true to my life, anyway," I said, not knowing whether I wanted most to laugh or cry. "Oh, Sally, SallyWoodburn, will anybody believe I said such things as these?"
"Give theFlashlightto me and let me look," she said. And when she'd taken the paper, she began to read the stuff that came under the big headings, out aloud, in her pretty, soft voice.
"Yesterday was a blazer, but though it was hot enough on the docks to roast a coon, when the Big Willie steamed in, that beautiful young visitor to our shores, Lady Betty Bulkeley, managed to look like the Duke's daughter and Duke's sister she is, and so far as a mere man could tell, without the help of patent hair curlers, or other artificial aids to personal pulchritude.
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair, she sat on a throne of ducal luggage, looking queenly in an elegant white shirt waist, built mostly of holes and eminently suited to her style of beauty as well as the weather. She also had on a picture hat, which was superfluous as she would have been a picture without it, and below the waist she was tailor made."
"I think it's most insulting!" I broke in. "And I was made at home, all the way down."
But Sally went on: "I soon found [writes the representative ofThe Flashlight] that the sister of the Duke of Stanforth, one of Britain's eligibles, preferred to be addressed by her Front name of Lady Betty. 'I feel more at home,' said she, with a sweet voice, but a pronounced English accent, 'when I am called Lady Betty. And I want to feel at home in America, because I expect to be some time with my friend, Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, who will show me society over on this side. I have heard so much about Newport, don't you know? I fancy it will be too utterly deevy.'"
"What's deevy?" I demanded with scorn.
"Oh, that's supposed to be what smart Englishwomen say for divine."
"Inever heard it," I sneered, "much less said it. I'm sure Mother would consider it quite profane."
"Well, do be quiet, child, and listen to whatThe Flashlightsays you said." "'What opinion have you formed of our society women and clubmen, on board the Willie?' was the next question.
"'I think your ladies are better dressed than ours, and the gentlemen are just lovely. They don't sit around and wait while we girls amuse them, they hustle to give us a good time, and they know how to do it. I shouldn't wonder if I should hate to go home and associate with lords after being a summer girl in Newport. I don't see now why American girls go out of their own country to marry.'
"'I suppose we shall be seeing your brother, the Duke, over here before long?'
"'His Grace may come to fetch me back,' replied her ladyship. 'He has never been to America, but it is one of the desires of his life to come, and your American beauties had better look out, for he is a gay young bachelor, and I shouldn't be surprised if he took a fancy to carry home a Duchess. Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox will entertain him also, and maybe he will paint some of America red.'"
"That's all about you, I see," Sally finished up. "The rest is about Cousin Katherine and me. It says we've come back with a touch of the Piccadilly accent; and it criticises my nose, and the way Cousin Katherine puts on her hat. It describes this house all wrong, and says the Newport cottage 'knocks spots' out of Mrs. Van der Windt's cottage. It also mentions Cousin Potter, and calls him 'one of our Army Dudes.' Butwedon't mind, and you mustn't. Everybody readsThe Flashlight, for the sake of the shocks, but nobody believes its flashes."
"Still, you must have said something to the man," remarked Mrs. Ess Kay.
"I only said 'No, but--' or 'Yes, but--,'" I insisted. "Truly and truly nothing else. And oh, there was aBat, too, who tried to talk to me."
"Great Scott! theEvening Bat," chortled Mr. Parker. "Look out for something rich to-night."
"Can't he be stopped?" I asked.
"Might as well try to stop Niagara--with a tin can; the lessyousaid, the more theBatwill say. But it doesn't matter. Nobody'll care. Reporters are paid by the yard for imagination; information's gone out, though I do hear you use it still on your side."
I was just going to defend information (British) at the expense of imagination (American), when I remembered that the "Army Dude"--which sounds rather like something you might buy at the Stores--had sent me up an enormous bouquet of violets as big as a breakfast plate, and that I'd forgotten to thank him. I did so at once, but it seemed that I had blundered.
"Violets?" he echoed. "Must have been some other fellow. I sent you gardenias."
"Oh, then the cards got mixed," I said. "I thought the gardenias were from Mr. Doremus. How kind of you both. I was so surprised to receive such lovely flowers."
"Our American buds are surprised when they don't get them. They would think it a cold day when they didn't have a slight morning haul of flowers--must be out of season ones, or they're no use--new novels, or candy. What do men over on your side of the water do to convince you girls that they think you're as beautiful as you really are?"
I thought for a minute, and then I said that perhaps we weren't as hard to convince as American girls. I don't know whether this was a proper answer or not, but, anyway, Mr. Parker laughed, and then began to plan what we should do for the day.
"Say, let's run her over to Coney Island," he said.
"Oh, my dear boy!" exclaimed Mrs. Ess Kay. "Not for anything. The Duchess would have a fi--I mean, she would be horrified."
But when I heard that Coney Island was like a kind of glorified Margate (which I've never been to, but only heard about) with switchbacks and all sorts of shows, I said that Mother would consider it a chapter in the liberal education of a respectable British tourist; and it was decided that we should dine there. Mrs. Ess Kay had to do a lot of things before she could go on to Newport, so we were to shop all the morning, lunch at Sherry's, rest in the afternoon, and spend the evening at Coney Island. Next day we were to go to West Point, where Mr. Parker is stationed and stay there all night for a cadet ball.
Just as we had got this programme settled, and were making up our minds to go out early, "while it was cool" (we should all have been lying about with wet handkerchiefs on our foreheads at home, and there would have been special prayers in church, if it had ever been what New Yorkers seem to think cool) the butler came in leading by a leash a perfect angel of a dog, a little French bull, with skin satiny as a ripe chestnut, and eyes like rosettes of brown velvet, with diamonds shining through them. He had on a spikey silver collar, fringed on each edge with white horsehair, and he came trotting into the room with a high action of his paws, dainty and proud, like a horse that knows he's on show; and his tiny head was cocked on one side as if he were asking us to please admire him and be his friends.
I supposed that the little fellow belonged to Mrs. Ess Kay, and that he was being brought in to bid his mistress good morning, but she said quite sharply, "What dog is that?"
"He's a parcel, ma'am," said the butler, "addressed to Lady Betty Bulkeley. He was left at the door by a messenger boy, and the label's on his collar."
In another instant that little live, warm bundle of brindled satin sewed on to steel wires was in my lap, and it did seem as if he knew that he was mine. The queerest thing was that he had no note with him. On the label--just a luggage label tied on his collar--was my name, in a strange, but very interesting looking hand, and these words besides: "The Dog is now found. His name is Vivace."
"Whohassent it to you, Betty?" asked Mrs. Ess Kay; and I could see by her eyes that she was very curious.
I had just answered, "I don't know from Adam," when some words of my own jumped into my head. I could hear myself saying, "I must first find the dog," and then I knew that the giver of Vivace wasn't Adam. But luckily I hadn't thought before I spoke, so it was no harm to let it rest at that; and I just sat and played with my new toy while Mrs. Ess Kay and her brother jabbered about him excitedly.
"It must be Tom Doremus," said she. "He's the only man I let you know well enough on board to take such a liberty."
I thought of another man she hadn't wanted to let me know; but I rubbed my chin on Vivace's ear, which felt like a wall-flower, and kept quiet.
"Cheek of Doremus," remarked Mr. Parker. "He's a Josher from wayback. How does he know Lady Betty likes dogs? I should send the little brute off to the Dogs' Home."
"If Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox makes me do that, I shall have to go with him--and stop with him, too," said I. And I almost hated Mr. Parker for a minute in spite of the walking-stick roses and the snowstorm of gardenias upstairs.
"Of course, you shall keep the dog, if you want to," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "unless we find out that he's been sent by someone undesirable, and then of course the Duchess would expect me to see that you gave him back."
"Ifeelsomehow that we shall never find out," I said, and I hugged Vivace so hard, without meaning to, that he gave a tiny grunt. But he didn't mind a bit, and licked my hand with a tongue that was like a sweet little sample of pink plush.
I was suddenly so happy with my surprise-present that I forgave America for having imaginative reporters, and wasn't homesick for the pony or for Berengaria and her puppies, or anything.
Vivace went out with us in the electric carriage, and even Mrs. Ess Kay had to admire him as he sat straight up in my lap, like a bronze statue of a dog. "He's a thoroughbred, anyhow," she remarked. "He can't have cost a penny less than five hundred dollars, so whoever the anonymous giver is, he must be a rich man."
I'm rather hazy about dollars, still, but when I heard that, I felt myself go red. I knew well enough that the giver--who wasn't Adam--was very far from being a rich man, and I couldn't bear to think that he had perhaps squandered some hard-earned savings on buying such an extravagant present for me. But the more I thought of it--which I did all the way down to the shops--the more I thought it impossible that a man who had been obliged to cross the Atlantic in the steerage would even have a hundred pounds in the world. Somebody had perhaps given him the dog from a good kennel, when it was a wee puppy, I said to myself; but this, though it eased my mind in one way, made the gift seem all the more pathetic;--that that poor, handsome Jim Brett should part with something he must have loved (for who could have Vivace and not love him?) to please me. I should have liked to write a note to the Manhattan Club, where he had told me he was employed, to thank him. But he had sent the present anonymously, and I felt somehow as if he hadn't meant or wished me to acknowledge it.
While I was wondering what I should do, the brougham stopped before a shop even larger than Harrod's or the Army and Navy Stores. There were lovely things in the windows, things that looked like American women, and not like English or even French ones, though I couldn't define the difference if I were ordered to with a revolver at my head.
The petticoats and stockings and belts and lace things and parasols, and especially blouses, were so perfectly thrilling that my heart began to beat quite fast at sight of them. I felt as if I must have some immediately; and when Mrs. Ess Kay said that this was "quite a cheap store," I said to myself that I would do something more interesting than watch her shopping.
She had to buy handkerchiefs to begin with, for most of hers had disappeared in the wash at foreign hotels; and Sally wanted veiling. Those were not interesting to me, because they are necessary; and necessaries, like your daily bread and such things, are so dull. I said that I would just wander about a little, as they thought they would be some time, and we made an appointment to meet in half an hour at what they called the notion counter. I hadn't an idea what it was, and didn't like to ask, because I had asked so many questions already; but I knew that I could get someone to take me there when the half hour was up.
When you want everything you see, but aren't sure which things you want enough to buy and how many you can afford, it's less confusing to prowl alone. Besides, there was an exciting feeling of independence in strolling about unchaperoned in a shop as big as a village, in a strange foreign city.
I really did need a sunshade to go with a blue dress of mine, because my only light one (if I don't count rather a common white thing) is pink. I saw some beauties, and I wanted to ask the price; but the attendants,--who were girls, with lovely figures and their hair done in exactly the same flop over their foreheads,--were so interested in talking about a young man they all knew, that it seemed cruel to interrupt them, especially as I mightn't buy the sunshade in the end. However, I did venture to speak, in quite a humble voice, by and by, but the girl couldn't understand a word until I'd repeated everything twice. "A sunshade? Oh, you mean one of these parasawls," she said then. "Excuse me, it's your English accent I didn't quite catch at first. That one's ten dollars and forty-nine cents, and this is eight dollars, eighty-nine."
While we were busy doing the dollars into pounds and shillings, we got quite friendly, for she was a very obliging girl, and didn't bear me any grudge for interrupting, though her friends were going on with their conversation and telling such exciting things about the young man that she must have been dying to listen.
However, my girl hardly paid any attention to them at all, except just to get mixed up in her answers to me once or twice. She said it was very difficult to understand English people on account of their not opening their mouths much when they spoke, and their accent being so strong. I found this odd, because we always feel as if, the English language having been started by us, it is Americans who have an accent; but it seems that a great many people in the States dislike the way we talk, very much, and consider it extremely affected.
After all the trouble she had taken, I felt dreadfully not to buy anything of her, but the sunshades were too expensive, though she said they were marked down. I took a Japanese fan instead, which pops out at you like a Jack-in-the-box, from a fat red stick; and even that was a dollar and twenty-five cents when I thought it would be sixpence. On the way to meet Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally at the notion counter, I enquired the price of a good many other superlatively beautiful things, but they were all superlatively high, as well; and by the time a very dashing young man, who said he was a "floor-walker," had steered me to the notions, I felt as if I were the only cheap thing in the whole shop. To be sure, there were some embroidered collars and American flag-headed hat-pins, and flowered muslin wrappers which I could have had without ruining myself, if I had wanted them. But I didn't; and what I should like to know is, what does a girl do, if she's poor and has to live in New York? Mrs. Ess Kay had said the shop was a cheap shop, so there must be others where even the flowered wrappers and collars and hatpins are more. And besides, a girl couldn't go through life dressed entirely in such things. However, judging from the girls I have seen so far, they are all very rich, except the lower classes; and of course, it's much simpler to do without things if you can just be poor and give up to it comfortably, without thinking of appearances, like us.
As soon as I saw the Notion Counter, I knew why they had named it that; only it would be still more expressive if it were called the Imagination counter. It was lovely, and looked like thousands of little Christmas presents spread out for everyone.
There were a great many pretty people buying things at it, and in most of the other departments where I went with Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally; but when I admired them, and the sweet blouses they wore, and the way they carried their shoulders and hips, Mrs. Ess Kay sniffed, and said there was nobody in New York, now,--nobody at all who was worth looking at, and wouldn't be till October, except those who were just in the city for a day or two of shopping, like us. When I suggested that these charming beings in white muslins and summer silks might be here in that way, she did not think it at all probable.
"How can you tell?" I asked. "They look just as nice as we do."
Indeed, I thought some of them looked nicer, but I've been much too well brought up to make such remarks as that.
"I can tell, because I don't know their Faces," said Mrs. Ess Kay, decidedly, in a tone that gave a capital letter to her last word, and yet intimated that the poor, unknown (by her) Things couldn't possibly be worth a glance.
Now, Mother and Aunt Sophy are rather like that. It's almost terrible when they say "WhoIsshe?" But I shouldn't have expected it to be the same in America, if Sally hadn't warned me. I suppose it's quite easy to remember just Four Hundred faces, as you're sure there will never be any more, even if they have children, because they're being cut down instead of going up in number.
When we had been for about an hour and a half in the big shop, we'd finished all we had to do there, and must motor to another farther up, before meeting Mr. Parker, who was to give us lunch at a place called Sherry's, at one o'clock. On the way, Sally suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, Cousin Katherine, we must initiate this dear child into the mysteries of ice cream soda water; and I'm just yearning for some myself, anyhow."
"Huyler's," said Mrs. Ess Kay to hermecanicien, a very young man with eyes that looked positively ill with intelligence, and a way of snapping out "all right" when she spoke to him that would make Stan sit up with surprise if his chauffeur did it.
Sally said that the nicest oasis in the desert of London was an American place where you can get ice cream soda water; but I had never had any, and in the burning heat of the New York morning--which flung itself into the shop like a great wave in spite of fierce electric fans--I could have purred in pure delight over the piled up, ice-cold froth in that tall glass. It tasted like frozen velvet flavoured with strawberries, and I should have loved to be an ostrich or an anaconda so that the sensation might have lasted longer.
There were no men in the shop, only women, and so pretty that you wondered if there were a notice posted up over the door forbidding plain ladies to enter. Two or three had yellow hair, yellower than mine, and Mrs. Ess Kay said they were actresses who always came back to New York in summer to wait for Things to turn up, just as chickens come home to roost; and that they were supposed to be Resting.
I had always thought that a banana made you feel more as if you had eaten a large, elaborate dinner than any other one thing possibly could; but I found that an ice cream soda is even more so; and it was lucky for us that we had another hour's shopping to do (Mrs. Ess Kay made it an hour and a half because Potter is only her brother) before luncheon.
The next shop was even more wonderful than the first, and would have been a great deal more solemn and dignified, and even conventional, if the same kind of wooden balls hadn't gone tearing round like mad squirrels in wire cages over the counters, with people's money shut up inside them. There were very young youths sitting in tall pulpit things, who caught the balls on the fly in a sporting way, and did something to them, but I never could see what, and afterwards sent them back, with the greenback bills inside turned miraculously into silver and pretty miniature pennies.
When we got to Sherry's Potter was waiting for us, and looking cross. I think persons with turned up noses show crossness more easily than the other kind, and Potter had the expression in his eyes that Vic has when her shoes are tight and Mother is in a trying mood at the same time. I shouldn't be surprised if he has a horrid temper, although he thinks of so many funny things. And though he is so nice to me, he can't help saying things sometimes which show that he has a prejudice against England. That seems extraordinary, and shows one how conceited we English really are; for one is quite accustomed to the idea that there may be people who don't care for Americans, but it is odd that Americans may not like us. I suppose it's on a par with the sentiments in our National Anthem, which when one comes to analyse them, don't exactly suggest a sense of give and take--or, for that matter, a sense of humour.
"Confoundtheirpolitics, frustratetheirknavish tricks," but naturally bless everything in which We are concerned, as We are certain to be above reproach. I'm afraid that's quite of a piece with the calm confidence we have in our own superiority, although I daresay I should never have realised it if it weren't for Mr. Potter Parker and his perky nose.
It began to be less perky when we were all settled at a table in a perfectly charming restaurant, the most restful place to eat in that I ever saw. I can't imagine even a fiend being ill-tempered in it for long; and it was deliciously cool, as if we had come into a shadowy green wood after the blazing, brassy glare of the streets.
The big room really was rather like a wood, so the simile isn't far-fetched;--an open space in a wood, ringed round with tall trees bending their branches low over a still pool. The soothing brown of the wainscoted walls gave the tree-trunk effect; the great hanging baskets of ferns and moss that swung from the ceiling were the tree-branches; and the many round, snow-white tables, with green velvet chairs grouped closely round them on the polished floor were the water-lilies with green pads floating on the surface of the pond.
Nearly everything we had for lunch was in a more or less advanced state of frozenness, from the bouillon, ever so far along to the ices in the shape of different-coloured fruits, toward the end. Nevertheless, all of us, except Potter, drank iced water instead of wine whenever we stopped eating for an instant, or couldn't think of anything particular to say; and the more we had the more we seemed to want. There was a kind of iced-water curse upon us.
It has never occurred to Vic or me to lie down in the afternoon, though she tries to sleep a little sometimes if she's going to a ball. But when we got home, Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally took it quite as a matter of course that we would lie down before going to Coney Island to dine and see fireworks and other things. They were surprised when I didn't want to, but Mrs. Ess Kay said in that case Potter would entertain me while they rested. I told her it wasn't necessary, but Potter wanted me to bet my sweet life that it was just the one Proposition on earth for him, so he and Vivace and I sat in the fountain court while Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally went upstairs.
Potter was suddenly a changed man, as soon as he and I were alone together, becoming exactly what he had been yesterday when I first ran downstairs, and he introduced himself.
He didn't chaff me about my country, and make fun of our government, or hint that American men were the only men living who knew how to treat women, as he seemed to delight in doing when his sister and cousin were with us. He began by offering to teach me some of his best slang; but as the lesson went on, it turned out to be rather more like a lesson in flirtation.
I would have been even more startled than I was, if I hadn't already had a little experience on board ship, with Mr. Doremus. At home I've often thought it must be very pleasant to be out, and able to flirt; but I never had a chance, because, as Vic said, it was her turn first, and the only young man, not a relation, that I ever talked with alone was the curate, who would as soon have tried to flirt with a Bishopess as with one of Mother's daughters.
But I like Mr. Doremus' kind of flirtation almost better than Mr. Parker's. Mr. Doremus makes you feel as if you were a beautiful young heroine in a play, and you are almost sorry there is no audience to applaud the witty things he says, and the smart answers he inspires you to think of, just as if he were giving you a clue.
Potter is different, and instead of an audience you want a kind of perpetual chaperon, not a Briareus creature with lots of hands to applaud.
It is silly, I know, to blush and simper; but I couldn't think of anything else to do, Potter was so alarming; and I wouldn't allow him to tell my fortune by my hand, for it was much too hot. Even if it hadn't been I shouldn't have wanted my hand held, for I do hate being touched by anyone I'm not fond of. When I told him that, he said it was very simple; what I had to do was to get fond of him, and then it would be all right.
"I shan't have time," I said. "There'll be too much for me to think about; and then I shall be going home."
"How long does it take an English girl to get fond of a man?" said he.
I told him I didn't know anything about that, as I wasn't out; but I supposed it depended on the kind of girl.
"I guess it depends more on the man, in your climate, doesn't it?" asked Potter. "But over here it's sometimes a question of hours, for both sides. Why, a chum of mine went out to San Francisco on business which was going to keep him just one day. He met a girl at dinner, fell in love with her while she was eating her soup, and told her so before dessert came along. She vacillated over the ice cream, but said yes with the peaches and pears. Next day they got married and he brought her back East for a wedding trip."
"What did they do about the Banns?"
"Oh, Americans have done away with Banns since the Revolution, I guess. When we fellows fall in love we're in a hurry."
"Marry in haste, repent at leisure," I quoted primly.
"We don't repent. We just get a divorce. It saves worry. Incompatibility of the affections, or fatty degeneration of the temper, or something like that. But I don't need to talk of such things to you. Nobody who got a prize-package like Lady Betty Bulkeley would part with it while he had a button left on his coat."
"I don't see what buttons would have to do with it," I said, but as I had always been sent out of the room at home directly anyone began even to mention divorce, I thought I had better go upstairs and dress for dinner at Coney Island. Mr. Parker begged me not, but I would; and Vivace barked as if he were under the impression that he was a watch dog; so thanks to him I got away without trouble.
V
ABOUT WEST POINT AND PROPOSALS
I could hardly have supposed that there were as many people in the whole world put together, as at Coney Island; and most of them were in pairs, like the animals on their way to the ark. They all seemed to be engaged to each other, and delighted with each other's society, or else married and dreadfully tired of it. Or else they had dyspepsia. Or else they had brought too many of their children; for they had droves of very small ones, who bellowed louder than any English children I ever saw, and tyrannised over their parents in the most unbridled way.
But Coney Island was fun, and I felt more than ever that I was dreaming; a long, long dream of sands, and huge hotels, and queer little booths.
For dinner we ate nothing but fish, of so many different kinds and some of them so strange, that I almost feared the dream might turn into a nightmare afterwards. I found the clams rather like olives; you hate the first, but when you have had three you feel you would like three dozen; and they are not at all easy to forget.
We went down Under the Sea, and were introduced to horrific monsters, sailed up and down on switchbacks, which made Mrs. Ess Kay ill, but she nobly refused to desert me in such surroundings--a state of mind which made her chin look incredibly square. Eventually, after many adventures by the way, we arrived at the Moon, and not only got into the middle of it, but made acquaintance with the inhabitants, none of whom appeared to be over two feet high, or to have anything to speak of between their chins and their toes. After that experience, minstrel shows and concerts, and persons who told your fortunes with snakes, or ate glass, were rather an anticlimax; still, I enjoyed them all so much that I was incapable of extreme annoyance when we discovered thatThe Evening Bathad an "impressionist sketch" of me which made me look like an elderly murderess.
We got back to New York almost indecently late, but in the meaner parts through which we had to pass on the way to our gorgeousness the streets swarmed with poor creatures, pallid with heat, evidently preparing to camp out of doors till morning. It was a strange and interesting sight, but made me feel guilty when I recalled it afterwards in my great cool bedroom, with my five different kinds of baths.
Next morning I was waked early to find more presents of flowers in huge stacks, and to get ready for West Point. I was a little tired from yesterday, and the dry heat gave me rather the sensation of being a scientist's field mouse in a vacuum, so that I should have dreaded even a short journey if we hadn't been making it by water.
It was even better than if we had been ordinary tourists on one of the big Hudson River boats I had heard about, for we were to travel luxuriously in a little steam yacht of Potter's, which he calls "The Poached Egg" because it can't be beaten. It is not a vulgar yacht, as one might have thought from the name, but a dainty thing that ought to have been "The Butterfly," "Ye White Ladye," or something of that sort. When I said so, Mr. Parker insisted that he would at once re-christen her "Lady Betty," which would have a prettier meaning than anything else; and then I was sorry I'd spoken.
I had expected to be disappointed in the river, because nearly everybody I met on board ship tried to impress upon me that we had nothing half so good in England; while as for the Rhine, it wasn't a patch on the Hudson. I even wanted to be disappointed, out of patriotism or spite, which are much the same thing sometimes; but I couldn't. I found the Hudson too grand for petty jealousy. It seemed to me like a great, noble poem, rolling on and on in splendid cadences; and I have heard some music of Wagner's that it reminded me of, somehow.
The hills or mountains--I'm not sure which to call them--even the Palisades which have been so dinned into my ears--were not high enough to satisfy me at a first glance; but soon I saw that it was their grouping and their perfect proportion in relation to each other which made them so exquisite. As we steamed on, along the green and golden flood, between banks that appeared to fall back in admiration, I began to love the Hudson so much that I could have shrieked with rage at the great staring advertisements on hoardings. What can the scenery have done to Americans, that they should do their best to spoil it? No wonder most of them come over to see ours, which we have the sense to let alone, even if it crumbles.
Sally and Mr. Parker laughed at my fury, but I didn't see how they could take it so calmly. "It isn't my scenery, so I don't trouble myself," said Potter, when I asked why he didn't get up a secret night expedition to burn or chop down all the hoardings. But I'm sure English people aren't careless like that. Each person thinks the good of the whole country ishisbusiness; at least one would suppose so by the way everybody who comes to Battlemead talks politics and affairs of public interest, morning, noon and night. It seems, though, in America only policemen and people who live in Washington care about politics really, except to get benefits for themselves; and it isn't good form to be too much interested in such things.
Victoria would like this rule, for she has confessed to me that political questions bore her, and she would much rather be talked to about love or motoring, or even bridge; but she always reads the newspapers hard for fifteen minutes while Thompson does her hair, if she's going out to a big lunch or dinner, so that she will be up in everything and able to talk brilliantly to members of Parliament, or stuffy old things in the House of Lords.
I calmed down somewhat after I'd recovered from the first shock of seeing several islands entirely devoted to insisting that Uneeda Biscuit, or a Cigar, or some other extraneous thing which you're sure youdon'tneed in the least, and wouldn't buy even if you did when it had been forced on you like that. There was so much to admire that it seemed a shame to fret. Besides, it was soothing to sit on the yacht's deck under a pale green awning, drinking what I call a lemon squash, and Potter and Sally obstinately believe to be lemonade. While Mrs. Ess Kay angrily read nasty paragraphs about herself, and hilariously about her friends, in a regular highwayman of a paper,Smart Sayings, Sally Woodburn told me charming legends of the Hudson; dear old Dutch things, most of them, which had been made into plays and poems; and I was sorry when we came to West Point at last.
But I wasn't sorry for long. The minute we got on shore at a quaint little landing shoved incongruously in among beautiful wooded hills, the most exquisite scents of ferns and trees, and sweet, moist earth came hurrying down to welcome us. Eton is not more beautiful than West Point; and as we drove up the hill under an arbour of trees, I saw that the buildings cleverly contrived to look old and grey and picturesque, like ours. The elms in a big green square past the top of the hill had a venerable air, too, so they must have been precocious about growing, for it doesn't stand to reason that West Point can be as ancient as Oxford or Eton. But anyway, the elms were there, making an effect that England couldn't improve on, and there were some grey stone barracks, and a long line of officers' quarters built of wood and brick. I was glad that we were to stop with Potter, instead of going to an hotel, for I did want to see thoroughly what garrison life is like. Potter has only half a house, though I suppose he's rich enough to buy up all West Point if it were for sale; but he had got a chum of his, who lives in the other half, to clear out of his part and give it to us for the day and night.
Vic has been to Aldershot, and even to Malta and Gib. But I never have, and I never saw any officers' quarters at home, so I don't know how they compare with American ones. Potter's and his friend's are exactly like a doll's house turned into a museum. The rooms are tiny, and most of the furniture is made to fold up; but Stan would be green with envy if he could see their Persian rugs, and their silver things, and their dozens of Meerschaums, and their curiosities from all over the world.
I asked Potter what he would do when he was ordered away.
"That depends on where I'm ordered," said he. "If I don't like the place, I'll resign, and be a mere cit. It would be easy to get back again into the Army if there were any fun going."
"What kind of fun?" I wanted to know.
"A war with somebody, of course," said he. Men have the most extraordinary ideas of fun. But they seem to be alike about that in England and America. They are never so happy as when they are killing something or in danger of being killed themselves. I can't imagine how it would feel to be like that; but I know if they were different we should hate them. And Potter looked so nice in his soldier clothes (which he got into while we were making ourselves pretty for lunch) that I couldn't help thinking it would be a pity for him to leave the army.
His friend was invited to lunch with us, to make up for sacrificing his house. He is nicer than Potter, or even Mr. Doremus; but not half so handsome or brave looking, or with such a charming voice as poor Jim Brett--who is not, I suppose, a gentleman except by nature; otherwise he couldn't have been in the steerage.
I thought it was silly to have wire nettings in all the doors and windows, just to keep away a few innocent midges, until we sat out after lunch. There is a pleasant balcony with an upstairs and a downstairs, which Potter and Captain Collingwood call the "piazza," and it would have been delightful sitting there while the men smoked, if appalling little animals with a ridiculous number of thin, stick-out legs hadn't come buzzing round us. They were saucy-looking things, got up in loud suits of black and grey stripes, not in the least like our quiet, respectable midges at home; and they weren't even honourable enough to wait until sunset before attacking you. They pricked horribly, like pins your maid has stuck in the wrong places; and they had a horridpenchantfor your ankles. Iwassorry I had on clocked stockings! And I apologised heartily to Potter for poking fun at his wire nettings.
Though it was so hot, the air was delicious. It smelt of new-mown grass and lilies, with a sharp little spicy tang of the thick Virginia creepers, which made a shadowy green room of the "piazza." Birds were simply roaring with joy in the trees that overhung the house, and Potter and I almost quarrelled because he would insist that some huge creatures hopping about on the grass were robins. They would have made three of ours, and were much more like quails that had spilt strawberry juice on their breasts.
By and by Captain Collingwood asked if "Lady Betty didn't want to go and see things."
"She's booked to me for Flirtation Walk," said Potter, before I could answer. "Three's a crowd there, old chap." On which I regret to state Captain Collingwood suggested that Potter should teach his own grandmother something about nourishing herself with an egg diet.
"Anyhow, I suppose you don't object to a rearguard for inspection of camp, and other features of public interest," he went on; and after some hesitation Potter decided that this would be admissible.
Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally both wanted to lie down (it's strange the fondness American women have for putting themselves in a horizontal position in the daytime!) so Mrs. Ess Kay said that she would commission her brother as chaperon; I needn't be anxious, she assured me, it was quitecomme il faut. As if I would have worried about a thing like that!
I was delighted to go, because the most interesting groups had been passing the house, and it was difficult to see all you wanted to through the veil of creepers, without continually craning your neck. Tall, brown-faced boys, got up much like glorified Buttons, were sauntering about, holding sunshades over the heads of girls so young that they would have been in short frocks with their hair down their backs, in England. The girls were in white muslin or pale colours, with charming, floppy Leghorn hats trimmed with flowers; and they looked like the daintiest, prettiest of French dolls. But I was a great deal more interested in the youths, who were the cadets--first classmen, Potter said, and would be second lieutenants next year.
I never could take much interest in Eton boys, the few I have seen, for they look such children that one would be positively ashamed to bother with them; but the West Point cadets (though one couldn't exactly take them seriously like regularly grown-up men, perhaps), fascinated me from the very first glance through Potter's Virginia creeper. They looked as if they thought a lot of themselves, and the girls they were with had the air of encouraging them to think it. I wondered what kind of things they said to girls and secretly longed to find out.
It seems that in summer the cadets leave their barracks and go into camp, which is a time of year that the girls who visit West Point and those whose fathers are stationed there, like very much. We had a glimpse of the tents from the long street of the officers' quarters; and after we had visited a few technical things in which I was too polite to show that I was hardly interested, we strolled over to where we could see the little white pyramids gleaming under the Stars and Stripes.
I had been afraid that all the cadets would have gone away to Flirtation Walk, with girls, but to my joy there were plenty left in camp. On chairs under the trees near by two or three ladies were sitting with some white-butterfly girls; and a crowd of cadets were talking to them.
"There's a great pal of mine, Mrs. Laurence," said Captain Collingwood. "She would love to know you, Lady Betty. Do you mind if I introduce you to each other?"
"See here, that means we shall be hitched up with all that lot of cadets," Potter objected, quite crossly. "What's the good of wasting time?"
I hurried to say that I shouldn't consider it a waste of time, that I should be delighted to meet Mrs. Laurence, and also a few sample cadets, if any could be provided for the consumption of an enquiring British tourist.
Captain Collingwood thought that one or two might be found who would not object to the sacrifice; and five minutes later I was having more fun than I had ever had before in my life.
Mrs. Laurence was sweet, and so tactful. She scarcely talked to me at all, except to ask me how I liked America, and a few of the things people are obliged to get off their minds when they meet a foreigner; and then she introduced five cadets.
I was terrified for a minute, because until I left home my whole (youthful) male experience consisted of one brother, three cousins, and two curates, dealt with separately and with long sleepy intervals between. I began to wonder how I could possibly manage five tall youths at once, and to rack my brains for the right kind of conversation; but before I should have had time to say "knife" to a curate, I found myself chatting away with those cadets as if I had grown up with them. I never once stopped to think what I should say next, and neither did they.
Some girls were introduced to me, too, but luckily they didn't seem to expect me to talk to them much, so I didn't. More and more cadets kept coming over from camp, and joining our group, and being introduced in agreeable droves, until I gave up even trying to remember their names.
There was one, though, in the first batch of five, whose name was easy to get hold of and keep in mind, because it was Smith. Besides, he was the best looking of all, which made classifying him a real pleasure.
The girls who spoke to Mr. Smith called him "Captain," perhaps jokingly, and I asked how he could be a captain and yet a cadet, unless it meant cricket. Then he explained that the cadets had all the different grades of officers, from Adjutant and Captain down to Sergeant, and wanted to know if there were any other questions I would care to ask. I said that there were, lots, but I wasn't sure if I might.
"I give you a permit," said he, in a military way.
So I began with the buttons. "I should like to know why you have so many--all those rows on your jackets; and it's only the middle row you seem to use for anything."
"We use the others to give away to girls, to remember us by," answered my cadet. "It's forbidden, but that's a detail. Or rather it's why the girls like to have them."
I stared. "None of yours are missing."
"Most of 'em are pinned on at present. It's that way with all of us. Our Plebs sew 'em on for us at night, and use the door for a thimble."
"Oh, what are Plebs, if you please? Are you allowed valets?"
"I guess they call 'em fags in your country. There are a lot of them lying around. Shall I have some caught and dragged here? They might squirm a bit, as they aren't used to ladies' society, but——"
I hastily protested against such a cruel exhibition, and went on with my questions. I asked what they did in winter, and how long they had to be cadets, and whether they were in a hurry to be officers.
"Not as long as the girls can put up with us as we are," said my cadet. "Some of them even pretend they like us better."
"I can quite understand that!" I exclaimed. And then they all laughed, and some of them applauded.
"Thereallyimportant question is," said Captain or Mr. Smith, "whether you are going to be an officers' or a cadets' lady."
I hadn't an idea what he meant, but I remembered Vic's saying that in the lower middle classes they sometimes call a man's wife his "lady." Perhaps, I thought, the expression had been brought over to the nicest people in America, in theMayflower, which they all talk so much about; for certainlysomeof the people in her must have been cooks or in the steerage; there are too many descendants for the first class passengers alone. After considering for a minute I said in rather an embarrassed way that I wasn't "quite sure yet whether I would be either."
"You must be one or the other, you know, or you'll be like the bat in the fable who was neither bird nor beast, and so was out of all the fun on both sides. I may be prejudiced, but I advise you to be a cadets' lady. And you'd better decide now on account of to-night."
"To-night?" I repeated, puzzled.
"Yes, on account of making out your card. Say, Lady Betty, if youaregoing in with us, can I make out your card?"
Then arose a clamour. It appeared that they all wanted to make out the card--whatever it was. I asked if I couldn't have one from each, but it appeared that you couldn't do that. My cadet had spoken first, so he said that he would do it; but the others could give me bell-buttons and chevrons, and decorate fans for me instead.
"Do you like hops, Lady Betty?" enquired a perfect pet of a cadet, who looked like a cherub in uniform.
"Hops?" I wondered why he should ask me such an irrelevant question, but I answered as intelligently as I could. "I don't know much about them. I think they're graceful, but I don't like the smell."
He looked petrified. "Thesmell?"
"Yes. It makes one sleepy."
"I guess we won't give you much chance to be sleepy to-night," said he, "at our hop."
Then I understood. But what a funny thing to call a ball; a "hop!"
They explained, too, when they saw how stupid I was, that you were an "officers' lady" if you danced with them, and walked with them, and flirted with them, and didn't bother with cadets; or vice versa. Then I decided at once that I would be a cadets' lady, though I was sorry I had only one night to be it in. They were sorry, too, and showed their sorrow in so many nice ways that I enjoyed myself immensely, and quite saw how nice it must feel to be out, if you are a success. They wanted to draw lots for which cadet should take me to Flirtation Walk, but I said I had to go with Mr. Parker.
He must have been listening from a distance, (though he ought to have been talking with a pretty girl who had no hat,) for he came up to me at once, and announced that it was time to go now. He rather put on airs of having a right to tell me what I must do, and I didn't like it much, especially before those dear cadets, but it would have been childish to make a fuss. Besides, I was his guest.
I went, like a disagreeable lamb sulking on its way to the slaughter; but, thank goodness, I was engaged already for nearly all the dances, and most of them had to be split in two; there were so many cadets for them. (I think, by the by, I shall try to get Stan to take me to Sandhurst some day, to see if it is at all like West Point, and whether they have hops.)
Potter made fun of the cadets, and called them "white meat," and "little things that got in the way"; but when I asked a straight question he had to confess that he had been one himself only six years ago. "I was twenty-two when I graduated," he said. "One of the youngest men in my class." Which was the same as telling me that he is twenty-eight now. Ten years older than I am! It makes him seem quite old.
Somehow, although he is so nice to me in most ways, he stirs me up to feel antagonistic, as though I wanted to contradict him, and not like things that he likes; and I believe it is the same with him about me, for I make his eyes look angry very often. I felt he was disappointed because I admired the cadets so much, and had promised so many dances, and I was in a mood to tease him. But I fancy he isn't the kind who would take teasing well; and the scenery he was showing me was so beautiful that presently I resolved to be good.
We saw Kosciusko's monument, and I would insist upon his telling me things about Kosciusko himself, though Potter didn't seem to think him important; and then we began winding our way along a most exquisite path overhanging the river, always shadowed by trees. Sometimes it was cut through a green arbour, with a light like liquid emeralds; sometimes it ran high on the rocks; sometimes it dipped down close to the water; but invariably there was just enough room for two, and no more, to walk side by side.
We met several couples--cadets and girls; young officers and girls;--sauntering or sitting down close together in out of the way places. But by and by we seemed to have passed beyond the inhabited zone. Then Potter asked me if I were not tired from so much walking, and if I wouldn't like to rest. I said no, and he promptly pretended to be done up, which I thought very silly; but of course I had to sit down by him on a rock with a green, moss-velvet cushion.
"This is what I've been longing for all day," said he.
I hadn't; and I was thinking about the cadets. But I agreed that it was beautiful.
"Yes, it is," he answered, looking at me. "I never saw anything so pretty. Say, Lady Betty, you're an awful flirt."
I did open my eyes at that. "A flirt!" I exclaimed. "I never had a chance to try being it."
"I guess you don't need to try. There's some things girls like you are born knowing. I've been miserable all the afternoon. Couldn't you see my agony?"
"I didn't notice," said I.
"Ah, that's the trouble. You weren't thinking of me. Of course, I oughtn't to have cared for those little boys," (some of them were inches taller than he) "but I couldn't help it. I kept saying inside, 'This is a foretaste of what I've got to suffer when she's staying with Katherine at The Moorings.' I don't know when I've been so unpopular with myself. I don't see how I'm going to get along unless you'll be nice to me; right now."
"I am nice to you," I said. "As nice as I know how to be."
"I could teach you to be a lot nicer. Say, Lady Betty, let me, won't you?"
His eyes, though they are such a pale blue, had that silly, melting look in them that my cousin Loveland's have when he talks to me. "Let you do what?" I asked, almost snappishly, for a person sitting in such a lovely place.
"Teach you to like me. I fell all over myself in love with you the first minute I saw you."
"Day before yesterday!" I exclaimed. "What nonsense. You're poking fun at me. I don't believe in love at first sight--at least, I don't think I do. Anyhow, nobody could fall in love withmein that way."
"Couldn't they, though? That's all you know about it, then. All Americans will fall in love with you like that, and it's just what I want to guard against. I want you to be engaged to me before you go to Newport. Then I shall feel kind of safe."
"Dear me, are you really proposing, and it isn't in joke?" I asked. "I do wish you wouldn't."
"Would I propose to Lady Betty Bulkeley in joke?" he reproached me.
"The idea of proposing to any girl when you've only seen her three times!"
"What did I tell you about my friend in San Francisco? I was working slowly up to this, even then."
"Slowly!"
"Yes, very slowly. I think I've shown a great deal of patience. American girls--the beauties, I mean--are quite hurt if a fellow doesn't propose somewhere along in the first day or two. They think he can't appreciate their real worth, and that he deserves what he gets if some other chap walks away with them. Now, I'm not going to sit still on my perch and see anything else walking off with you."
I couldn't help laughing. "I'll call for help if I think there's any danger," said I; "but I can't promise more than that. I didn't come over to America to pick up a husband."
He looked at me rather queerly when I said that, almost as if he thought I had come for that express purpose, and was trying to conceal it. But, of course, he couldn't be so horrid as to suppose such a thing really, and I must have imagined the strange expression. If he only knew, I came away so that another girl might be sure to get a husband, and I'm not allowed to go back until he has been got.
"They're just growing around on blackberry bushes and in strawberry patches for you to pick and choose," said Potter, "and that's what worries me. I'm a wildly jealous fellow. I've got two month's leave so as to be with you at Newport, and I tell you I shall see a bright, beautiful crimson, if too many dudes come fooling around the shanty. Say, won't you justplaywe're engaged, anyhow, and see how you like it?"
But now I was really cross, and wouldn't hear a word more of such nonsense, so I jumped up, and he had to scramble up, too.
"If you've really proposed--which I doubt--" said I, "you must please understand that you've been formally refused. But I forgive you because I believe you must have been chaffing, and because it's my first proposal; so at all events I can't die without having had at least one. Now, do be sensible and take me back, or I shall have to find my way alone,--or else ask a strange cadet to pilot me."
That threat found a vulnerable spot; and he was not half bad on the way home--perhaps no worse than the name of the Walk allowed.
I was a good deal excited about the ball, as it was my very first. Sally Woodburn had looked at my things, and told me what to bring. Not that it was a hard choice, for I have only four frocks with me, in which I could go to a dance. The one Sally wanted me to wear at West Point is a little white thing, of embroidered India muslin. Thompson made it after one of Vic's, and it is a rag compared to Sally's and Mrs. Ess Kay's gorgeous things. But when Sally had done my hair in a new way, (they had left Louise behind, as there was no room for her), and fastened round my throat a lovely string of pearls she brought on purpose, I looked quite nice.
The "hop" was in a great big room which the cadets use for something or other, I forget what; and it was decorated with quantities of American flags. There were lots of girls--the youngest things! hardly any of them could have been out--but there were even more men; counting officers and cadets, at least two for each girl.
The card which my particular cadet had talked about making for me, was a programme, with all the dances and the men's names, and illuminations which he had put on himself. It was beautiful, and I told him that I would always keep it. I danced every dance, with two partners for each, and there was a cotillion afterwards with favours to remind the girls who got them, of West Point; little flags, and buttons, and bits of gold lace; but I was very lucky, for some of the friends I had made in camp had smuggled me special things, and I shall have quite a collection of sergeant's stripes and corporal's chevrons, belt buckles and beautiful bright bell-buttons with initials scratched on them.
I don't believe Vic had half so much fun at her first ball as I had at mine, although hers is so many seasons ago now that I can't remember what she said about it. I was only a little girl then, and she wasn't in the habit of telling me things, as she is now.
Although I didn't get to bed till after two, I was up early next morning, because I had promised my best cadets that I would be at morning parade, or whatever they call it, to say good-bye. Sally went with me, and it was quite an affecting parting. I shall never forget those dear boys if I live to be a hundred, though I can't remember any of their names, as after all I lost the card I meant to keep always.