Kitabı oku: «Lord Loveland Discovers America»

CHAPTER ONE
The Discovery of America by Lord Loveland

"Even the Last Resort has refused me." Loveland broke the news to his mother when he had kissed her.

"Miss Mecklenburg?"

"Yes. I begin to realise that I'm a sinking ship. The early rats are deserting me – or declining to come on board. Clever little animals!"

"You shan't sink," protested Lady Loveland, clasping the pretty hands whence all save the wedding ring and its guard had gone to pay a visit of indefinite length to Messrs. Battenborough. "The idiot, to refuse you – with her nose, too."

"She didn't do it with her nose, Mater."

"Val, you know what I mean. And after you'd overlooked her being a Jewess!"

"Yes, it was kind of me, wasn't it? An Italian Prince has just overlooked it, too. Her engagement to Doriana was announced the morning after she'd offered to be a sister to me. It was the size of her purse, not her nose, which caught his eye. But sooner or later he'll beat her."

"I hope so. She deserves it for taking him instead of you. Oh, Val, what a world!"

"Don't grouse, Mater. I might have beaten her if I'd got her, and then there'd have been a scandal. I can't stand women with important looking teeth, and noses which throw their other features into perspective. Besides, Lillah Mecklenburg isn't as young as she's painted."

"So few women are nowadays, dearest," sighed Lady Loveland, who, in living for her handsome son, did not trouble to live up to the past of her complexion, and whose way of doing her hair was alone enough to show that though lenient to Val's weaknesses, she would not condone those of her sister women. "Oh, Val, it's hard you should have to think of such creatures. But what are we to do?"

"That's just where I want your advice," said Loveland, who had come a long way to get it. For the distance from London to the north of Scotland is formidable when birds are out of season.

Lady Loveland was flattered that Val should ask for her advice which, when offered gratuitously, he had never been known to take.

"My advice!" she echoed sadly. "That's all I can give you now! Although I did hope, dear Boy, I must confess. I – I have been trying for Limericks. It was for your sake, and I hoped to win large sums. I thought of lines all night long, and I did send in some splendid ones, a thousand times better than those for which other people (dreadful people, my dear, with names like Hogson, and Dobbs) have won hundreds of pounds. I gave the editors permission to use my name, too; one would have thought, a valuable advertisement for their papers. But all I've won after the greatest efforts has been fifteen and six – an insult – while these Dobbs and Hogsons – I believe the editors must be Socialists. And – the shillings for the postal orders have counted up into pounds. I am crushed with remorse."

"Never mind, dear, you meant it for the best," said Val, who cared more for his mother than for anyone else in the world – except himself. And that he made this exception was largely Lady Loveland's fault, for she had brought him up to believe in but one person of paramount importance, adorning the universe: Perceval George Victor Edward Gordon, thirteenth Marquis of Loveland. "What would a few pounds matter – or a few hundreds even, if you'd won them? The ship's too far under water to be raised with Limericks."

"Dearest – is it as bad as that?"

"It's as bad as anything can be. Look out of your window at the snow falling. Well, that's nothing to the way it's snowing bills outside my window. If you and I can't think of something to clear the weather, I shall have to chuck the army. And even if I do, the bills will still keep on snowing."

"What horrible creatures tradesmen must be," said Lady Loveland, whose opinions had come down to her crusted and spider-webbed from the cellars of the Stone Age. "To think that we'd have had power of life and death over them if we'd lived a few hundred years ago. I wish those times could come back."

"The world at large doesn't agree with you."

"It oughtn't to be at large," replied Lady Loveland, without the smallest idea of a joke. "It's reached a pretty pass when Worms who make boots and uniforms and – "

"And sell wine – "

"Oh, if you like – "

"And jewellery – "

"Very well. Admit the jewellery – "

"And motors. I've wasted a good deal of substance in riotous motor-cars, Mater."

"Oh, I suppose men of your position have some right to enjoy their lives? As I was saying, it's come to a pretty pass when Worms who make or sell what every gentleman must have – things that ought simply to come, like the air you breathe – can turn and rend an officer of the Guards, a peer of the realm, without fear of being crushed."

"If I'd chosen to be a kind of secret advertising agent for tradespeople, I might have been dressed and wined for nothing, motor-carred too, perhaps," said Loveland. "I know some fellows who do go in for that sort of thing. But I'm hanged if I could. I'd rather blow out my brains decently."

"Oh, my darling, don't speak so wildly," implored his mother. "There must be resources we can call upon – if we could only think of them."

"I have called on several people's resources, without any good coming of it." Loveland grinned faintly, though he was in the depths of depression, and had suffered from insomnia for at least a week, between eight and ten in the morning, when so popular a young man should (in his own opinion) have been dreaming of last night's pleasures, instead of worrying how to pay for them.

"There is surely a last resort," went on Lady Loveland.

"Miss Mecklenburg was mine – and she's failed me – thank Heaven!"

"There must be something else."

"Something still worse?"

"Don't be flippant, dearest. I can't concentrate my thoughts when you are. Ah, if we could have let Loveland Castle as well as we did twelve years ago!"

"It's crumbled a lot since. And we're too poor to repair ourselves, let alone our castles."

"You at least don't need repairing," said his mother, gazing at her son with admiration. "You're the handsomest young man in the Kingdom."

Loveland laughed, though he believed her. As a child he had been kissed by all his mother's prettiest friends, because he was so absurdly beautiful, and so precocious. If he had been a plain or stupid boy he might have grown up to be an estimable young man, as Marquises go. "Why don't you say, 'in the world'?" he asked.

"I'm not a woman to exaggerate, dearest. All the Lovelands have been good-looking. One has only to go into the picture gallery at the Castle to see that – "

"Yes. As we can't sell their portraits."

"If we could, your father would have done it when he sold the Town house. But you will be so confusing, Val. My argument is, that as you're the best looking and the cleverest – "

"I don't know a blessed thing, my dear ladyship. Never had any education. You ought to have sent me to Eton, instead of coddling me up with tutors and – "

"You didn't think so then. I remember well when it was proposed, you flung yourself on the floor and howled."

"So of course that settled it."

"Why, yes. You generally settled things like that. You had such a determined way, dear. But you were born knowing more than many studious, uninteresting young men have forgotten. Then, your South African career! It was like a romance. You, who had been crammed, oh, ever so little, for Sandhurst, and then left there to go to the war when you were a mere child, hardly nineteen – so brave! And then, the Thing you did on the battlefield! Of course you ought to have had the Victoria Cross, but as it was, the newspapers rang with your praises, and I was besieged for your photographs to publish. That deed alone would have made you a personage of consideration, even without your rank."

"I've told you lots of times, Mater, the whole thing was a sort of accident. I couldn't bear the chap. If I'd stopped to think, I don't believe I'd have run back a step to drag him out from under fire. But I was there, hauling him away, before I knew what I was doing."

"Yes, you have told me – and other people. But no one believes you. How could they? They see it's your modesty." (Lord Loveland's mother was perhaps the one person on earth who would have attributed to him this quality.) "And as for disliking the young man whose life you saved at the risk of your own, of course that proves you all the more noble. Everybody must see that."

"Oh, well, it's a jolly good thing for me if they do," said Val, mechanically passing his hand over the scar on his forehead, which became him like a hall mark or a halo. It, together with the South African brown that never quite faded, had made him still more ornamental in the eyes of the pretty young married women with whom he was popular. Also in the eyes of girls, who liked to dance and flirt with Lord Loveland, even though they preferred to marry Dukes and Princes. "But what are you working up to so elaborately, Mater?"

"To your Prospects. There's no young man so liked and wanted everywhere."

"Oh, I'm fair at polo: I can ride straight, and shoot a bit," said Loveland with a pretence at self-depreciation he was far from feeling. "I get asked to all the amusing house parties. But you know as well as I do, that stopping at such places is a lot more expensive than swaggering about at the most expensive hotels in Europe."

"I know, dearest," sighed the devoted lady who by industrious spoiling had made him what he was. "I was only going on to say that you are a personage of importance; never think you're not. As for the two or three wretched girls who have hurled themselves at the heads of princes, when they might have had you – why, our English heiresses are growing disgustingly conceited and ambitious, quite unmaidenly, and let them regret their mistakes – you needn't. Val, you want my advice. Well, I've had an inspiration, I do believe, a real inspiration. Why don't you go to America?"

"To try ranching?"

"Good Heavens, no, my son! To try marrying. In America you'll succeed brilliantly. Why not run over and see what there is?"

She spoke as if to see meant to have, notwithstanding certain failures nearer home. But Loveland's sense of humour, which had a real existence, did not always bestir itself when his own affairs were in question. When things come too close to the eye, one is apt to lose the point of view. And Loveland did not laugh at his mother's suggestion.

"Oh, girls!" he said, distastefully. "Why go there for them? Plenty come over here to collect us."

"Ye – es. But think of the competition. There are still unmarried Dukes. It's so annoying, there always seem to be Dukes, and foreign semi-Royalties who might better stop in their own countries than prowl about ours, seeking what they may devour."

"That's what you propose my doing in the States."

"Oh, that's different. The Americans would be the foreigners, not you."

"They don't look on themselves in that light."

"Let them look at you – the girls I mean – in any light, there, on their native heath, where practically no competition can exist. For who ever heard of an American heiress marrying an American man?"

"I suppose it must happen sometimes," said Val.

"It's never in the newspapers. No, dearest, I believe that is why, according to statistics, there are so many more men than women in the States. The girls marry our men. And really some of them are quite presentable."

If any one of three or four beautiful and charming Duchesses had heard the tone in which old Lady Loveland said this, she would have laughed or sneered, according to her mood.

"Do you know many Americans, Val?" his mother went on, thoughtfully.

"Hardly any except Jim Harborough, and – er – his cousin who has married Stanforth."

(This was another instance of a misguided young woman who preferred a Duke to the Marquis. Therefore she remained nameless between mother and son.)

"Mr. Harborough would, I suppose, give you letters of introduction to the Right People over there?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose he would. He doesn't approve of me; but he couldn't refuse letters to his wife's cousin."

"Doesn't approve of you, indeed! What impertinence! But perhaps he's jealous, and thinks you were once in love with Betty. I feared it myself before she paid that visit to the States which turned out such a success. Just as I'm sure yours would, if you went."

"I never was in love with Betty. First cousins are a bit too near to be interesting. One's generally known them since the stage when they were silly over dolls. Besides, Betty looks too much like me. I don't care for yellow-haired, blue-eyed girls."

"It's just as well you didn't care for Betty. Such a marriage would have been disastrous. But she's a sweet girl, and must have made a good many friends in the States. There was the young woman Mohunsleigh married, for instance. I believe he met her through Betty. Oh, Val, you really ought to go over. I'm sure you'd be the greatest success."

"Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea," Loveland patronized his mother's inspiration. "Of course Harborough and Betty would both give me letters. If I had to marry – horrid bore, at my age! – and could afford to choose, I'd take an English girl of the right sort. But Americans are a lot better than English ones of the wrong sort; middle class mushrooms who've shot up in a night – on the strength of Pale Pills for Pink People, or Corsets, or Disinfectants. If a man's a beggar he must be content with the wine and wives of the country where he begs. American girls, no matter what they've sprung from, seem adaptable; and anyhow, people are tolerant of any queer ways they may have."

"That's true," agreed Lady Loveland, who had never in her life spoken to an American girl, but was now eager to become Dowager for the sake of a desirable one. "If you went to New York – or somewhere – you'd see enough girls to feel you were picking out the best. Oh, you would virtually have a clear coast! And judging from novels I've read, everybody in American society would be fighting for the honour of entertaining you, racking their brains to get up the most wonderful spectacles for your amusement."

"They wouldn't amuse me," said Loveland, in the blasé way he had cultivated since he came back a wounded hero of nineteen, in the last year of the South African war. "I should be there purely on business." But though he spoke like a tired man of forty rather than a happy and healthy one of twenty-six or seven, he was beginning to lean towards his mother's advice. He could easily get long leave. He had a couple of months due to him. During a tour of inspection in the States he would be free from all the bills that flesh is heir to, as he would have no settled address, until the "business" that took him over was settled. After that, when his engagement was published in the papers, tradesmen would hold their hands.

"It oughtn't to take you many weeks," Lady Loveland was reflecting aloud, "if you went at the right season, and to the right place."

"The Season is different for different places over there, Betty says," remarked Loveland, who now, having discovered America as a spot worthy of note on the world's map, was ready to explain it to his mother.

"How odd!" exclaimed Lady Loveland, to whom all things were odd, and scarcely proper, if they were not as in Great Britain. "But oh, of course, you only mean that they go to one place to shoot at a certain time, to another to hunt at a different time, as We do – "

"Not exactly that, I think," said Val, getting out of his element. "I believe it's something to do with the thermometer. Betty went in summer, and was obliged to stop at Newport. One reads things about Newport."

"Yes. Though I forget what," replied his mother, dismissing Newport. "But in the States there must be heiresses abounding in great quantities everywhere, as all American girls appear to be rich in more or less degrees. They flock to Europe from towns with the most extraordinary names. I don't know why it's happened to stick in my memory, but I know there was one – Oshkosh, or something truly awful of that sort. A young person from there, with millions, actually millions, married the Marquise de Merpoule's third son, if you remember, a most unprepossessing youth, whose face looked like an accident."

"I hardly think I should have to go as far afield as Oshkosh, wherever it may be," said Loveland, glancing at his double in the mirror – where was reflected also the worn furnishing of his mother's drawing-room. With a pang he saw the sorry background and forgot himself for a moment in thinking of Loveland Castle – a very noble, dull palace, all marble, gold plate, portraits and precedence when in its prime; echoing sadness now, until such time as the heir might redeem it with some fair lady's dollars. The murmur of those echoes depressed him, as did the white whirl of snow veiling the windows of the shooting lodge whither Lady Loveland had retired to live upon nothing, that he might have something.

But his mother was happy in prophetic thoughts of a future, when Val should have saved his own and the family's fortunes. "Of course you won't need to go to Oshkosh," she said. "Very likely they'd have small-pox or Red Indians there. I only meant that if there could be millions in a town with such a name, what must there be in others more important and easier to get at?"

"I'll stick to the important ones that are easy to get at."

"That means you are making up your mind to go?"

"It's practically made up – thanks to you, Mater. I believe in quick decisions."

"How like your father! After selling the house in Grosvenor Square, he made up his mind in ten minutes to go to Monte Carlo, and – "

"Don't compare that decision with this, for Heaven's sake. It wouldn't be lucky."

"No, dearest," said Lady Loveland meekly, her delicate nose reddening with reminiscences. "Well then, it's quite settled. I feel it's for the best. And I can trust you to bring me a daughter-in-law to be – well, not to be ashamed of."

"I'll promise you anyhow she shan't disgrace you by her manners, or me by her looks, after I've gone so far to get her."

"Why, you might find something that would do, on the ship, which would save so much time and trouble!" exclaimed Lady Loveland, brightening. "You could marry immediately on landing. And yet – perhaps it would be foolish to do anything irrevocable until you'd looked to see what there was in New York. You mustn't be reckless when so much depends upon prudence. Still it would be wise to sail on a good ship, where you might meet millionairesses. That would be only an ordinary precaution."

"It wouldn't be an ordinary price," said Loveland.

"We must manage it somehow – and a good cabin. You owe that to your position."

"I owe so much already, I may as well owe a little more."

"Val, dear, I asked you not to joke. It confuses me. And I need to concentrate all my ideas upon one point. Let me see. Yes! The pink pearls!"

"The pink what?" asked Loveland, startled.

"I still have them. The double rope, you know."

"I know. Another beastly heirloom."

"Still, one can pawn heirlooms. Your bride can redeem it – and the other things. I've always saved the pink pearls for a great emergency. This is a great emergency. Battenborough ought to give seven or eight hundred. And though seven or eight hundred, as you say, wouldn't go far among the debts, they might send you to America and back."

"I'll have to throw a few sops to Cerberus, if I want new clothes to impress the American girls," laughed Val. "That brute Deedes won't give me so much as a waistcoat unless he gets something on account."

"Pay him something," said Lady Loveland. "Pay what you must. Keep what you can – for yourself. As for me, I want nothing."

"Except a rich daughter-in-law," finished her son, his spirits rising though the snow still fell. After all, it was only October, and there was sunshine elsewhere. In America perhaps it was now shining on his bride to be! "I'll write to Betty about the letters," he said, "after you've given me some tea."