XXX
ORA and Ida were sitting at one of the little round tables in the pretty green and wicker smoking-room of the Hotel Bristol in Genoa, drinking their coffee and smoking their after-luncheon cigarettes, when Ida, who was glancing over theHerald, cried,
“Aw!”
Ora looked round in surprise. Ida often relieved the strain when they were alone by relapsing into the vernacular, but was impressively elegant in public.
“What is it?” she asked apprehensively. “Anybody we know dead? That is about all the news we ever get in these Continental——”
“Dead nothing. Greg’s struck a bigger bonanza than I had any idea of, and Amalgamated is after it. They tried to corral your mine for delinquent taxes, but got left. Found a bit of unclaimed land between your claim and the ranch and staked off. They’re sinking a shaft and mean to prove that the vein—Greg’s—apexes in their claim. Wouldn’t that come and get you! Just listen.” And she read aloud an embellished but not untruthful tale. “Glory, I hope they don’t get him! That would be the end of all my fond dreams.”
“I have an idea that Mr. Compton was born to win. At all events you have your new house in Butte, and all the money you can spend for the present.”
“Yes, but I want money to spend in Butte, live in that house, and make things hum. However, I guess you’re right. I’ll bet on Greg. Here come the letters. Hope you get one from Mark as I’d like some real news.”
A page with letters in his hand had entered the room. He served the young American ladies first as their tips were frequent and munificent, particularly Ora’s. The other people in the room were English and Italian.
Ida’s letters were from Ruby and Pearl. Ora’s from Mark, Professor Becke, and two of her English friends.She opened her husband’s first. It contained an account of the threatened loss of her mine, her narrow escape, and Gregory’s rescue. It was graphically written. Mark fancied himself as a letter writer and never was averse from impressing his clever wife.
Ora’s face flushed as she read; she lost her breath once or twice. She pictured every expression of Gregory’s eyes as he perforated the clerk; her heart hammered its admiration. She was too thoroughly Montanan and the daughter of her father to be horrified at bribery and corruption. For the moment she forgot gratitude in her exultation that he had triumphed over the mightiest trust in the country. But before she finished the letter she sighed and set her lips. She handed it deliberately to Ida.
“Here is an account of the first development,” she said casually. “It will interest you.”
Ida read the letter hastily. “Well, they caught him napping after all,” she said with profound dissatisfaction. “He dreams too much, that’s what. He’s got a practical side all right, but he isn’t on the job all the time. I’d like to write and tell him what I think of him but guess I’d better keep my mouth shut.”
“It was Mark’s fault as much as Mr. Compton’s—more. He should have had a new map made of my claim; or, if he did have one made, he should have studied it more carefully. Anybody to look at it would assume that it touched the boundary line of your—Mr. Compton’s ranch.”
“Well, Greg’ll get out of it some way. When he does sit up and take notice he doesn’t so much as wink, and so far as he knew or cared the rest of the world might have waltzed off into space. Lucky it hit him to buy the house and send that last five thousand before he snapped close on Amalgamated——”
“What does Miss Miller have to say?”
“Nothing much but ecstasies over my house. The Murphys had taste, it seems, so I won’t have to do a thing to it. Say, Ora, don’t you feel as if you’d like to go back?”
Ora looked up and her face turned white. “Go back? I thought you wanted to stay over here for a year, at least. We haven’t half seen Europe yet—to say nothing of Egypt.”
“Yes—I know—but sometimes I feel homesick. It isn’t only that I want to make Butte sit up; but—well, I suppose you’ll laugh, but I miss the mountains. I never thought much about them when I was there, but they’ve kind of haunted me lately.”
“There are mountains in Europe.”
“I know, but they’re just scenery. Our mountains are different.”
Ora looked at her speculatively. It was not the first time that Ida had surprised her with glow-worms flitting across her spiritual night, although she seemed to be so devoid of imagination, or what she would have called superfluous nonsense, as to inspire her more highly organised friend with envy. Her mental and artistic development had been rapid and remarkable but uneven. She yawned through the opera and symphony concerts. She would always be bored by pictures unless she could read a “story” in them, although she had now mastered the jargon of art as well as most of her quick-witted country-women. In Florence and Rome she had “struck” after one morning of picture galleries, but she showed a spontaneous and curious appreciation of the architecture of the Renaissance. Ora had expected the usual ecstasies over the old castles of England and Germany, but although Ida admired them heartily, and even declared they made her feel “real romantic,” it was for the Renaissance palaces of France and of the cities they visited in Italy that she reserved her instant and critical admiration. Ora, who like most imaginative people played with the theory of reincarnation, amused herself visioning Ida in Burne-Jones costumes, haunting the chill midnight corridors of a Florentine palace, dagger in hand, or brewing a poisoned bowl. If Ida possessed a rudimentary soul, which suffered a birth-pang now and then, Ora had caught more than one glimpse of a savage temper combined with a cunning that under her present advantages was rapidly developing into subtlety. But Ida indulged too little in introspection to develop her inmost ego other than automatically. To mental progress she was willing to devote a certain amount of labour. Whenever they were not on a train or visiting at country houses, she spent an hour every morning with a teacher of either French or Italian; German she had refused to “tackle,” but, to use her own phrase, she “ateup” the Latin languages, and her diction was remarkably good. If picture galleries replete with saints, virgins, madonnas and Venuses bored her, she returned more than once to the portrait rooms in the Pitti and the Uffizi galleries, haunted the museums with their mediæval and Renaissance furniture and tapestries, and eagerly visited every palace to which the public was admitted.
And she proved herself as adaptable as Ora had hoped. In England she bored her way through the newspapers until she was able to sustain her part in political conversation. She soon discerned that English people of assured position and wide social experience liked a certain degree of picturesque Americanism when it was unaccompanied by garrulity or blatant ill-breeding. She amused herself by “giving them what they wanted,” and was a more pronounced success than Ora, who was outwardly too much like themselves, yet lacking the matchless fortune of English birth. But this did not disturb Ora, who made more real friends, and derived endless amusement observing Ida. On one occasion they visited for a week at one of the country homes of a duke and duchess that had entertained Mrs. Stratton many years ago, and Ida had enchanted these bored but liberal products of a nation that led with too much indifference the Grand March of Civilisation with her Western “breeziness” and terminology (carefully selected), combined with her severely cut and altogether admirable gowns, and her fine imposing carriage. From this castle she went on with Ora to one leased by an ambitious American more English than the English, who permitted herself to indulge in a very little fashionable slang, but had consigned the American vernacular to oblivion in the grave of her ancestors. Here Ida was languid and correct (save at the midnight hour when she sought Ora, not only for relaxation but the instructions she was never too proud to receive); her English slang (which she had “swapped” for much of her own with her various British admirers) was impeccable, and she flirted like a stage duchess.
She estimated the various aristocracies she entered under Ora’s wing as a grand moving picture show run for the benefit of Americans, and was grateful to have an inside seat, although nothing would have bored her more thanto take a permanent position in their midst. With their history, traditions, psychology, she concerned herself not at all; nor did she in any way manifest a desire to cultivate the intellectual parts of her shrewd, observing, clutching brain. She threw away as many opportunities as she devoured, but on the whole proved herself somewhat more adaptable than the usual American woman elevated suddenly from the humbler walks of life to the raking searchlights of Society. In Berlin and Vienna she repeated her social triumphs, for, although Americans do not penetrate far below the crust of Continental society, smart men abound in the crust; Ida graduated as an adept in flirtation with agreeable and subtle men of the world, yet keeping the most practical at arm’s length with a carefully calculated Western directness and artlessness that amounted to genius.
In France and Italy the dazzling fairness of Ora had its innings. A vague suggestion of unreality, almost morbid, and a very definite one of unawakened womanhood, combined with a cultivated mind, ready wit, and air of high breeding, gave her a success as genuine as Ida’s and somewhat more perilous. But she soon learned to tread warily, after her theories of European men had been vindicated by personal experience. In fact, after the two girls had ceased to be mere tourists they had taken the advice of one of Mrs. Stratton’s friends and enlisted the services of an indigent lady of title as chaperon. Lady Gower had been little more than a figurehead but had served her purpose in averting gossip; and now that her charges were tourists again had returned to her lodgings in Belgravia. As maids also are a doubtful luxury when travelling they had recently dismissed the last of a long line.
On the whole the two girls had got on together amazingly well. They had had their differences of opinion, but Ora was too proud to quarrel, Ida too easy-going and appreciative of the butter on her bread. It was fortunate, however, that Gregory had been able to provide his wife with an abundance of money, for she was far too shrewd, and far too interested in prices, to remain hoodwinked for long. After three months of sight-seeing andpensionsboth had been glad to leave the tourist class and mingle in the more spectacular life of the great world, and that had meant trousseaux in Paris. There Ida had “gowned”herself for the first time, and her delight in her fashionable wardrobe had been equalled only by her satisfaction in driving a bargain. At present they were resting in Genoa, a favourite city of Ora’s, after a hard ten weeks in Rome.