"Certainly, Mariol, you have found your American types ready to hand upon this voyage," Lord Clandonald was saying, as the two men walked up and down with their cigars upon the deck decried by Miss Carstairs' chaperon. "The most obvious one is, of course, the astonishing young person who aroused us from the spiritual lethargy of a first meal at sea, when one is always on guard not to be too accessible.""She is like one of those Eastern shops, where everything is in the window," Mariol answered. "But adorably fresh and naïve and pretty. No other continent could produce her than the wide and liberal one we are just quitting.""Might we but keep her to ourselves!" said Clandonald, mockingly. "But I foresee that she will be the wonder and the joy of the entire ship's company on our run over. And the mild old boy who retires into the background to give his Wonder every chance! I rather like the old boy, I think.""My own taste would be for the young lady who is protected by Buddha reincarnate, in the person of the disapproving chaperon. Her beauty is rarer, more subtle, than the other's; she is clearly of thefine fleurof the American aristocracy of dollars. I suspect a Colonial ancestor somewhere, and you observed that the chaperon did not disdain us too much, to let fall a hint or two concerning the custom of splendor in her charge's life. When they find you out, Clandonald, I'll wager the sun will promptly shine between the clouds for you.""The old woman is in the apologetic stage for America, and that's enough to give me a strong disgust for her. Let them be anything that's real, and I'm ready to meet Americans 'hands across the sea.' But the ones that affect to decry their nationality, to convince us that they are of a small, segregated class that stand on higher ground than the rest, are abhorrent to me. Clearly, Buddha's protégée belongs to that class? and will not tarry to let us become aware of it.""Grant that my Mdlle. Hélène—for I don't know her other name—is both beautiful and finely bred, and I will abandon you the rest of her sisterhood. She is full of an exquisite intellectuality, but it would not prevent her loving if her heart were awakened—and if I am not mistaken, it has already been awakened. Imagine a young girl,chez nous, with that expression in her eyes, and yet that delicate restraint of manner. I should like to know the fair Hélène's history.""That you might dissect her with admirable grace in a feuilleton thattout Pariswould read and applaud—and—forget her the next hour, in a new enthusiasm.""Better to possess all the enthusiasms than none, old chap. I am really in despair over your failure to be aroused by the infinite variety of the diversions offered to you in this journey of ours that, alas! must end too soon.""There is one pleasure that has never palled on me, and that is the society of my travelling companion. You are the ideal one in many respects, Mariol; but if I could point out one virtue more than another that distinguishes you in that character, it is the letting a man enjoy all his bad humors, his fads, his follies, if you will, unchecked and unbridled. I have sometimes basely suspected you of sacrificing me in order to make copy of my infirmities. But, at any rate, I have enjoyed blessed liberty, and, whatever the result, I have profited by the semblance of a perfect tact and consideration.""A roundabout way of warning me not to intrude my advice upon you now. But seriously, Clandonald, and at any risk, I must tell you that you need rousing. That past of yours, unsavory as it was through no fault of yours, has been long enough decently interred for you to forget it, and to recreate your life's happiness. One can't be sore always, any more than we can love always, or mourn always. And you, of all men the one best fitted to wear the yoke of your staid British virtues, to serve your country and your king at home, to be a model landlord, a husband and a paterfamilias,comme il y en a peu! For heaven's sake, accept the blessed opportunity of your present freedom, and make up for that wretched first mistake. You aren't happy, you have no ambition, no purpose, no zest in living. Get yourself a wife.""This from Mariol, the scoffer, the celibate! My dear fellow, I forgive you your trespass upon forbidden ground, because I know you are sincere. But you forget one small, important fact. The person who bore my name, and her various works of evil, have so depleted my finances that, had I the courage, I haven't the wherewithal to hawk my wares in the marriage mart. I wonder if you know what it costs to keep a Lady Clandonald in the enjoyment of the domestic atmosphere of which you speak. I know to my cost. Unless she were a beautiful savage, content to retire with me to one of those isles of the South Sea poor Louis Stevenson idealized, I couldn't even give her a season in town, or a trip to Paris or Homburg, much less races, and all the bridge a woman needs; and so there'd be the devil to pay, you see. If she would set up a bonnet-shop, or a place for horribly dear frocks, and keep me on the proceeds—! but otherwise, I'm as poor as a rat, Mariol, and haven't your resources, or royalties, remember.""A small matter, my dear lad, with the ever-continuing flood of American dollars pouring from West to East through the facile clasp of the fair beings by whom we are presently surrounded. And you would not run great risks. There is this to be said for them, that American ladies rarely degenerate into either bores, dupes or pieces of household machinery: 'Le familier vulgaire, utile et sans bouquet, comme le vin qu'on boit avec l'eau.' They progress with the epoch and the civilization that claim them. Take—as a matter of illustration merely—either of the two young women who grace our board.""As a matter of illustration, merely," answered Clandonald, laughing, "I'd prefer to take the sweet child of nature, combining, with the vulgarity of a powdered nose, the eyes of an intelligent cherub recently short-coated.""As you please," said Mariol, arching his brows resignedly. "My choice for you would have been the fine-grained daughter of the Puritans with hair the color of a hazelnut, the flat, straight back, and resolute figure gowned by Paquin. I dare say both ladies are accessible to what you have to offer them, or that either would soon fit into place in the long walk at Beaumanoir, among those strutting white peacocks against a background of clipped yews and sun-warmed ancient brick. No American girl could resist that walk and those white peacocks, Clandonald, take my word for it.""Then marry one yourself, and I'll let the place to you for a song.""I have still to see Tibet," answered the other, stopping to light a fresh cigar.Their talk ended in a discussion wide afield from the subject with which it had begun. But when Mariol turned in, it was with a throb of secret satisfaction that he had been able, in the darkness, and apparentlyà l'improviste, to wing in the direction of his friend a shaft he had long held in reserve for him.He had been with Clandonald, side by side, wading through the miserable mire of his divorce case, and rejoiced when he saw him rid for ever of the creature who had dragged him down. The two men had met first in South Africa, while Clandonald was lying ill of enteric, and Mariol, coming upon him by accident in the course of his own explorations for observation and adventure at the seat of war, had nursed him with the gentleness and devotion of a woman, until he was out of danger and ready for the voyage home. During his first convalescence, Clandonald had received the plainly unwelcome news of his wife's intended journey out, "to look after her dear old boy." The arrival of her errant ladyship, followed by the untoward discovery of her real motives in making this heroic effort, and the hardly concealed scandal of her companionship on the voyage, precipitated a relapse of Clandonald's malady, and the ultimate severance, some two years later, of his heavy marriage bond, borne during the lifetime of a boy who died through her neglect.In all this dreary time Mariol had stood by him and held him up. The brilliant mocker, the professed skeptic of all tenderness apart from the metaphysics of the sex question, had developed into the best of hard-luck friends; and their agreement to travel together after Clandonald was free and had left the army proved more than a success.Now they were drifting homeward again, Mariol to his boulevards and the fond congenial life of Paris, Clandonald—to what? Mariol, with his keen insight and ready sympathy, saw that his friend was returning to England, restless, unsatisfied, out of tune with his future surroundings; well in body and healthy in his mind, indeed, but in no humor to pick up his life from where his late partner had cast it, like a jewel, into wayside dirt.Mariol had hoped much from their visit to America, where they had found themselves, during the latter part of the season at Newport, subjected to the overpowering hospitality of the leaders of the great world. But although Clandonald's antecedents were as well known and familiarly discussed there, as in England and on the Continent, and there had been displayed no disposition on the part of society to visit his evil fortune upon him, the young man passed but abstractedly through the ordeal of charms and graces, defiled before his gaze, during the hours when the world that entertains is in evidence. Mariol sometimes wondered whether his friend would not have been more easily consoled in an atmosphere less surcharged with the art of pleasing.The moment he had laid eyes upon Miss Carstairs, whose patronymic he was yet to learn, it had flashed upon the Frenchman's active brain that here was the solution of his perplexities. That the girl met so thoroughly his own exacting taste in externals, seemed to him a convincing proof she would be the ideal angel to step down into Clandonald's troubled pool and make it clear. Her looks, age, good breeding, reserve of bearing, and evident fortune, added to the fact that she, too, had in her eyes the shadow of past sorrow, left the kind fictionist no doubt of his own perspicacity in selection. He had addicted himself to the task of making friends with her, with a promptitude facilitated by his secret hopes, and Clandonald's indifference proved the more provoking in that it bore every aspect of probable enduringness.Mariol fell asleep, that memorable first night at sea, congratulating himself that his cares in connection with matters of sentiment were so purely perfunctory, and that whatever the issue out of Clandonald's impassivity, no personal interest in any one of the disturbing sex could ever afford his mentor other than the emotion of a scientist who skewers a new butterfly for his microscope.CHAPTER IIIThere was to be no complexity attending the position taken by Miss Pamela Winstanley, commonly called Posey, in the consideration of her fellow-passengers of the "Baltic." From the first day out, as has been said, every one aboard became a prey to the absorbing interest created by her daily movements, sayings and doings. Beyond the fact that she was travelling with her father, a Mr. Herbert Winstanley, sometime of the Army of the Confederate States, presumably a person of very moderate social place and fortunes, the antecedents of the radiant young beauty were unknown, and she was accepted upon her face value alone. It was indisputable that, whenever she appeared conversation centered upon her to the exclusion of more serious topics. And, in return, Miss Winstanley lavished her effervescing good graces with impartiality upon all admirers in attendance. The honors of her smiles and pretty sayings were shared alike by Lord Clandonald and any minor individual of the impressible sex, who might chance to be on hand. Jolly old Lord Channel Fleet, resembling Santa Claus with his roseate face and white fringe of a beard, found himself vying for her favors with a succession of American college youths in sweaters, one of whom, famed in university circles as a thrower of the hammer, stood about in attitudes expressive of rank jealousy, whenever his sportive lordship was at her side. Lady Channel Fleet, indeed, was known to be nervous lest the threatening young man should do something dreadful to her liege.Miss Bleecker, Mrs. Vereker, and sundry mothers of unentertaining daughters who struggled into their deck-chairs without assistance and walked with each other the diurnal mile, looking as if nothing would induce them to descend to the companionship of the supporting sex, formed a number of ingenious theories to account for the fair Pamela. She was a milliner's forewoman, going out to secure fashions for Alison's Cross Roads. She was a dashing divorcee, who had resumed her maiden name. She had been a barmaid in California, an artist's model in New York, an assistant washerwoman in the Klondyke, had tried on cloaks in a leading haberdashery of Chicago—in all of which capacities there was somebody aboard who had known somebody else who had actually seen her! But of suppositions concerning the charmer, the most popular was that she had sung on the local stage somewhere in the South, and was now going abroad to study for comic opera. For in addition to other devices for the bewilderment of mere man, Miss Winstanley was found to possess a fascinating gift of rendering little Creole chansonettes that conjured up the warm velvet-like touch of Southern air, the region of palm and pine and mocking-birds, of orange flowers and Cherokee roses, and the love spells lingering around it. Then she could croon "Mammy" songs, of a negress hushing her nursling, in a way to bring tears to the eyes of most hardened listeners. And between the songs and croonings she would describe scenes, and impersonate actors, with a natural fire and pathos that are rarely taught or teachable. But of this accomplishment she was more chary than the rest, and there were those heard to declare that, on one occasion on deck, she had sung tears into her own eyes, and abruptly stopped, declaring she did not care to do it before more than one or two. The incident being repeated to Miss Bleecker, that inveterate lady declared it to be but a clever bit of acting to whet expectation of future appearances behind the footlights.Amid the successes of his daughter's meteoric rise, little Mr. Winstanley prowled about the ship, a solitary and somewhat pathetic figure in his evident belief that self-effacement was the first duty of the parent of such a Phoenix among maidens. Following his abortive reopening of acquaintance with Miss Carstairs, he withdrew into his shell and spoke no more to her. Helen reproached herself that she had not been able to conceal from him the repulsion at first inspired in her by her rival in John Glynn's favor. Old Winstanley's mild twinkle of the eye, the smile playing around his thin lips, gave no hint, however, that his retiring attitude was inspired by offence. He seemed to live apart in a world of his own thoughts and memories, from which even his Posey's triumphs could not extract him for long.And Posey, Miss Bleecker to the contrary (who from her end of the table consistently glared down the intruder's right to be), continued to reign in her revolving chair, as the established queen of every meal. Her quips and cranks of fan, her lawless sallies at the expense of those around her, had effectually banished restraint and brought the diverse elements of their party together; even Helen parting with her formality to join in the talk, when convinced by observation that Miss Winstanley knew nothing whatever of her prior acquaintance with John Glynn.From the beginning, the Honorable Bobby Vane, Lord Kennington's scapegrace boy, had fallen head over ears in love with Posey, and was ready to forfeit his not very brilliant prospects in life to marry her, no matter in what capacity she had previously appeared. Posey laughed at and with the lad, enjoying his off-hand gayety and mischief, and there it began and ended. The Russian savant, under the influence of Miss Winstanley's presence, forgot to grumble about draughts and sauces, and smoothed his grim-visaged front into affability, answering her in English as choice as M. de Mariol's French. The old German count, proving to be the most kindly and merry of comrades, developed a faculty for telling uproariously funny stories, of which the effect was impaired only by such a strange mispronunciation of the English tongue that his auditors were kept supernaturally grave in the effort not to smile at him, and therefore did not smile at all.A volume of Mariol's clever (and happily innocuous) short stories having been produced by somebody and put into circulation on the ship, Miss Winstanley had familiarized herself with them, and was engaged at odd moments in translating the littlechef d'oeuvresof style, with Bobby Vane, in whose imagination a book of any kind, save a betting book, loomed larger than an elephant.Mariol, to whom direct address from casual people upon the subject of his writings was an affliction, had been rather dreading the young lady's comments, and was relieved when she disposed of him thus easily:"I think they're just lovely, Mr. Mariol, and am trying to make Mr. Vane agree with me, but he declares they're too jolly dismal and give him the awful blues. After this, when people say they envy me being at table with you, I can truly tell them you don't talk the least bit like your books.""Mrs. Kipling told me once," said Clandonald, following a laugh at Mariol's expense, "that when a gushing American girl asked how she could endure the brilliancy of a certain chat between her husband and Cecil Rhodes on the Kiplings' veranda in South Africa, she had been puzzled what to answer, because, as a matter of fact, each of these gentlemen had been trying to talk more delightful drivel than the other. What good luck for the rest of us, that great minds do unbend in the intimacy of private discourse!""If one doesn't talk in brief paragraphs, like those columns printed in American newspapers for busy men to read in elevated trains, one isn't listened to, I find," said the author, ruefully."In most countries, nowadays," observed Prince Zourikoff, looking anxiously to see whether the portion of cold braised beef left upon the platter was enough for his liberal appetite, "the fine arts of conversation and correspondence have both been driven like chaff before the wind of modern restlessness. Nobody converses, few read, friendly communication is achieved by wire or telephone. And as to introducing a serious topic into society—perish the thought! One would be voted a superannuated nuisance.""I have always thought it the best compliment a man can pay a woman," said Miss Carstairs, blushing a little, "when he talks to her, in earnest, about what dominates his thoughts."Mariol flashed an appreciative glance at her. Clandonald cried out:"Heaven defend your sex, my dear lady, if they had to sit still and listen to most men's governing thoughts. And, on the whole, there is nothing so wearing as a person with ideas that have never been applied. To-day, we must think and act, and accomplish or fail, before we talk. And as far as talk goes, it's everybody's plain duty to be amusing and not long.""To come down before the footlights, and do one's turn, and then drop back again," interpolated Miss Bleecker, with a glance at the beauty, who was helping Bobby Vane to a baked potato. "You are quite right, Lord Clandonald. It is perfect audacity for any one person, whether clever or insignificant, to attempt to monopolize attention. Everybody else is invariably bored by it, where they are not laughing in their sleeves.""Have you seen many persons laughing in their sleeves, Miss Bleecker?" asked Posey Winstanley, innocently. "Did they do it when you were young? I always wondered how. Mr. Vane, please stop eating long enough, to let's try laughing in our sleeves at Miss Bleecker. I reckon she'll tell us if it's the real thing.""There are places, then, where they do say 'I reckon,'" pursued Miss Bleecker, impassively. "You mentioned, Lord Clandonald, how much you were disappointed not to hear more provincialisms of speech in America. I should think Miss Winstanley could give you all you care to collect.""Did you ever hear, Miss Winstanley," put in Mariol quickly, "the pretty speech made by King William IV about a charming country-woman of yours, whom some one asked, 'Pray, do you come from that part of America where they guess and where they calculate?' 'Lady Wellesley comes from where they fascinate,' said the gallant monarch."Bobby Vane clapped his hands approvingly."That's rippin', ain't it, Mr. Mariol! My goodness me, wish I weren't such a duffer at writing things down an' spellin' or I'd make a note of it. What?""Come to school at Alison's Cross Roads, Alabama, and we'll teach you how," said Posey."Helen, you will find me on the boat-deck by Mrs. Vereker," said Miss Bleecker, majestically arising. "I have had quite enough of this. And I consider it my mission to spend as much time as I can give to poor Mrs. Vereker, prostrated by care and anxiety as she has been, and her husband never allowed to come near her on the voyage."A light sparkled in the wide-open blue eyes of the ship's charmer, and a smile hovered around her pretty mouth. She was well aware that about the second day out, the critical and finical Mr. Vereker had joined in the universal procession toward her shrine. She had avoided an introduction as long as possible, compelling her ancient admirer to perform wonders of intrigue and diplomacy, before he was admitted to the privilege of her acquaintance. Since then, he had persecuted her for walks on deck, secured for her white violets, at vast expense, from some one who was taking them out in the ship's ice-box for sale in London; had sent to her table daily tokens of regard, from pats of choice butter, bunches of black Hamburg grapes, and broiled birds, to Southern "pin-money" pickles. Not content with these tangible evidences, Mr. Vereker had promised her a dog, and invited her to motor with them through Touraine. The poor man, who had, in Miss Bleecker's parlance, "no stomach to speak of," was expecting the return of one of his periodical attacks, when he would be forced to go upon milk and Educator biscuits, too enfeebled to walk the deck and flirt, and wished to make the most of his well moments; but, so far, Miss Winstanley had been constantly engaged with others, and could not yield him the tête-à-tête desired.Miss Bleecker, enlisted under the standard of a complaining wife, was gratified to leave the party, having hurled the final shaft. Mariol liked the self-control with which Posey turned immediately to other topics, no less than he appreciated the effort Helen Carstairs made to atone for her companion's venom by remaining awhile in conversation that included the girl attacked. The Frenchman, who noted most things passing near him, had been making up his mind that some strong personal reason existed to keep Miss Carstairs in a state of mental self-defence against the attractions of Miss Winstanley. A judgment so clear and cool and fair as Helen's in ordinary matters, he had rarely seen, and he believed her capable of more than the allotted amount of feminine generosity toward those of her own sex. As far as he had been able to gather, she had never before seen or heard of this mysterious young person who had made their voyage so gay. What could the reason be?It had not escaped him that the Southern girl, taking heed of Helen's low-pitched voice, of her quiet garb and reserved manner among strangers, had profited by them to tone down some of her own extravagances. Already, Miss Winstanley's hair was brushed simply back in a glorious golden sweep, allowing its natural waves to reveal themselves untortured. Already, the obnoxious blue dress with its lace transparencies, the redundant jewelry had gone into retirement, the young girl appearing at dinner in white blouses as simple as Helen's own. Better than all, she no longer challenged people within earshot with her sentiments and opinions.From time to time, Mariol had detected passing from her to Helen the glances of homage a very unsophisticated girl bestows upon one she has elected to make her heroine. And, despite this artless worship, Miss Carstairs did not relent in her cool demeanor. She was civil always, considerate often, but never yielding in keeping Miss Winstanley at a distance. The men at their table were unanimously beginning to feel that a girl may win easily in the chief events of such a contest, and yet be badly worsted in the end.The only one among them who seemed to have preserved indifference on the subject of Posey's wrongs, was the quiet little man in the mustard-colored tweeds, with the cowboy hat of sunburnt felt, who accompanied the beauty to her meals, but was rarely seen with her elsewhere.One afternoon, however, she broke away from her cordon of admirers, and finding the old fellow walking alone, linked her arm in his, adjusting her pace to his."Why, little girl, what's come to you, that the beaux have left you no better company than mine?" he said, with the jocular homage of his habitual manner to her."There isn't much better company than yours, dad, and I'm beginning to find it out," she answered, caressingly.[image]"There isn't much better company than yours, dad.""Well, well, a compliment from the belle o' the ship! Reckon when I get to London I'll have to be buying myself a new suit, and a dozen o' boiled shirts, though, come to think of it, seems to me I'm no great way behind that Lord Channel Fleet o' yours in the matter of clothes and footwear—regular beetle-crushers, those shoes of his, and his hat an even match for mine.""He's rather an old dear, anyhow," said Posey; "but I've got another ancient on the string that's too foolish to talk about. That Mr. Vereker—he's dyed and made-up, and always fussing about his digestion. He has a young doctor travelling with him to give him hypodermics for his nerves, and they're going to some queer place where he'll have to walk barefoot on wet stones, and diet, with a lot of grand dukes and things that he just loves to talk about. Aren't they funny though, these old society men? Imagine you prancing around after young girls!""I can't," said her father, simply. "There isn't a woman living, old or young, that could take my fancy away from the girl I won in Baltimo, after the wah. She's my love, the same now as then. You're pretty good-looking, Posey, so people seem to think. But your mother. Lord! She was a beauty, and as soft and gentle as an evenin' breeze.""I sometimes wish I had her now, daddy. Since I've been eighteen, and everybody's so good to me, I mean. There are such lots of little things a mother could tell me. And to think I was the only child she kept—the very last of your family—and she couldn't have stayed with me! Ah! well, don't mind me, dad, I'm happy enough with you.""You certainly don't often pull a long face, dearie. If there's anything troubling you, out with it, and let's see if I can't help.""It's rather a big little secret, daddy. Maybe I oughtn't have kept it so long, but I was ashamed to tell, I reckon. You see nothing like this ever happened to me before."The old man's faded eyes kindled with sudden fire. He halted her suddenly, facing seaward, and together they leaned over the taffrail."Posey, it hasn't got anything to do with John Glynn, has it?" he asked with a tremulous eagerness of joy."Yes, daddy.""He spoke to you before we sailed?""Just before. That last evening, at the hotel, when you went off to smoke with the nice old gentleman you fought beside at Seven Pines, and left us sitting in the corridor looking at the people. He said everything that was nice about you, first; how you had been his father's dearest friend, and had helped him through college, and started him in New York, and he loved you dearly, and never could repay the debt. Then he recalled how he and I had known each other as boy and girl, though he always thought of me as nothing but a little kid, until he saw me last year at home, and just now, in New York. He told me how hard he was working, with scarcely a minute to call his own, and what a tough struggle it would be to get up top, but that he meant to do it, if he lived——""And he will—he will!" interrupted Mr. Winstanley, in accents of strong pride. "He didn't tell you, I'll bet, that he never took up my offer to stake him with funds for his expenses in New York, till he got square upon his feet, and that he never drew a blessed cent of it?""He said you'd been more than good, but he wouldn't impose on you. You see, daddy, John knows that all these years you've had as much as you could do to keep us going, and have me educated. I suppose he was as surprised as I, when he found you were taking me abroad in style—you extravagant old thing, you!""Of course. Of course," murmured Mr. Winstanley, acquiescently. "It does seem extravagant, doesn't it? But we'll manage to make two ends meet, I reckon, if we pinch, afterwards, to make up for it. Go on, Posey, go on. Tell me the rest about you and John. It is music to my ears.""I thought so, daddy," the girl said, with a tender sigh. "And though I wasn't quite ready to do what he asked me, I couldn't say no. So when he said you and his father had always wanted us two to be married, some day, and would I consider myself engaged to him, until he was ready to give me a home in New York, I just asked him to wait till the next day, and I would telephone my answer before the steamer sailed. And I did. That's what I was doing when you called to me that the carriage was waiting to drive us to the pier. I was shut up in the telephone booth at the hotel saying 'yes' to John.""And you never gave the poor lad a chance to see you face to face again?" exclaimed her father, every wrinkle of his face luminous with satisfaction at the news."Ye-es," said Posey, "I saw him for a minute over the rail of the steamer. He just rushed down from his office the minute he could get off. I'd told him I'd write him all the usual things by the pilot-boat, and from Queenstown; and he'd laughed and said he'd have to be satisfied with that! You mustn't expect John and me to be silly, father, for we aren't a bit, either of us. I ought to tell you that he's been in love with another girl, and it didn't turn out well, and he put her out of his thoughts forever.""So that was what ailed the lad last Spring when I went North on that business of the mine? I might have guessed it, poor boy, he was blue as indigo. Well, it was handsome of him to tell you, daughter, and, my word for it, your marriage will be just as happy as if he hadn't taken that other little notion before he saw that you were the real girl for him. It'll all be blown away like the steamer smoke yonder, and he'll wonder at himself for ever thinking he could have put up with the idea of any wife but you. For that's a man's way, my dear, since the world began.""Was it your way, daddy?" asked Posey archly."My child, I was ready to put myself before the mouth of the first cannon I met up with when I went into service, and be blown to atoms, through calf-love for a young lady of our neighborhood. She jilted me to marry a widower, a Baptist preacher by the name of Simkins; no, it was Lawson, I think—but never mind. She had nine children when I saw her next, and we didn't recognize each other. When we did, she talked to me about Simpkins'es (it really was Simkins) asthma, without a break for fifteen solid minutes, and I got away, thanking the Lord it wasn't my asthma, and my fat wife, and my nine children, howling and doing stunts all over the house—yet I lived to be happier than any king with the real angel of my life! But, dearie, it isn't the time to be talking of anything but you and John Glynn, and the joy you've given me in promising to marry each other some day. He is the finest young man I know, and the one of all in the world I'd choose to share what—there, you do the talking, I can't trust myself.""Daddy, do you want me to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the way I always have? Then here it is. What I've promised to do, I'll do. I think just as much of John as you do, in a way, and I was proud to have him ask me. But I felt he was doing it because he had made up his mind it was the thing of all others to please you; also, because it was safe and right to anchor his life to a girl who belonged to his own class, and had no ideas beyond the plain, homely things she had been brought up to. But he doesn't know me, in the least. I'm not the girl he thinks, only a vain, conceited creature who loves admiration and flattery and pretty things, and all the luxuries I see other people having on this voyage, and the high-up places of the world. I want to live, to have my fling, and what's worse, I want to be loved—really, as I think it ought to be!"Her voice dropped with her eyelashes; a burning blush ran up and overspread her face. Old Herbert Winstanley asked himself if this were, indeed, his little girl, his romp in pinafores of a year or two back? Whence had come the blooming vision of young womanhood who had supplanted the Posey of his recent lean and struggling years? What were these obsessions controlling her? He could not tell, and meekly bent before the blast."I reckon you know best, daughter," he said, clearing his throat in some embarrassment. "But this much I'm as sure of as that the sun is in the sky. You've done a wise thing, and a good thing, in engaging yourself to John. Be true to him and to yourself, and the rest'll all come right. Only, it's fair to tell you that you and John aren't a-going to begin as poor as poverty's back door, the way we did. I've had a little streak o' luck lately, and there's cash enough to give you your fling in Europe, and start you and John to housekeeping in New York in pretty decent style. He's a luckier fellow than he knows, is John, only I don't mean to tell him so yet a while, or anybody else, and neither must you, my girl.""Could I have a cabin de luxe, and a French maid and a chaperon to travel with, daddy," she asked with a glowing countenance, "instead of half a stateroom with a horrid woman who drenches herself with scents, and lectures me about keeping the light turned on while I do my hair? Could I have a little string of real pearls, and one lovely pearl ring, and a rug for my steamer-chair lined with otter, and tailor-made suits that fit adorably—like Miss Carstairs, who's just my ideal, though she'll hardly look at me?""We'll see, we'll see," mumbled Mr. Winstanley, looking as much alarmed as did the fisherman in the "Arabian Nights," when he had let the Genie escape and soar from the Magic Bottle. "Seems to me you spent a good lot shopping in New York the week we were there.""I wish I could throw all that trash I bought overboard," said the girl, gritting her teeth in vexation. "Nobody but an idiot from Alison's Cross Roads would have chosen such things and thought them stylish.""It may be so," said her father, resignedly, "but putting one fact alongside another, it looks as if you'd had as good a show as any young lady on board, daughter.""Daddy, you are the dearest old bat!" cried she, revealing to his astonished gaze her eyes full of big, bright, childish tears. "How can't you see that I'm only a peep-show, an amusement for all these people, and that most of the women on board hardly speak to me? I don't care a bit about that horrid old war-horse of the Scripture that snorts and champs—Miss Bleecker! I consider her beneath my notice, and she may insult me all she pleases. And Mrs. Vereker is another, and all their set—dull, stiff women, with nothing but their wealth to recommend them.""Well, if it comes to that," murmured Mr. Winstanley, involuntarily clinking the sovereigns he carried in a buckskin pouch in his breeches pocket, then checking himself and saying no more."They may say I'm a chorus girl all they're a mind to. I know I'm not, and that you are one of the most honored citizens of our town, and we came of good old stock. I don't deny I've wanted to go on the stage. Till lately, I've simply yearned for it. But that, and all sorts of notions I had seem to have vanished away since I came aboard—since I've known Miss Carstairs.""That's the young woman sits at our table? Can't say I blame you, Posey, I kinder took a shine to her, myself, the first evening out; but she chilled on me afterward, and I'm never for troubling folks with my attentions.""She chilled on you because of me, poor dear; for any nice girl in her senses must see you're a heavenly angel, if you do wear rusty tweeds. She thought I was crude and aggressive and cheap, and so I am, maybe, but I don't mean to stay so; and if ever I get to be anything better, it'll be Helen Carstairs that's started me. But she won't know it, and won't know me, and that's really what's bothering me so dreadfully, daddy.""Her father's the great Carstairs, isn't he? Didn't I hear John say he'd indirectly given him a lift last year, and said some good things about the way the boy managed a certain office job that came under Carstairs' eye?""Did he? There now, daddy, is just the girl John would have been wise to get, if he could. She might have helped him up the ladder by just putting out a finger-tip. And he is so ambitious, so fastidious. I could see that little trifles about me jarred on him constantly—the very things these lords and grandees aboard admire the most it seems. He called them provincialisms, and Lord Channel Fleet says they're simply delicious. Who am I to believe?""Ah, my little girl, I can't tell you, and that's the truth. But John's apt to be right, only whether or not Miss Carstairs is his ideal, you just be yourself, and don't put on any frills. You can't help being lively, thank God, nor true, nor generous, for you're your own mother's child. You'll make friends, never fear, the only trouble to my mind is lest they should be those who care for you only because——""Why, daddy, one would almost think I am something in disguise. You needn't be afraid of any one on this trip, however. They'll all forget me the day the ship touches Liverpool.""Well, it don't matter much when we've got John behind us, does it, daughter? I reckon he'll be proud as I am to hear what a belle you've been. There's only one thing it's crossed my mind he mightn't fancy over-much—your going around with that lord fellow that's been so much talked about—that Clandonald man, I mean.""Oh! daddy,don't!"Mr. Winstanley had thought himself, through experience, prepared for most of the idiosyncrasies of femininity as developed by his daughter, but he could not have reasonably counted upon the look that came into her face as she made this protest. It caused him to stare, shake himself like a wet dog, scrutinize her again narrowly, then utter an exclamation familiar to him only under stress of strong emotion."Stonewall Jackson, daughter! I want to know!"CHAPTER IVThe measure of Mr. Winstanley's curiosity was, however, not to be satisfied on this occasion; since, almost immediately, the colloquy with his daughter over the "Baltic's" rail was destined to interruption by Lord Clandonald in person, who came up to ask if Miss Winstanley were ready for their walk.Since the first evening of their meeting, he had fallen into the habit of seeking her out in a half-shy, wholly unemotional manner, and of spending a half hour or so in her company listening to her merry chatter and insensibly lightening and brightening out of the heavy lassitude that had possessed his soul for so many weary months. With returning animation, the real beauty and high distinction of his face revealed itself. Posey, who had thought of his title merely as a pleasing toy, who had as yet acquired none of the prevalent worship of her average countrymen for the glamour of a place among the hereditary nobility of the lands they affect to surpass in achievement, liked to be with him because of three things—viz., the great strength and beauty of his body, his gift of beautiful diction, and the melodious speech that rang upon her ear like a chime of perfect bells. She also enjoyed his way of brushing his hair and putting on his clothes, and not caring in the least what anybody on board thought of him or said of him. At least, that is what, had she possessed a confidante of her own sex, Miss Winstanley would have admitted concerning her indifferent admirer.He had come to her as a man who at thirty considers himself to have done with life, and consents to take up incidental diversion by the way. He had never met a girl so ignorant of the world, so inexhaustibly interested in things and people, so fresh and healthy, yet innately refined, so daring, yet so sure of herself that no man might take a liberty with her in speech or action; and above all, so pretty.So deliciously pretty! The woman whom he had ruined his life by marrying, five years before, had been accounted a beauty, and was a gentlewoman by tradition and association. As he had seen Ruby Darien last, in the divorce court, she seemed a mere made-up creature who would go to pieces at night in her maid's hands, a thing of artifice and stimulant, of base passions and shallow emotionality, already a has-been, although barely his own age. At what time of her existence was it that she had made his pulses thrill with her loveliness? Could he have ever considered Ruby the peer in looks of this stray maiden come upon by chance to be soon parted with, and never seen again? He hated to think he had believed himself Ruby's lover during the time before he had found her out. He loathed the days before he put her away, when, for his boy's sake, he had kept on terms with her outwardly. After his child died, and he had taken his opportunity to be a free man, he often thanked God, that following that voyage of his wife's to South Africa he had never thought of her as beautiful.But except for the somewhat languid admiration excited in him, the young American had not yet stirred the deeper fountains of Clandonald's feeling. Mariol, observing the progress of affairs, was quietly content. He really considered the acquaintance with Posey a species of mild cure, like a visit to a German health-place where one eats brown bread and baked apples, and goes to bed at ten o'clock. If it had been Miss Carstairs, now, upon whom these desultory attentions of his lordship had been bestowed, Mariol, having ascertained this lady to be the daughter of the world-famous financier, would have been much more actively concerned in forecasting for her a place among the white peacocks at Beaumanoir.It was about Beaumanoir that Clandonald now found himself obliged to talk with Miss Winstanley. With the lightning-like rapidity of growth in steamer intimacies, they had all come to discourse of one another's domiciles and surroundings, and Mariol, whose æstheticism rejoiced in his friend's noble old forsaken home, had shown the girl a photograph of it. Posey, like every Southerner, had an instinctive love and reverence for the historic element in English country homes, and the ancient moated dwelling in whose grounds monarchs had taken their pleasure appealed keenly to her otherwise concrete and contemporaneous view of things. To see it was like stepping out of a modern railway station into an old-world garden of ripe delights. And to be actually walking up and down decks with the owner, albeit he looked like other men and had his hands thrust in the pockets of an indifferently shabby ulster, was a fillip her imagination had not previously known.A little teased, a little flattered by her queries on the subject, Clandonald yet felt assured that her interest was impersonal and genuine. When he remembered how Ruby had hated to stay at Beaumanoir, preferring any small stuffy hotel in Paris or Rome, or on the Riviera, Miss Winstanley's real enthusiasm was refreshing. It almost made him want to go back himself to that spot, haunted by the ghosts of dead beliefs, near which the poor little boy slept, under a tiny mound in the churchyard that he was always trying to forget.Strange, now it always came to him when alone in a balmy wood, with birds singing and sun filtering through the branches; or on Sundays when a church bell rang; or if he awoke suddenly in the middle of the night; or in looking at a field of haymakers and distant grazing sheep! It was not a keen pain any longer, but only a sobering, tender thought, and the man was better for it afterward. Now, again, as he thrust his hands deeper in his pockets and strode up and down beside the girl, dodging other walking pairs, and wishing there were not so many people in the world who wanted to do what he did, the image of the little green mound arose across the waste of wide Atlantic. Was it Posey who inspired his one sacred remembrance? He could not tell, but went on letting her draw him out about his lovely impoverished Beaumanoir, until she was touched and astonished at the feeling he revealed concerning it."Oh! I am sure you will have it all once more, and be able to enjoy everything as of old," she exclaimed impulsively."Perhaps you don't know why this is impossible," he answered, gulping down the bitter fact, "It is quite hopeless for me to live decently there, on all I am ever likely to have in the way of income.""And I, like a goose, keep always ignoring the money question in connection with those beautiful entrancing old English places. I've read about them so often in a book we have of 'Dwellings of the Aristocracy and Gentry,' and also in 'Country Life.' They seem to have been created to go on for ages by themselves, in a state of suspended animation, like the Sleeping Beauty's palace. If you won't think me silly, I'll tell you that when I get hold of a copy of 'Country Life,' I imagine myself living in one house after another of the illustrations, and I want to buy all the horses and dogs and sheep and everything in the advertisements, except, maybe, incubators, which are horrid unnatural things, and the smelly stuff they put upon the grass and flowers that can't say 'don't'!"Clandonald laughed."Rather my own idea. But I supposed all you people of the South owned large estates and many acres to experiment upon.""Oh! dear, no! We personally never owned anything bigger than a back-yard, until my father was persuaded by a man to go shares with him in some land I never saw, where they found both coal and iron. Last year the man died, and my daddy, who had paid up most all the purchase money, came into possession of the whole property. I believe it's turned out better than he thought, and he's lately got something good out of it, else certainly we'd not have had this trip to Europe. I'm glad you never saw Alison's Cross Roads, Lord Clandonald. It's just the homeliest, pokiest little place in Alabama, and the people are good and kind, but commonplace to a degree. The houses are all of wood with jig-saw trimmings and the paint half worn off. Nobody thinks it necessary to improve anything, and the negroes swarm over everywhere, and rule the land.""Then I suppose you'll call me jolly impertinent," said he, "if I wonder how you grew up as you are in the middle of it.""I don't know! I just did. People have grown tired, down there, of holding up their hands over me. My teacher at school, who was born North, was the only one that ever understood why I wanted anything different from the rest. She took several magazines, and told me about others, that I persuaded daddy to subscribe to. She lent me books and talked to me, but two years ago she decided to marry in New York, and I lost her. She lives there now, dear soul, in an awfully little flat. Her husband is in the insurance business, and she edits a column of 'Advice to Girls.' She says she fairly hates some of the idiots who write to her asking the most drivelling questions. But to please the editor, she has to dissemble, and call them dears and answer like a guardian angel when she had rather choke them and be done with it—because the work pays the butcher's bill and half the gas!""Has she taught you that such poverty is evened by the good to be acquired from the married state?""I think so. At least, she and Mr. Bartley have a good deal of fun out of things. Their greatest treat, when their maid's cooking gets too impossible and Mr. Bartley is growing thin, is to go to dinner at an Italian restaurant, a dollar each, with wine, and to eat enough spaghetti to last another little while. Mrs. Bartley got fifteen dollars for looking up facts and dates in the Astor Library for a fashionable lady, who was allotted to read a paper on something she never heard of before, at a meeting of her literary club. Mrs. Bartley ended by doing the whole thing, and the lady was so fascinated by herself in typewriting, that she sent a check for fifteen instead of ten; so the Bartleys took me to their restaurant for dinner, and afterward to the play, in cheap seats. Yes, I think the Bartleys are all right. If their kitchen door could be kept shut, and the smell of cooking be banished from the parlor, I believe they'd be as happy as most people who are married, anyway.""Perhaps, if you and your father are to be in London, you would let me take you out to dinner and cheap seats at the play?""Wouldn't I love it? But you can't drag daddy to the theatre, and I'm not like Miss Carstairs, blessed with a chaperon. Do you notice that, as we are getting 'half-seas over,' Miss Bleecker's English accent becomes more pronounced? She is forever talking about when we are 'in town,' and regretting that it is out of the season, because so few of their great friends will be there to welcome them. She calls all the American duchesses by their first names, and the other United States peeresses that she didn't play with in infancy, she must have brought up by hand.""I am afraid I am too lowly a personage to claim the lady's acquaintance in future," said Clandonald, indifferently. "But I confess I should like, for my friend Mariol's sake, who has conceived a vast admiration for her charge—to manage to ask Miss Carstairs and himself to join you and your father in a run down to Beaumanoir for luncheon, while you are 'in town.' It is pretty, there, in autumn, and there are sure to be some good peaches on the garden wall.""How adorable!" exclaimed Posey. "Daddy might go to that, if I beg him, but Miss Carstairs—! There's the difficulty. She won't more than look at me. I wonder why you, who are born really higher up in the world than Miss Bleecker and Miss Carstairs, never let me feel that I am only a druggist's daughter!""In Athens, they tell you Aristotle kept a chemist's shop," answered Clandonald, laughing. "And I have always understood that some of the most illustrious of the families in New York's Four Hundred were founded upon drugs.""If it wasn't pills, or capsules, or hair tonic, it was some other kind of merchandise!" said Posey, viciously. "And, anyhow, what does it matter? There was a sentence I copied out of a book of Maarten Maartens, that Mrs. Bartley lent me, about there being no other way of living than either on the money you have earned for yourself, or on the money that other people have earned for you. As long as that simple fact remains, the question will also remain whether money-making is so very contemptible!""Try any man living, with an honest chance, and see what he'd answer," said Clandonald with a sigh. "I'd give anything I own for a respectable business that would bring in the cash and the knowledge of how to run it,bien entendu.""You poor thing!" exclaimed Miss Winstanley, guilelessly. "Why weren't you born in dear America? Of course if youcouldgo stalking around in chain-armor like those ancestors of yours at Beaumanoir, it wouldn't seem so appropriate. But just to look at you as you stand, to-day, I should judge there were the makings of a fair business man in you. Look here, Lord Clandonald, I don't know that I was ever better pleased in my life than by that idea of yours of our going to lunch at Beaumanoir with Miss Carstairs. I don't mind telling you I just adore that girl—and the combination of her company with a moat and yew trees, and wall-peaches, and the chance of seeing English rooks—and Miss Bleecker not 'in it,' I'll be eternally obliged.""It seems to me the host counts for unflatteringly little," said Clandonald, somewhat piqued."I didn't mean to have you think so," answered she with astonishing gentleness, "I was only carried away to forget my manners by realizing so many dreams at once. Indeed, I am glad, or shall be, to meet you again after this voyage. Now, I'm going to ask you something that will make you laugh, perhaps, but please don't. Could you give me the address of a really good place in London where I could get frocks and hats, ready-to-wear, that would keep me from looking like a guy?"Poor Clandonald winced at thought of just how he had become acquainted with the bestfaiseusesin London, whose bills he had paid to the uttermost farthing, after the ex-Lady Clandonald had ceased to be. But he could not help smiling at the earnest anxiety of his questioner."I think I might help you a little, perhaps, but surely——""Surely there ought to be some woman aboard to do it? Of course you think so, but if I could tell you half I've divined, and some things I've overheard from them, you'd know I'd never ask one of them. Why, I heard that old Vereker tabby say to the old Bleecker cat, as distinctly as could be, that I was a freak in clothes and a bounder in manners, and she wondered the captain let me go at large.""Oh! I say.""Perfectly true, and I had it out of her by trailing her half-dead husband after me all over the ship, until he hadn't a leg to stand on; and I put a rose in his buttonhole under her very eyes. I've been ashamed of it ever since, but when a girl's got to fight her own battles, what would you have?""There should be always some one glad to fight for you," he said, suddenly fired by her proud young beauty in distress.They had, while speaking, walked down to the dividing rail that cuts off the promenaders of the second cabin from the first-class decks, and for some moments tarried there, Clandonald with his back to it, Miss Winstanley facing him. As the Englishman spoke these unpremeditated words of warm sympathy, for the second time that day there had come into the girl's artless face an expression she certainly had no idea of revealing. It caused Clandonald to pull himself up with a jerk, and stay the vague, rather affectionate, words he had been on the point of uttering, without, perhaps, meaning to have too much importance attached to them. And it was further reflected in the shining green eyes of a second-class passenger in shabby black, standing near by the barrier, wearing a veil of black gauze with large coquettish velvet dots that half concealed her undulated locks of unreasonably ruddy hair!It was not the first time the green gleam of those watchful eyes had been fixed upon Clandonald and his companions. He had, in fact, been under their close observation whenever practicable since leaving New York harbor, in the course of their owner's predatory walks, as she alternately drew near and receded with graceful feline tread, seeming to look at nothing, yet forever alert where the good-looking, lazy young Englishman was concerned.The youthful steward who distends himself for the public good by blowing the bugle for lunch was, on this occasion, the agent of Providence to relieve a strained situation. Clandonald could not, in the face of such a blast, go on with his implied offer of championship. The second-cabin passenger glided swiftly back across her little bridge, and was seen no more. Miss Winstanley, announcing herself half-starved, went to her stateroom to wash her hands. And his lordship, to calm his feelings, partook of a certain small, specially reviving, bitter-sweet draught, which his servant had acquired the gentle art of mixing, during their sojourn in San Francisco. On the way into the dining-room, he found Mariol just ahead of him, amid a congerie of stewards hurrying to and from their pantries with their arms full of crockery, and in an atmosphere tinctured with out-rushing odors of cauliflower and curried rice, gave his friend a word of counsel."I have been talking with Miss Winstanley," he said. "The truth is, Mariol, the poor girl is being pecked by all these women, until it hurts. You have some friendship, perhaps some influence, with Miss Carstairs. Persuade her to be generous, and take the outsider in. It will cost her nothing, and I'm hanged if I understand why she's been such an icicle, as it is.""Did Miss Winstanley invite your intercession?" asked Mariol, dodging back from contact with an inclined plane of mutton broth, in a tilting china plate marked with the White Star's emblem, borne aloft by a deeply apologetic steward."No. Absolutely no. She'd fight to the last ditch before she'd give in to them. But I have an ulterior motive. I want to ask the two young women with my dear old aunt, Lady Campstown, to play propriety, to come down with you to Beaumanoir some day next week, and if they hardly speak——""Under these circumstances, I will engage to attempt the impossible, though whether I achieve it is quite another story. I, too, have been at a loss to fathom Miss Carstairs' apparent intention to ignore our pretty table-mate. I had fancied her too sure of her own position to care about a mere difference in social status. I have found her perfectly amiable. But if, by any chance, the discussion of Miss Winstanley comes up, there is an immediate stiffening of the muscles of the neck and chin, the clear eyes become veiled, and she turns the subject. I could almost fancy, but that they never met before, there was some personal animus between them.""Tell her the girl is her devoted lover from afar, makes her a model in all things, and that we owe the agreeable modifications of the fair Posey's dress and manner exclusively to Miss Carstairs' example.""That is a happy suggestion, and may accomplish good results. But did you ever know a man's eulogy of a woman effect anything with her own sex? It is generally successful only in confirming the worst predispositions, and in precipitating animosity where latent antipathy had sufficed. Still, who could resist the exquisite flattery of such imitation as our Posey's of Miss Carstairs? Fix your day for Beaumanoir, my dear chap. I consider our cause gained in advance.""Do you know, Mariol," said Clandonald as the two men sat down at table, where the ladies had not yet arrived, "I have sometimes fancied that you yourself are getting rather under the spell of the young lady you have engaged to placate in Miss Winstanley's behalf.""Do you know, Clan, that I never before suspected you of the imaginative gift? Nothing but Jonah's gourd—was it Jonah, and was it a gourd?—that grew up and withered in a night, could have had so little time allotted to its natural development, as a fancy by me for Miss Carstairs.""That is no argument. I have read of love affairs beginning at the Statue of Liberty and culminating before the Gulf Stream was crossed. There is really no better medium than mid-Atlantic air for the growth of the tender passion. The leisure of a good voyage is like the forty years of Europe compared with the cycle of Cathay.""It seems to me that you are exculpatory.""I wish to heaven I might be!" exclaimed Clandonald, smothering his very genuine regret with a forkful of the roast beef of old England pastured upon Western plains.The talk that morning with Posey Winstanley had awakened in him certain emotions of a simple elementary sort that, in spite of him, still twanged upon his heart-strings, pleasingly. He had, however, been by no means prepared for that upward glance of her childlike orbs when he had offered her his sympathy. While the normal vanity of the male creature thrilled in quickened interest in response to it, his judgment, his sense of responsibility, nay, of honor, called upon him loudly to let the thing go no further. A patent and audacious coquette on the surface, she was at heart a child who had as yet tasted no reality of sentiment for one of the dominant sex, and to whom such reality would inevitably come with extraordinary force.The whimsicality of her having selected him—a battered plaything of the Fates, who did not want her, who could not indulge in her—for the object of a dawning first passion, struck him hard. He resolved to keep out of her way, and considered how he could have his meals elsewhere, or take to his bed for the remainder of the voyage. The projected luncheon at Beaumanoir should be carried out, and that done, he would have acquitted himself,en galant homme, of all that could be reasonably expected of a travelling Briton toward visiting Americans who had contributed to cheer his voyage across the Atlantic.To begin the new order of things, he let himself be absorbed in conversation by Miss Bleecker, his pet aversion, who leaning over the table, her ample bosom begarlanded with chains and cords, each one sustaining some necessary implement for the aid of vision, far or near, and all of them entangled, was in her best spirits. She, Lady Channel Fleet, and Mrs. Vereker, had been in their deck chairs since broth and biscuits to the present moment, discussing the American women who had married into the British nobility. The three ancient heads cowled in veils and furry hoods—for the air off the Banks had had in it a tang of ice—had bobbed together during this time with a vivacity of movement suggesting the cinematograph.Mrs. Vereker's sciatic leg, which it was the mission of her good-looking footman to keep enwrapped with rugs, when he could forego flirting with the ladies' maids, had been frequently exposed to the biting wind, and yet she did not notice it. Lady Channel Fleet, who, with her husband and a maid, had been doing America economically in somebody's private car, at somebody's expense, wisely kept quiet; since, if she shivered, there was no James to wrap her up. Miss Bleecker, more serene, indeed, than Buddha, in her position between a British matron of title and one of New York's leaders, did not feel the cold. Except in a parterre box at the opera (with the best people), she had no greater idea of happiness than such surroundings; with a long, uninterrupted morning in which to rehash old stories and acquire new ones concerning the ladies under discussion, whom she secretly considered the elect of earth.Lady Channel Fleet, conscious of having had more honors paid to her in America than in the whole course of her undistinguished life at home, was proportionately inclined to be critical of Americans, now she had come away. Her strictures upon their extravagance in living, which she had enjoyed to the top of her bent, the largeness of their houses and the smallness of their grounds, their ridiculous way of running after strangers, and the extraordinary interchange of matrimonial partners among people one knew and visited, were interspersed with various bits of gossip she had been able to pick up in England concerning American peeresses who had not received her at their houses and were, indeed, unconscious of her existence.It had been rather a bitter pill for Mrs. Vereker, who was hand-in-glove with all these fine people both in England and New York, to have to listen politely to Lady Channel Fleet. But, then, Mrs. Vereker had already stood so much in the line of incivility from the British dames of high place upon whom she had lavished courtesy during their sojourn in the land of the free, that she was a little hardened. She knew that on arrival out, she would go from Claridge's to stop at country houses where Lady Channel Fleet's star would never even faintly rise. She was secure in being able to buy herself a good time and the best of everything wherever she might go, and felt, on the whole, content. Miss Bleecker, on the contrary, who had no such solid foundations as her friend, felt in listening to Lady Channel Fleet as acutely pained as if she were reading one of Mr. Benson's or Mr. Hichens' novels, wherein modern Americans of good society are made to say "Popper" and "real nice." She could hardly imagine how her nation could arise to ignoring these dreadful accusations.But when Lady Channel Fleet had incidentally let fall that she always presumed Miss Bleecker, from her speech and manner, to be an Englishwoman born, Miss Bleecker had forgiven all. She redoubled her powers of entertainingness, brought out a few newer, racier anecdotes of persons known to all of them, and the luncheon bugle had caught the gossips unawares, making them feel the morning quite too short."I suppose we shall see you at Mr. Vereker's little supper this evening, Lord Clandonald?" said the chaperon, suavely. "One knows what to expect in the way of private dainties, when Mr. Vereker entertains—game, wines, patés, caviare put up for him on the Volga, flowers, grapes and melons from his own glass houses, and such turtle soup as only the Verekerchefcan send aboard. And to think the poor man has to sit at the head of the table, drinking milk and swallowing little tablets out of his waistcoat pocket, looking gray as a ghost, and thin as a rail, not able to touch a thing of all his delicious spread!""Mr. Vereker has been so good as to include me," answered Clandonald."I believe most of those at our table are expected," the lady went on, in a hardly lowered voice, "with, of course, one or two exceptions. When Mr. Vereker crosses alone they say his parties are apt to be a little mixed. But with his wife aboard—she is so thoroughly exclusive, one need never fear."What might have been omitted from the words, was accentuated by a manner of contempt whose objects there was no mistaking. Mr. Winstanley as usual appeared not to be listening to the passing chat; but his daughter lost not a syllable or look; Helen Carstairs, also, fully appreciated the situation. While Posey, with rare self-control, kept her own counsel and remained silent, Miss Carstairs, flushing faintly, spoke so that all present could hear her."I'm afraid I'm one of those who fail to appreciate the honor of Mr. Vereker's invitations, ashore or afloat. Who was it who said to be left out by him was a greater compliment than to be placed at his right hand?""Helen, I'm surprised to hear you talk such nonsense," began her chaperon briskly, but was interrupted by Posey Winstanley, who with a grateful glance at Helen, spoke in tones as quiet and measured as her own."Then I am certainly past getting the benefit of Miss Carstairs' hint, Miss Bleecker, since Mr. Vereker asked me first, before seeing if he could get the others; and I was rash enough to accept."
"Certainly, Mariol, you have found your American types ready to hand upon this voyage," Lord Clandonald was saying, as the two men walked up and down with their cigars upon the deck decried by Miss Carstairs' chaperon. "The most obvious one is, of course, the astonishing young person who aroused us from the spiritual lethargy of a first meal at sea, when one is always on guard not to be too accessible."
"She is like one of those Eastern shops, where everything is in the window," Mariol answered. "But adorably fresh and naïve and pretty. No other continent could produce her than the wide and liberal one we are just quitting."
"Might we but keep her to ourselves!" said Clandonald, mockingly. "But I foresee that she will be the wonder and the joy of the entire ship's company on our run over. And the mild old boy who retires into the background to give his Wonder every chance! I rather like the old boy, I think."
"My own taste would be for the young lady who is protected by Buddha reincarnate, in the person of the disapproving chaperon. Her beauty is rarer, more subtle, than the other's; she is clearly of thefine fleurof the American aristocracy of dollars. I suspect a Colonial ancestor somewhere, and you observed that the chaperon did not disdain us too much, to let fall a hint or two concerning the custom of splendor in her charge's life. When they find you out, Clandonald, I'll wager the sun will promptly shine between the clouds for you."
"The old woman is in the apologetic stage for America, and that's enough to give me a strong disgust for her. Let them be anything that's real, and I'm ready to meet Americans 'hands across the sea.' But the ones that affect to decry their nationality, to convince us that they are of a small, segregated class that stand on higher ground than the rest, are abhorrent to me. Clearly, Buddha's protégée belongs to that class? and will not tarry to let us become aware of it."
"Grant that my Mdlle. Hélène—for I don't know her other name—is both beautiful and finely bred, and I will abandon you the rest of her sisterhood. She is full of an exquisite intellectuality, but it would not prevent her loving if her heart were awakened—and if I am not mistaken, it has already been awakened. Imagine a young girl,chez nous, with that expression in her eyes, and yet that delicate restraint of manner. I should like to know the fair Hélène's history."
"That you might dissect her with admirable grace in a feuilleton thattout Pariswould read and applaud—and—forget her the next hour, in a new enthusiasm."
"Better to possess all the enthusiasms than none, old chap. I am really in despair over your failure to be aroused by the infinite variety of the diversions offered to you in this journey of ours that, alas! must end too soon."
"There is one pleasure that has never palled on me, and that is the society of my travelling companion. You are the ideal one in many respects, Mariol; but if I could point out one virtue more than another that distinguishes you in that character, it is the letting a man enjoy all his bad humors, his fads, his follies, if you will, unchecked and unbridled. I have sometimes basely suspected you of sacrificing me in order to make copy of my infirmities. But, at any rate, I have enjoyed blessed liberty, and, whatever the result, I have profited by the semblance of a perfect tact and consideration."
"A roundabout way of warning me not to intrude my advice upon you now. But seriously, Clandonald, and at any risk, I must tell you that you need rousing. That past of yours, unsavory as it was through no fault of yours, has been long enough decently interred for you to forget it, and to recreate your life's happiness. One can't be sore always, any more than we can love always, or mourn always. And you, of all men the one best fitted to wear the yoke of your staid British virtues, to serve your country and your king at home, to be a model landlord, a husband and a paterfamilias,comme il y en a peu! For heaven's sake, accept the blessed opportunity of your present freedom, and make up for that wretched first mistake. You aren't happy, you have no ambition, no purpose, no zest in living. Get yourself a wife."
"This from Mariol, the scoffer, the celibate! My dear fellow, I forgive you your trespass upon forbidden ground, because I know you are sincere. But you forget one small, important fact. The person who bore my name, and her various works of evil, have so depleted my finances that, had I the courage, I haven't the wherewithal to hawk my wares in the marriage mart. I wonder if you know what it costs to keep a Lady Clandonald in the enjoyment of the domestic atmosphere of which you speak. I know to my cost. Unless she were a beautiful savage, content to retire with me to one of those isles of the South Sea poor Louis Stevenson idealized, I couldn't even give her a season in town, or a trip to Paris or Homburg, much less races, and all the bridge a woman needs; and so there'd be the devil to pay, you see. If she would set up a bonnet-shop, or a place for horribly dear frocks, and keep me on the proceeds—! but otherwise, I'm as poor as a rat, Mariol, and haven't your resources, or royalties, remember."
"A small matter, my dear lad, with the ever-continuing flood of American dollars pouring from West to East through the facile clasp of the fair beings by whom we are presently surrounded. And you would not run great risks. There is this to be said for them, that American ladies rarely degenerate into either bores, dupes or pieces of household machinery: 'Le familier vulgaire, utile et sans bouquet, comme le vin qu'on boit avec l'eau.' They progress with the epoch and the civilization that claim them. Take—as a matter of illustration merely—either of the two young women who grace our board."
"As a matter of illustration, merely," answered Clandonald, laughing, "I'd prefer to take the sweet child of nature, combining, with the vulgarity of a powdered nose, the eyes of an intelligent cherub recently short-coated."
"As you please," said Mariol, arching his brows resignedly. "My choice for you would have been the fine-grained daughter of the Puritans with hair the color of a hazelnut, the flat, straight back, and resolute figure gowned by Paquin. I dare say both ladies are accessible to what you have to offer them, or that either would soon fit into place in the long walk at Beaumanoir, among those strutting white peacocks against a background of clipped yews and sun-warmed ancient brick. No American girl could resist that walk and those white peacocks, Clandonald, take my word for it."
"Then marry one yourself, and I'll let the place to you for a song."
"I have still to see Tibet," answered the other, stopping to light a fresh cigar.
Their talk ended in a discussion wide afield from the subject with which it had begun. But when Mariol turned in, it was with a throb of secret satisfaction that he had been able, in the darkness, and apparentlyà l'improviste, to wing in the direction of his friend a shaft he had long held in reserve for him.
He had been with Clandonald, side by side, wading through the miserable mire of his divorce case, and rejoiced when he saw him rid for ever of the creature who had dragged him down. The two men had met first in South Africa, while Clandonald was lying ill of enteric, and Mariol, coming upon him by accident in the course of his own explorations for observation and adventure at the seat of war, had nursed him with the gentleness and devotion of a woman, until he was out of danger and ready for the voyage home. During his first convalescence, Clandonald had received the plainly unwelcome news of his wife's intended journey out, "to look after her dear old boy." The arrival of her errant ladyship, followed by the untoward discovery of her real motives in making this heroic effort, and the hardly concealed scandal of her companionship on the voyage, precipitated a relapse of Clandonald's malady, and the ultimate severance, some two years later, of his heavy marriage bond, borne during the lifetime of a boy who died through her neglect.
In all this dreary time Mariol had stood by him and held him up. The brilliant mocker, the professed skeptic of all tenderness apart from the metaphysics of the sex question, had developed into the best of hard-luck friends; and their agreement to travel together after Clandonald was free and had left the army proved more than a success.
Now they were drifting homeward again, Mariol to his boulevards and the fond congenial life of Paris, Clandonald—to what? Mariol, with his keen insight and ready sympathy, saw that his friend was returning to England, restless, unsatisfied, out of tune with his future surroundings; well in body and healthy in his mind, indeed, but in no humor to pick up his life from where his late partner had cast it, like a jewel, into wayside dirt.
Mariol had hoped much from their visit to America, where they had found themselves, during the latter part of the season at Newport, subjected to the overpowering hospitality of the leaders of the great world. But although Clandonald's antecedents were as well known and familiarly discussed there, as in England and on the Continent, and there had been displayed no disposition on the part of society to visit his evil fortune upon him, the young man passed but abstractedly through the ordeal of charms and graces, defiled before his gaze, during the hours when the world that entertains is in evidence. Mariol sometimes wondered whether his friend would not have been more easily consoled in an atmosphere less surcharged with the art of pleasing.
The moment he had laid eyes upon Miss Carstairs, whose patronymic he was yet to learn, it had flashed upon the Frenchman's active brain that here was the solution of his perplexities. That the girl met so thoroughly his own exacting taste in externals, seemed to him a convincing proof she would be the ideal angel to step down into Clandonald's troubled pool and make it clear. Her looks, age, good breeding, reserve of bearing, and evident fortune, added to the fact that she, too, had in her eyes the shadow of past sorrow, left the kind fictionist no doubt of his own perspicacity in selection. He had addicted himself to the task of making friends with her, with a promptitude facilitated by his secret hopes, and Clandonald's indifference proved the more provoking in that it bore every aspect of probable enduringness.
Mariol fell asleep, that memorable first night at sea, congratulating himself that his cares in connection with matters of sentiment were so purely perfunctory, and that whatever the issue out of Clandonald's impassivity, no personal interest in any one of the disturbing sex could ever afford his mentor other than the emotion of a scientist who skewers a new butterfly for his microscope.
CHAPTER III
There was to be no complexity attending the position taken by Miss Pamela Winstanley, commonly called Posey, in the consideration of her fellow-passengers of the "Baltic." From the first day out, as has been said, every one aboard became a prey to the absorbing interest created by her daily movements, sayings and doings. Beyond the fact that she was travelling with her father, a Mr. Herbert Winstanley, sometime of the Army of the Confederate States, presumably a person of very moderate social place and fortunes, the antecedents of the radiant young beauty were unknown, and she was accepted upon her face value alone. It was indisputable that, whenever she appeared conversation centered upon her to the exclusion of more serious topics. And, in return, Miss Winstanley lavished her effervescing good graces with impartiality upon all admirers in attendance. The honors of her smiles and pretty sayings were shared alike by Lord Clandonald and any minor individual of the impressible sex, who might chance to be on hand. Jolly old Lord Channel Fleet, resembling Santa Claus with his roseate face and white fringe of a beard, found himself vying for her favors with a succession of American college youths in sweaters, one of whom, famed in university circles as a thrower of the hammer, stood about in attitudes expressive of rank jealousy, whenever his sportive lordship was at her side. Lady Channel Fleet, indeed, was known to be nervous lest the threatening young man should do something dreadful to her liege.
Miss Bleecker, Mrs. Vereker, and sundry mothers of unentertaining daughters who struggled into their deck-chairs without assistance and walked with each other the diurnal mile, looking as if nothing would induce them to descend to the companionship of the supporting sex, formed a number of ingenious theories to account for the fair Pamela. She was a milliner's forewoman, going out to secure fashions for Alison's Cross Roads. She was a dashing divorcee, who had resumed her maiden name. She had been a barmaid in California, an artist's model in New York, an assistant washerwoman in the Klondyke, had tried on cloaks in a leading haberdashery of Chicago—in all of which capacities there was somebody aboard who had known somebody else who had actually seen her! But of suppositions concerning the charmer, the most popular was that she had sung on the local stage somewhere in the South, and was now going abroad to study for comic opera. For in addition to other devices for the bewilderment of mere man, Miss Winstanley was found to possess a fascinating gift of rendering little Creole chansonettes that conjured up the warm velvet-like touch of Southern air, the region of palm and pine and mocking-birds, of orange flowers and Cherokee roses, and the love spells lingering around it. Then she could croon "Mammy" songs, of a negress hushing her nursling, in a way to bring tears to the eyes of most hardened listeners. And between the songs and croonings she would describe scenes, and impersonate actors, with a natural fire and pathos that are rarely taught or teachable. But of this accomplishment she was more chary than the rest, and there were those heard to declare that, on one occasion on deck, she had sung tears into her own eyes, and abruptly stopped, declaring she did not care to do it before more than one or two. The incident being repeated to Miss Bleecker, that inveterate lady declared it to be but a clever bit of acting to whet expectation of future appearances behind the footlights.
Amid the successes of his daughter's meteoric rise, little Mr. Winstanley prowled about the ship, a solitary and somewhat pathetic figure in his evident belief that self-effacement was the first duty of the parent of such a Phoenix among maidens. Following his abortive reopening of acquaintance with Miss Carstairs, he withdrew into his shell and spoke no more to her. Helen reproached herself that she had not been able to conceal from him the repulsion at first inspired in her by her rival in John Glynn's favor. Old Winstanley's mild twinkle of the eye, the smile playing around his thin lips, gave no hint, however, that his retiring attitude was inspired by offence. He seemed to live apart in a world of his own thoughts and memories, from which even his Posey's triumphs could not extract him for long.
And Posey, Miss Bleecker to the contrary (who from her end of the table consistently glared down the intruder's right to be), continued to reign in her revolving chair, as the established queen of every meal. Her quips and cranks of fan, her lawless sallies at the expense of those around her, had effectually banished restraint and brought the diverse elements of their party together; even Helen parting with her formality to join in the talk, when convinced by observation that Miss Winstanley knew nothing whatever of her prior acquaintance with John Glynn.
From the beginning, the Honorable Bobby Vane, Lord Kennington's scapegrace boy, had fallen head over ears in love with Posey, and was ready to forfeit his not very brilliant prospects in life to marry her, no matter in what capacity she had previously appeared. Posey laughed at and with the lad, enjoying his off-hand gayety and mischief, and there it began and ended. The Russian savant, under the influence of Miss Winstanley's presence, forgot to grumble about draughts and sauces, and smoothed his grim-visaged front into affability, answering her in English as choice as M. de Mariol's French. The old German count, proving to be the most kindly and merry of comrades, developed a faculty for telling uproariously funny stories, of which the effect was impaired only by such a strange mispronunciation of the English tongue that his auditors were kept supernaturally grave in the effort not to smile at him, and therefore did not smile at all.
A volume of Mariol's clever (and happily innocuous) short stories having been produced by somebody and put into circulation on the ship, Miss Winstanley had familiarized herself with them, and was engaged at odd moments in translating the littlechef d'oeuvresof style, with Bobby Vane, in whose imagination a book of any kind, save a betting book, loomed larger than an elephant.
Mariol, to whom direct address from casual people upon the subject of his writings was an affliction, had been rather dreading the young lady's comments, and was relieved when she disposed of him thus easily:
"I think they're just lovely, Mr. Mariol, and am trying to make Mr. Vane agree with me, but he declares they're too jolly dismal and give him the awful blues. After this, when people say they envy me being at table with you, I can truly tell them you don't talk the least bit like your books."
"Mrs. Kipling told me once," said Clandonald, following a laugh at Mariol's expense, "that when a gushing American girl asked how she could endure the brilliancy of a certain chat between her husband and Cecil Rhodes on the Kiplings' veranda in South Africa, she had been puzzled what to answer, because, as a matter of fact, each of these gentlemen had been trying to talk more delightful drivel than the other. What good luck for the rest of us, that great minds do unbend in the intimacy of private discourse!"
"If one doesn't talk in brief paragraphs, like those columns printed in American newspapers for busy men to read in elevated trains, one isn't listened to, I find," said the author, ruefully.
"In most countries, nowadays," observed Prince Zourikoff, looking anxiously to see whether the portion of cold braised beef left upon the platter was enough for his liberal appetite, "the fine arts of conversation and correspondence have both been driven like chaff before the wind of modern restlessness. Nobody converses, few read, friendly communication is achieved by wire or telephone. And as to introducing a serious topic into society—perish the thought! One would be voted a superannuated nuisance."
"I have always thought it the best compliment a man can pay a woman," said Miss Carstairs, blushing a little, "when he talks to her, in earnest, about what dominates his thoughts."
Mariol flashed an appreciative glance at her. Clandonald cried out:
"Heaven defend your sex, my dear lady, if they had to sit still and listen to most men's governing thoughts. And, on the whole, there is nothing so wearing as a person with ideas that have never been applied. To-day, we must think and act, and accomplish or fail, before we talk. And as far as talk goes, it's everybody's plain duty to be amusing and not long."
"To come down before the footlights, and do one's turn, and then drop back again," interpolated Miss Bleecker, with a glance at the beauty, who was helping Bobby Vane to a baked potato. "You are quite right, Lord Clandonald. It is perfect audacity for any one person, whether clever or insignificant, to attempt to monopolize attention. Everybody else is invariably bored by it, where they are not laughing in their sleeves."
"Have you seen many persons laughing in their sleeves, Miss Bleecker?" asked Posey Winstanley, innocently. "Did they do it when you were young? I always wondered how. Mr. Vane, please stop eating long enough, to let's try laughing in our sleeves at Miss Bleecker. I reckon she'll tell us if it's the real thing."
"There are places, then, where they do say 'I reckon,'" pursued Miss Bleecker, impassively. "You mentioned, Lord Clandonald, how much you were disappointed not to hear more provincialisms of speech in America. I should think Miss Winstanley could give you all you care to collect."
"Did you ever hear, Miss Winstanley," put in Mariol quickly, "the pretty speech made by King William IV about a charming country-woman of yours, whom some one asked, 'Pray, do you come from that part of America where they guess and where they calculate?' 'Lady Wellesley comes from where they fascinate,' said the gallant monarch."
Bobby Vane clapped his hands approvingly.
"That's rippin', ain't it, Mr. Mariol! My goodness me, wish I weren't such a duffer at writing things down an' spellin' or I'd make a note of it. What?"
"Come to school at Alison's Cross Roads, Alabama, and we'll teach you how," said Posey.
"Helen, you will find me on the boat-deck by Mrs. Vereker," said Miss Bleecker, majestically arising. "I have had quite enough of this. And I consider it my mission to spend as much time as I can give to poor Mrs. Vereker, prostrated by care and anxiety as she has been, and her husband never allowed to come near her on the voyage."
A light sparkled in the wide-open blue eyes of the ship's charmer, and a smile hovered around her pretty mouth. She was well aware that about the second day out, the critical and finical Mr. Vereker had joined in the universal procession toward her shrine. She had avoided an introduction as long as possible, compelling her ancient admirer to perform wonders of intrigue and diplomacy, before he was admitted to the privilege of her acquaintance. Since then, he had persecuted her for walks on deck, secured for her white violets, at vast expense, from some one who was taking them out in the ship's ice-box for sale in London; had sent to her table daily tokens of regard, from pats of choice butter, bunches of black Hamburg grapes, and broiled birds, to Southern "pin-money" pickles. Not content with these tangible evidences, Mr. Vereker had promised her a dog, and invited her to motor with them through Touraine. The poor man, who had, in Miss Bleecker's parlance, "no stomach to speak of," was expecting the return of one of his periodical attacks, when he would be forced to go upon milk and Educator biscuits, too enfeebled to walk the deck and flirt, and wished to make the most of his well moments; but, so far, Miss Winstanley had been constantly engaged with others, and could not yield him the tête-à-tête desired.
Miss Bleecker, enlisted under the standard of a complaining wife, was gratified to leave the party, having hurled the final shaft. Mariol liked the self-control with which Posey turned immediately to other topics, no less than he appreciated the effort Helen Carstairs made to atone for her companion's venom by remaining awhile in conversation that included the girl attacked. The Frenchman, who noted most things passing near him, had been making up his mind that some strong personal reason existed to keep Miss Carstairs in a state of mental self-defence against the attractions of Miss Winstanley. A judgment so clear and cool and fair as Helen's in ordinary matters, he had rarely seen, and he believed her capable of more than the allotted amount of feminine generosity toward those of her own sex. As far as he had been able to gather, she had never before seen or heard of this mysterious young person who had made their voyage so gay. What could the reason be?
It had not escaped him that the Southern girl, taking heed of Helen's low-pitched voice, of her quiet garb and reserved manner among strangers, had profited by them to tone down some of her own extravagances. Already, Miss Winstanley's hair was brushed simply back in a glorious golden sweep, allowing its natural waves to reveal themselves untortured. Already, the obnoxious blue dress with its lace transparencies, the redundant jewelry had gone into retirement, the young girl appearing at dinner in white blouses as simple as Helen's own. Better than all, she no longer challenged people within earshot with her sentiments and opinions.
From time to time, Mariol had detected passing from her to Helen the glances of homage a very unsophisticated girl bestows upon one she has elected to make her heroine. And, despite this artless worship, Miss Carstairs did not relent in her cool demeanor. She was civil always, considerate often, but never yielding in keeping Miss Winstanley at a distance. The men at their table were unanimously beginning to feel that a girl may win easily in the chief events of such a contest, and yet be badly worsted in the end.
The only one among them who seemed to have preserved indifference on the subject of Posey's wrongs, was the quiet little man in the mustard-colored tweeds, with the cowboy hat of sunburnt felt, who accompanied the beauty to her meals, but was rarely seen with her elsewhere.
One afternoon, however, she broke away from her cordon of admirers, and finding the old fellow walking alone, linked her arm in his, adjusting her pace to his.
"Why, little girl, what's come to you, that the beaux have left you no better company than mine?" he said, with the jocular homage of his habitual manner to her.
"There isn't much better company than yours, dad, and I'm beginning to find it out," she answered, caressingly.
[image]"There isn't much better company than yours, dad."
[image]
[image]
"There isn't much better company than yours, dad."
"Well, well, a compliment from the belle o' the ship! Reckon when I get to London I'll have to be buying myself a new suit, and a dozen o' boiled shirts, though, come to think of it, seems to me I'm no great way behind that Lord Channel Fleet o' yours in the matter of clothes and footwear—regular beetle-crushers, those shoes of his, and his hat an even match for mine."
"He's rather an old dear, anyhow," said Posey; "but I've got another ancient on the string that's too foolish to talk about. That Mr. Vereker—he's dyed and made-up, and always fussing about his digestion. He has a young doctor travelling with him to give him hypodermics for his nerves, and they're going to some queer place where he'll have to walk barefoot on wet stones, and diet, with a lot of grand dukes and things that he just loves to talk about. Aren't they funny though, these old society men? Imagine you prancing around after young girls!"
"I can't," said her father, simply. "There isn't a woman living, old or young, that could take my fancy away from the girl I won in Baltimo, after the wah. She's my love, the same now as then. You're pretty good-looking, Posey, so people seem to think. But your mother. Lord! She was a beauty, and as soft and gentle as an evenin' breeze."
"I sometimes wish I had her now, daddy. Since I've been eighteen, and everybody's so good to me, I mean. There are such lots of little things a mother could tell me. And to think I was the only child she kept—the very last of your family—and she couldn't have stayed with me! Ah! well, don't mind me, dad, I'm happy enough with you."
"You certainly don't often pull a long face, dearie. If there's anything troubling you, out with it, and let's see if I can't help."
"It's rather a big little secret, daddy. Maybe I oughtn't have kept it so long, but I was ashamed to tell, I reckon. You see nothing like this ever happened to me before."
The old man's faded eyes kindled with sudden fire. He halted her suddenly, facing seaward, and together they leaned over the taffrail.
"Posey, it hasn't got anything to do with John Glynn, has it?" he asked with a tremulous eagerness of joy.
"Yes, daddy."
"He spoke to you before we sailed?"
"Just before. That last evening, at the hotel, when you went off to smoke with the nice old gentleman you fought beside at Seven Pines, and left us sitting in the corridor looking at the people. He said everything that was nice about you, first; how you had been his father's dearest friend, and had helped him through college, and started him in New York, and he loved you dearly, and never could repay the debt. Then he recalled how he and I had known each other as boy and girl, though he always thought of me as nothing but a little kid, until he saw me last year at home, and just now, in New York. He told me how hard he was working, with scarcely a minute to call his own, and what a tough struggle it would be to get up top, but that he meant to do it, if he lived——"
"And he will—he will!" interrupted Mr. Winstanley, in accents of strong pride. "He didn't tell you, I'll bet, that he never took up my offer to stake him with funds for his expenses in New York, till he got square upon his feet, and that he never drew a blessed cent of it?"
"He said you'd been more than good, but he wouldn't impose on you. You see, daddy, John knows that all these years you've had as much as you could do to keep us going, and have me educated. I suppose he was as surprised as I, when he found you were taking me abroad in style—you extravagant old thing, you!"
"Of course. Of course," murmured Mr. Winstanley, acquiescently. "It does seem extravagant, doesn't it? But we'll manage to make two ends meet, I reckon, if we pinch, afterwards, to make up for it. Go on, Posey, go on. Tell me the rest about you and John. It is music to my ears."
"I thought so, daddy," the girl said, with a tender sigh. "And though I wasn't quite ready to do what he asked me, I couldn't say no. So when he said you and his father had always wanted us two to be married, some day, and would I consider myself engaged to him, until he was ready to give me a home in New York, I just asked him to wait till the next day, and I would telephone my answer before the steamer sailed. And I did. That's what I was doing when you called to me that the carriage was waiting to drive us to the pier. I was shut up in the telephone booth at the hotel saying 'yes' to John."
"And you never gave the poor lad a chance to see you face to face again?" exclaimed her father, every wrinkle of his face luminous with satisfaction at the news.
"Ye-es," said Posey, "I saw him for a minute over the rail of the steamer. He just rushed down from his office the minute he could get off. I'd told him I'd write him all the usual things by the pilot-boat, and from Queenstown; and he'd laughed and said he'd have to be satisfied with that! You mustn't expect John and me to be silly, father, for we aren't a bit, either of us. I ought to tell you that he's been in love with another girl, and it didn't turn out well, and he put her out of his thoughts forever."
"So that was what ailed the lad last Spring when I went North on that business of the mine? I might have guessed it, poor boy, he was blue as indigo. Well, it was handsome of him to tell you, daughter, and, my word for it, your marriage will be just as happy as if he hadn't taken that other little notion before he saw that you were the real girl for him. It'll all be blown away like the steamer smoke yonder, and he'll wonder at himself for ever thinking he could have put up with the idea of any wife but you. For that's a man's way, my dear, since the world began."
"Was it your way, daddy?" asked Posey archly.
"My child, I was ready to put myself before the mouth of the first cannon I met up with when I went into service, and be blown to atoms, through calf-love for a young lady of our neighborhood. She jilted me to marry a widower, a Baptist preacher by the name of Simkins; no, it was Lawson, I think—but never mind. She had nine children when I saw her next, and we didn't recognize each other. When we did, she talked to me about Simpkins'es (it really was Simkins) asthma, without a break for fifteen solid minutes, and I got away, thanking the Lord it wasn't my asthma, and my fat wife, and my nine children, howling and doing stunts all over the house—yet I lived to be happier than any king with the real angel of my life! But, dearie, it isn't the time to be talking of anything but you and John Glynn, and the joy you've given me in promising to marry each other some day. He is the finest young man I know, and the one of all in the world I'd choose to share what—there, you do the talking, I can't trust myself."
"Daddy, do you want me to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the way I always have? Then here it is. What I've promised to do, I'll do. I think just as much of John as you do, in a way, and I was proud to have him ask me. But I felt he was doing it because he had made up his mind it was the thing of all others to please you; also, because it was safe and right to anchor his life to a girl who belonged to his own class, and had no ideas beyond the plain, homely things she had been brought up to. But he doesn't know me, in the least. I'm not the girl he thinks, only a vain, conceited creature who loves admiration and flattery and pretty things, and all the luxuries I see other people having on this voyage, and the high-up places of the world. I want to live, to have my fling, and what's worse, I want to be loved—really, as I think it ought to be!"
Her voice dropped with her eyelashes; a burning blush ran up and overspread her face. Old Herbert Winstanley asked himself if this were, indeed, his little girl, his romp in pinafores of a year or two back? Whence had come the blooming vision of young womanhood who had supplanted the Posey of his recent lean and struggling years? What were these obsessions controlling her? He could not tell, and meekly bent before the blast.
"I reckon you know best, daughter," he said, clearing his throat in some embarrassment. "But this much I'm as sure of as that the sun is in the sky. You've done a wise thing, and a good thing, in engaging yourself to John. Be true to him and to yourself, and the rest'll all come right. Only, it's fair to tell you that you and John aren't a-going to begin as poor as poverty's back door, the way we did. I've had a little streak o' luck lately, and there's cash enough to give you your fling in Europe, and start you and John to housekeeping in New York in pretty decent style. He's a luckier fellow than he knows, is John, only I don't mean to tell him so yet a while, or anybody else, and neither must you, my girl."
"Could I have a cabin de luxe, and a French maid and a chaperon to travel with, daddy," she asked with a glowing countenance, "instead of half a stateroom with a horrid woman who drenches herself with scents, and lectures me about keeping the light turned on while I do my hair? Could I have a little string of real pearls, and one lovely pearl ring, and a rug for my steamer-chair lined with otter, and tailor-made suits that fit adorably—like Miss Carstairs, who's just my ideal, though she'll hardly look at me?"
"We'll see, we'll see," mumbled Mr. Winstanley, looking as much alarmed as did the fisherman in the "Arabian Nights," when he had let the Genie escape and soar from the Magic Bottle. "Seems to me you spent a good lot shopping in New York the week we were there."
"I wish I could throw all that trash I bought overboard," said the girl, gritting her teeth in vexation. "Nobody but an idiot from Alison's Cross Roads would have chosen such things and thought them stylish."
"It may be so," said her father, resignedly, "but putting one fact alongside another, it looks as if you'd had as good a show as any young lady on board, daughter."
"Daddy, you are the dearest old bat!" cried she, revealing to his astonished gaze her eyes full of big, bright, childish tears. "How can't you see that I'm only a peep-show, an amusement for all these people, and that most of the women on board hardly speak to me? I don't care a bit about that horrid old war-horse of the Scripture that snorts and champs—Miss Bleecker! I consider her beneath my notice, and she may insult me all she pleases. And Mrs. Vereker is another, and all their set—dull, stiff women, with nothing but their wealth to recommend them."
"Well, if it comes to that," murmured Mr. Winstanley, involuntarily clinking the sovereigns he carried in a buckskin pouch in his breeches pocket, then checking himself and saying no more.
"They may say I'm a chorus girl all they're a mind to. I know I'm not, and that you are one of the most honored citizens of our town, and we came of good old stock. I don't deny I've wanted to go on the stage. Till lately, I've simply yearned for it. But that, and all sorts of notions I had seem to have vanished away since I came aboard—since I've known Miss Carstairs."
"That's the young woman sits at our table? Can't say I blame you, Posey, I kinder took a shine to her, myself, the first evening out; but she chilled on me afterward, and I'm never for troubling folks with my attentions."
"She chilled on you because of me, poor dear; for any nice girl in her senses must see you're a heavenly angel, if you do wear rusty tweeds. She thought I was crude and aggressive and cheap, and so I am, maybe, but I don't mean to stay so; and if ever I get to be anything better, it'll be Helen Carstairs that's started me. But she won't know it, and won't know me, and that's really what's bothering me so dreadfully, daddy."
"Her father's the great Carstairs, isn't he? Didn't I hear John say he'd indirectly given him a lift last year, and said some good things about the way the boy managed a certain office job that came under Carstairs' eye?"
"Did he? There now, daddy, is just the girl John would have been wise to get, if he could. She might have helped him up the ladder by just putting out a finger-tip. And he is so ambitious, so fastidious. I could see that little trifles about me jarred on him constantly—the very things these lords and grandees aboard admire the most it seems. He called them provincialisms, and Lord Channel Fleet says they're simply delicious. Who am I to believe?"
"Ah, my little girl, I can't tell you, and that's the truth. But John's apt to be right, only whether or not Miss Carstairs is his ideal, you just be yourself, and don't put on any frills. You can't help being lively, thank God, nor true, nor generous, for you're your own mother's child. You'll make friends, never fear, the only trouble to my mind is lest they should be those who care for you only because——"
"Why, daddy, one would almost think I am something in disguise. You needn't be afraid of any one on this trip, however. They'll all forget me the day the ship touches Liverpool."
"Well, it don't matter much when we've got John behind us, does it, daughter? I reckon he'll be proud as I am to hear what a belle you've been. There's only one thing it's crossed my mind he mightn't fancy over-much—your going around with that lord fellow that's been so much talked about—that Clandonald man, I mean."
"Oh! daddy,don't!"
Mr. Winstanley had thought himself, through experience, prepared for most of the idiosyncrasies of femininity as developed by his daughter, but he could not have reasonably counted upon the look that came into her face as she made this protest. It caused him to stare, shake himself like a wet dog, scrutinize her again narrowly, then utter an exclamation familiar to him only under stress of strong emotion.
"Stonewall Jackson, daughter! I want to know!"
CHAPTER IV
The measure of Mr. Winstanley's curiosity was, however, not to be satisfied on this occasion; since, almost immediately, the colloquy with his daughter over the "Baltic's" rail was destined to interruption by Lord Clandonald in person, who came up to ask if Miss Winstanley were ready for their walk.
Since the first evening of their meeting, he had fallen into the habit of seeking her out in a half-shy, wholly unemotional manner, and of spending a half hour or so in her company listening to her merry chatter and insensibly lightening and brightening out of the heavy lassitude that had possessed his soul for so many weary months. With returning animation, the real beauty and high distinction of his face revealed itself. Posey, who had thought of his title merely as a pleasing toy, who had as yet acquired none of the prevalent worship of her average countrymen for the glamour of a place among the hereditary nobility of the lands they affect to surpass in achievement, liked to be with him because of three things—viz., the great strength and beauty of his body, his gift of beautiful diction, and the melodious speech that rang upon her ear like a chime of perfect bells. She also enjoyed his way of brushing his hair and putting on his clothes, and not caring in the least what anybody on board thought of him or said of him. At least, that is what, had she possessed a confidante of her own sex, Miss Winstanley would have admitted concerning her indifferent admirer.
He had come to her as a man who at thirty considers himself to have done with life, and consents to take up incidental diversion by the way. He had never met a girl so ignorant of the world, so inexhaustibly interested in things and people, so fresh and healthy, yet innately refined, so daring, yet so sure of herself that no man might take a liberty with her in speech or action; and above all, so pretty.
So deliciously pretty! The woman whom he had ruined his life by marrying, five years before, had been accounted a beauty, and was a gentlewoman by tradition and association. As he had seen Ruby Darien last, in the divorce court, she seemed a mere made-up creature who would go to pieces at night in her maid's hands, a thing of artifice and stimulant, of base passions and shallow emotionality, already a has-been, although barely his own age. At what time of her existence was it that she had made his pulses thrill with her loveliness? Could he have ever considered Ruby the peer in looks of this stray maiden come upon by chance to be soon parted with, and never seen again? He hated to think he had believed himself Ruby's lover during the time before he had found her out. He loathed the days before he put her away, when, for his boy's sake, he had kept on terms with her outwardly. After his child died, and he had taken his opportunity to be a free man, he often thanked God, that following that voyage of his wife's to South Africa he had never thought of her as beautiful.
But except for the somewhat languid admiration excited in him, the young American had not yet stirred the deeper fountains of Clandonald's feeling. Mariol, observing the progress of affairs, was quietly content. He really considered the acquaintance with Posey a species of mild cure, like a visit to a German health-place where one eats brown bread and baked apples, and goes to bed at ten o'clock. If it had been Miss Carstairs, now, upon whom these desultory attentions of his lordship had been bestowed, Mariol, having ascertained this lady to be the daughter of the world-famous financier, would have been much more actively concerned in forecasting for her a place among the white peacocks at Beaumanoir.
It was about Beaumanoir that Clandonald now found himself obliged to talk with Miss Winstanley. With the lightning-like rapidity of growth in steamer intimacies, they had all come to discourse of one another's domiciles and surroundings, and Mariol, whose æstheticism rejoiced in his friend's noble old forsaken home, had shown the girl a photograph of it. Posey, like every Southerner, had an instinctive love and reverence for the historic element in English country homes, and the ancient moated dwelling in whose grounds monarchs had taken their pleasure appealed keenly to her otherwise concrete and contemporaneous view of things. To see it was like stepping out of a modern railway station into an old-world garden of ripe delights. And to be actually walking up and down decks with the owner, albeit he looked like other men and had his hands thrust in the pockets of an indifferently shabby ulster, was a fillip her imagination had not previously known.
A little teased, a little flattered by her queries on the subject, Clandonald yet felt assured that her interest was impersonal and genuine. When he remembered how Ruby had hated to stay at Beaumanoir, preferring any small stuffy hotel in Paris or Rome, or on the Riviera, Miss Winstanley's real enthusiasm was refreshing. It almost made him want to go back himself to that spot, haunted by the ghosts of dead beliefs, near which the poor little boy slept, under a tiny mound in the churchyard that he was always trying to forget.
Strange, now it always came to him when alone in a balmy wood, with birds singing and sun filtering through the branches; or on Sundays when a church bell rang; or if he awoke suddenly in the middle of the night; or in looking at a field of haymakers and distant grazing sheep! It was not a keen pain any longer, but only a sobering, tender thought, and the man was better for it afterward. Now, again, as he thrust his hands deeper in his pockets and strode up and down beside the girl, dodging other walking pairs, and wishing there were not so many people in the world who wanted to do what he did, the image of the little green mound arose across the waste of wide Atlantic. Was it Posey who inspired his one sacred remembrance? He could not tell, but went on letting her draw him out about his lovely impoverished Beaumanoir, until she was touched and astonished at the feeling he revealed concerning it.
"Oh! I am sure you will have it all once more, and be able to enjoy everything as of old," she exclaimed impulsively.
"Perhaps you don't know why this is impossible," he answered, gulping down the bitter fact, "It is quite hopeless for me to live decently there, on all I am ever likely to have in the way of income."
"And I, like a goose, keep always ignoring the money question in connection with those beautiful entrancing old English places. I've read about them so often in a book we have of 'Dwellings of the Aristocracy and Gentry,' and also in 'Country Life.' They seem to have been created to go on for ages by themselves, in a state of suspended animation, like the Sleeping Beauty's palace. If you won't think me silly, I'll tell you that when I get hold of a copy of 'Country Life,' I imagine myself living in one house after another of the illustrations, and I want to buy all the horses and dogs and sheep and everything in the advertisements, except, maybe, incubators, which are horrid unnatural things, and the smelly stuff they put upon the grass and flowers that can't say 'don't'!"
Clandonald laughed.
"Rather my own idea. But I supposed all you people of the South owned large estates and many acres to experiment upon."
"Oh! dear, no! We personally never owned anything bigger than a back-yard, until my father was persuaded by a man to go shares with him in some land I never saw, where they found both coal and iron. Last year the man died, and my daddy, who had paid up most all the purchase money, came into possession of the whole property. I believe it's turned out better than he thought, and he's lately got something good out of it, else certainly we'd not have had this trip to Europe. I'm glad you never saw Alison's Cross Roads, Lord Clandonald. It's just the homeliest, pokiest little place in Alabama, and the people are good and kind, but commonplace to a degree. The houses are all of wood with jig-saw trimmings and the paint half worn off. Nobody thinks it necessary to improve anything, and the negroes swarm over everywhere, and rule the land."
"Then I suppose you'll call me jolly impertinent," said he, "if I wonder how you grew up as you are in the middle of it."
"I don't know! I just did. People have grown tired, down there, of holding up their hands over me. My teacher at school, who was born North, was the only one that ever understood why I wanted anything different from the rest. She took several magazines, and told me about others, that I persuaded daddy to subscribe to. She lent me books and talked to me, but two years ago she decided to marry in New York, and I lost her. She lives there now, dear soul, in an awfully little flat. Her husband is in the insurance business, and she edits a column of 'Advice to Girls.' She says she fairly hates some of the idiots who write to her asking the most drivelling questions. But to please the editor, she has to dissemble, and call them dears and answer like a guardian angel when she had rather choke them and be done with it—because the work pays the butcher's bill and half the gas!"
"Has she taught you that such poverty is evened by the good to be acquired from the married state?"
"I think so. At least, she and Mr. Bartley have a good deal of fun out of things. Their greatest treat, when their maid's cooking gets too impossible and Mr. Bartley is growing thin, is to go to dinner at an Italian restaurant, a dollar each, with wine, and to eat enough spaghetti to last another little while. Mrs. Bartley got fifteen dollars for looking up facts and dates in the Astor Library for a fashionable lady, who was allotted to read a paper on something she never heard of before, at a meeting of her literary club. Mrs. Bartley ended by doing the whole thing, and the lady was so fascinated by herself in typewriting, that she sent a check for fifteen instead of ten; so the Bartleys took me to their restaurant for dinner, and afterward to the play, in cheap seats. Yes, I think the Bartleys are all right. If their kitchen door could be kept shut, and the smell of cooking be banished from the parlor, I believe they'd be as happy as most people who are married, anyway."
"Perhaps, if you and your father are to be in London, you would let me take you out to dinner and cheap seats at the play?"
"Wouldn't I love it? But you can't drag daddy to the theatre, and I'm not like Miss Carstairs, blessed with a chaperon. Do you notice that, as we are getting 'half-seas over,' Miss Bleecker's English accent becomes more pronounced? She is forever talking about when we are 'in town,' and regretting that it is out of the season, because so few of their great friends will be there to welcome them. She calls all the American duchesses by their first names, and the other United States peeresses that she didn't play with in infancy, she must have brought up by hand."
"I am afraid I am too lowly a personage to claim the lady's acquaintance in future," said Clandonald, indifferently. "But I confess I should like, for my friend Mariol's sake, who has conceived a vast admiration for her charge—to manage to ask Miss Carstairs and himself to join you and your father in a run down to Beaumanoir for luncheon, while you are 'in town.' It is pretty, there, in autumn, and there are sure to be some good peaches on the garden wall."
"How adorable!" exclaimed Posey. "Daddy might go to that, if I beg him, but Miss Carstairs—! There's the difficulty. She won't more than look at me. I wonder why you, who are born really higher up in the world than Miss Bleecker and Miss Carstairs, never let me feel that I am only a druggist's daughter!"
"In Athens, they tell you Aristotle kept a chemist's shop," answered Clandonald, laughing. "And I have always understood that some of the most illustrious of the families in New York's Four Hundred were founded upon drugs."
"If it wasn't pills, or capsules, or hair tonic, it was some other kind of merchandise!" said Posey, viciously. "And, anyhow, what does it matter? There was a sentence I copied out of a book of Maarten Maartens, that Mrs. Bartley lent me, about there being no other way of living than either on the money you have earned for yourself, or on the money that other people have earned for you. As long as that simple fact remains, the question will also remain whether money-making is so very contemptible!"
"Try any man living, with an honest chance, and see what he'd answer," said Clandonald with a sigh. "I'd give anything I own for a respectable business that would bring in the cash and the knowledge of how to run it,bien entendu."
"You poor thing!" exclaimed Miss Winstanley, guilelessly. "Why weren't you born in dear America? Of course if youcouldgo stalking around in chain-armor like those ancestors of yours at Beaumanoir, it wouldn't seem so appropriate. But just to look at you as you stand, to-day, I should judge there were the makings of a fair business man in you. Look here, Lord Clandonald, I don't know that I was ever better pleased in my life than by that idea of yours of our going to lunch at Beaumanoir with Miss Carstairs. I don't mind telling you I just adore that girl—and the combination of her company with a moat and yew trees, and wall-peaches, and the chance of seeing English rooks—and Miss Bleecker not 'in it,' I'll be eternally obliged."
"It seems to me the host counts for unflatteringly little," said Clandonald, somewhat piqued.
"I didn't mean to have you think so," answered she with astonishing gentleness, "I was only carried away to forget my manners by realizing so many dreams at once. Indeed, I am glad, or shall be, to meet you again after this voyage. Now, I'm going to ask you something that will make you laugh, perhaps, but please don't. Could you give me the address of a really good place in London where I could get frocks and hats, ready-to-wear, that would keep me from looking like a guy?"
Poor Clandonald winced at thought of just how he had become acquainted with the bestfaiseusesin London, whose bills he had paid to the uttermost farthing, after the ex-Lady Clandonald had ceased to be. But he could not help smiling at the earnest anxiety of his questioner.
"I think I might help you a little, perhaps, but surely——"
"Surely there ought to be some woman aboard to do it? Of course you think so, but if I could tell you half I've divined, and some things I've overheard from them, you'd know I'd never ask one of them. Why, I heard that old Vereker tabby say to the old Bleecker cat, as distinctly as could be, that I was a freak in clothes and a bounder in manners, and she wondered the captain let me go at large."
"Oh! I say."
"Perfectly true, and I had it out of her by trailing her half-dead husband after me all over the ship, until he hadn't a leg to stand on; and I put a rose in his buttonhole under her very eyes. I've been ashamed of it ever since, but when a girl's got to fight her own battles, what would you have?"
"There should be always some one glad to fight for you," he said, suddenly fired by her proud young beauty in distress.
They had, while speaking, walked down to the dividing rail that cuts off the promenaders of the second cabin from the first-class decks, and for some moments tarried there, Clandonald with his back to it, Miss Winstanley facing him. As the Englishman spoke these unpremeditated words of warm sympathy, for the second time that day there had come into the girl's artless face an expression she certainly had no idea of revealing. It caused Clandonald to pull himself up with a jerk, and stay the vague, rather affectionate, words he had been on the point of uttering, without, perhaps, meaning to have too much importance attached to them. And it was further reflected in the shining green eyes of a second-class passenger in shabby black, standing near by the barrier, wearing a veil of black gauze with large coquettish velvet dots that half concealed her undulated locks of unreasonably ruddy hair!
It was not the first time the green gleam of those watchful eyes had been fixed upon Clandonald and his companions. He had, in fact, been under their close observation whenever practicable since leaving New York harbor, in the course of their owner's predatory walks, as she alternately drew near and receded with graceful feline tread, seeming to look at nothing, yet forever alert where the good-looking, lazy young Englishman was concerned.
The youthful steward who distends himself for the public good by blowing the bugle for lunch was, on this occasion, the agent of Providence to relieve a strained situation. Clandonald could not, in the face of such a blast, go on with his implied offer of championship. The second-cabin passenger glided swiftly back across her little bridge, and was seen no more. Miss Winstanley, announcing herself half-starved, went to her stateroom to wash her hands. And his lordship, to calm his feelings, partook of a certain small, specially reviving, bitter-sweet draught, which his servant had acquired the gentle art of mixing, during their sojourn in San Francisco. On the way into the dining-room, he found Mariol just ahead of him, amid a congerie of stewards hurrying to and from their pantries with their arms full of crockery, and in an atmosphere tinctured with out-rushing odors of cauliflower and curried rice, gave his friend a word of counsel.
"I have been talking with Miss Winstanley," he said. "The truth is, Mariol, the poor girl is being pecked by all these women, until it hurts. You have some friendship, perhaps some influence, with Miss Carstairs. Persuade her to be generous, and take the outsider in. It will cost her nothing, and I'm hanged if I understand why she's been such an icicle, as it is."
"Did Miss Winstanley invite your intercession?" asked Mariol, dodging back from contact with an inclined plane of mutton broth, in a tilting china plate marked with the White Star's emblem, borne aloft by a deeply apologetic steward.
"No. Absolutely no. She'd fight to the last ditch before she'd give in to them. But I have an ulterior motive. I want to ask the two young women with my dear old aunt, Lady Campstown, to play propriety, to come down with you to Beaumanoir some day next week, and if they hardly speak——"
"Under these circumstances, I will engage to attempt the impossible, though whether I achieve it is quite another story. I, too, have been at a loss to fathom Miss Carstairs' apparent intention to ignore our pretty table-mate. I had fancied her too sure of her own position to care about a mere difference in social status. I have found her perfectly amiable. But if, by any chance, the discussion of Miss Winstanley comes up, there is an immediate stiffening of the muscles of the neck and chin, the clear eyes become veiled, and she turns the subject. I could almost fancy, but that they never met before, there was some personal animus between them."
"Tell her the girl is her devoted lover from afar, makes her a model in all things, and that we owe the agreeable modifications of the fair Posey's dress and manner exclusively to Miss Carstairs' example."
"That is a happy suggestion, and may accomplish good results. But did you ever know a man's eulogy of a woman effect anything with her own sex? It is generally successful only in confirming the worst predispositions, and in precipitating animosity where latent antipathy had sufficed. Still, who could resist the exquisite flattery of such imitation as our Posey's of Miss Carstairs? Fix your day for Beaumanoir, my dear chap. I consider our cause gained in advance."
"Do you know, Mariol," said Clandonald as the two men sat down at table, where the ladies had not yet arrived, "I have sometimes fancied that you yourself are getting rather under the spell of the young lady you have engaged to placate in Miss Winstanley's behalf."
"Do you know, Clan, that I never before suspected you of the imaginative gift? Nothing but Jonah's gourd—was it Jonah, and was it a gourd?—that grew up and withered in a night, could have had so little time allotted to its natural development, as a fancy by me for Miss Carstairs."
"That is no argument. I have read of love affairs beginning at the Statue of Liberty and culminating before the Gulf Stream was crossed. There is really no better medium than mid-Atlantic air for the growth of the tender passion. The leisure of a good voyage is like the forty years of Europe compared with the cycle of Cathay."
"It seems to me that you are exculpatory."
"I wish to heaven I might be!" exclaimed Clandonald, smothering his very genuine regret with a forkful of the roast beef of old England pastured upon Western plains.
The talk that morning with Posey Winstanley had awakened in him certain emotions of a simple elementary sort that, in spite of him, still twanged upon his heart-strings, pleasingly. He had, however, been by no means prepared for that upward glance of her childlike orbs when he had offered her his sympathy. While the normal vanity of the male creature thrilled in quickened interest in response to it, his judgment, his sense of responsibility, nay, of honor, called upon him loudly to let the thing go no further. A patent and audacious coquette on the surface, she was at heart a child who had as yet tasted no reality of sentiment for one of the dominant sex, and to whom such reality would inevitably come with extraordinary force.
The whimsicality of her having selected him—a battered plaything of the Fates, who did not want her, who could not indulge in her—for the object of a dawning first passion, struck him hard. He resolved to keep out of her way, and considered how he could have his meals elsewhere, or take to his bed for the remainder of the voyage. The projected luncheon at Beaumanoir should be carried out, and that done, he would have acquitted himself,en galant homme, of all that could be reasonably expected of a travelling Briton toward visiting Americans who had contributed to cheer his voyage across the Atlantic.
To begin the new order of things, he let himself be absorbed in conversation by Miss Bleecker, his pet aversion, who leaning over the table, her ample bosom begarlanded with chains and cords, each one sustaining some necessary implement for the aid of vision, far or near, and all of them entangled, was in her best spirits. She, Lady Channel Fleet, and Mrs. Vereker, had been in their deck chairs since broth and biscuits to the present moment, discussing the American women who had married into the British nobility. The three ancient heads cowled in veils and furry hoods—for the air off the Banks had had in it a tang of ice—had bobbed together during this time with a vivacity of movement suggesting the cinematograph.
Mrs. Vereker's sciatic leg, which it was the mission of her good-looking footman to keep enwrapped with rugs, when he could forego flirting with the ladies' maids, had been frequently exposed to the biting wind, and yet she did not notice it. Lady Channel Fleet, who, with her husband and a maid, had been doing America economically in somebody's private car, at somebody's expense, wisely kept quiet; since, if she shivered, there was no James to wrap her up. Miss Bleecker, more serene, indeed, than Buddha, in her position between a British matron of title and one of New York's leaders, did not feel the cold. Except in a parterre box at the opera (with the best people), she had no greater idea of happiness than such surroundings; with a long, uninterrupted morning in which to rehash old stories and acquire new ones concerning the ladies under discussion, whom she secretly considered the elect of earth.
Lady Channel Fleet, conscious of having had more honors paid to her in America than in the whole course of her undistinguished life at home, was proportionately inclined to be critical of Americans, now she had come away. Her strictures upon their extravagance in living, which she had enjoyed to the top of her bent, the largeness of their houses and the smallness of their grounds, their ridiculous way of running after strangers, and the extraordinary interchange of matrimonial partners among people one knew and visited, were interspersed with various bits of gossip she had been able to pick up in England concerning American peeresses who had not received her at their houses and were, indeed, unconscious of her existence.
It had been rather a bitter pill for Mrs. Vereker, who was hand-in-glove with all these fine people both in England and New York, to have to listen politely to Lady Channel Fleet. But, then, Mrs. Vereker had already stood so much in the line of incivility from the British dames of high place upon whom she had lavished courtesy during their sojourn in the land of the free, that she was a little hardened. She knew that on arrival out, she would go from Claridge's to stop at country houses where Lady Channel Fleet's star would never even faintly rise. She was secure in being able to buy herself a good time and the best of everything wherever she might go, and felt, on the whole, content. Miss Bleecker, on the contrary, who had no such solid foundations as her friend, felt in listening to Lady Channel Fleet as acutely pained as if she were reading one of Mr. Benson's or Mr. Hichens' novels, wherein modern Americans of good society are made to say "Popper" and "real nice." She could hardly imagine how her nation could arise to ignoring these dreadful accusations.
But when Lady Channel Fleet had incidentally let fall that she always presumed Miss Bleecker, from her speech and manner, to be an Englishwoman born, Miss Bleecker had forgiven all. She redoubled her powers of entertainingness, brought out a few newer, racier anecdotes of persons known to all of them, and the luncheon bugle had caught the gossips unawares, making them feel the morning quite too short.
"I suppose we shall see you at Mr. Vereker's little supper this evening, Lord Clandonald?" said the chaperon, suavely. "One knows what to expect in the way of private dainties, when Mr. Vereker entertains—game, wines, patés, caviare put up for him on the Volga, flowers, grapes and melons from his own glass houses, and such turtle soup as only the Verekerchefcan send aboard. And to think the poor man has to sit at the head of the table, drinking milk and swallowing little tablets out of his waistcoat pocket, looking gray as a ghost, and thin as a rail, not able to touch a thing of all his delicious spread!"
"Mr. Vereker has been so good as to include me," answered Clandonald.
"I believe most of those at our table are expected," the lady went on, in a hardly lowered voice, "with, of course, one or two exceptions. When Mr. Vereker crosses alone they say his parties are apt to be a little mixed. But with his wife aboard—she is so thoroughly exclusive, one need never fear."
What might have been omitted from the words, was accentuated by a manner of contempt whose objects there was no mistaking. Mr. Winstanley as usual appeared not to be listening to the passing chat; but his daughter lost not a syllable or look; Helen Carstairs, also, fully appreciated the situation. While Posey, with rare self-control, kept her own counsel and remained silent, Miss Carstairs, flushing faintly, spoke so that all present could hear her.
"I'm afraid I'm one of those who fail to appreciate the honor of Mr. Vereker's invitations, ashore or afloat. Who was it who said to be left out by him was a greater compliment than to be placed at his right hand?"
"Helen, I'm surprised to hear you talk such nonsense," began her chaperon briskly, but was interrupted by Posey Winstanley, who with a grateful glance at Helen, spoke in tones as quiet and measured as her own.
"Then I am certainly past getting the benefit of Miss Carstairs' hint, Miss Bleecker, since Mr. Vereker asked me first, before seeing if he could get the others; and I was rash enough to accept."