Kitabı oku: «Lord Loveland Discovers America», sayfa 4

CHAPTER SEVEN
Guide, Philosopher and Friend

"Well," said the girl, "what do you think of things?"

"I think," answered Loveland, "it's a beastly shame we're not put at the same table."

"I mean of things in general."

"I prefer to think of you in particular."

"It wouldn't pay," said the girl, with one of her whimsical smiles.

Loveland looked at her sharply. "What makes you say that?" he wanted to know.

"Because it's true."

"Why do you insinuate that I only want to do things that pay?"

"I told you I wrote stories, didn't I? Well, to write stories, one must make a study of Man. I do. And I never found it dull yet."

"I'm glad you don't find it dull where I'm concerned," said Val. "But I'm not glad you consider me a swine."

"Lucky I've just been in England, and heard other Englishmen talk," said the girl. "If not, I should hardly understand that pretty expression."

"So you've been making a study of other Englishmen? What did you think of us?"

"That you, as a race, are very tall and tweedy. And that you aren't precisely dissatisfied with yourselves."

It was the next morning, and they were pacing up and down the long white deck. Loveland had joined Miss Dearmer as she walked, and she had not been repellent in her manner. Yet somehow her friendliness did not encourage him to increasing conceit. Even before she had made that little remark about studying Man, he had vaguely felt that she read him as if he were a cypher of which she had found the key.

"I hope you met the right kind of men," he said.

"You mean, men like you? You see, I know who you are, now."

"Who told you anything about me?"

"Miss Milton."

"Oh, you know her – daughter of the white-faced woman, pretty, blushy little thing who sits at my table?"

"Yes. We were travelling in England at the same time, and met often at hotels."

"What did Miss Milton say about me?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes. I'm not a coward."

"She said she wondered if you were going over to our country to try and marry an American girl."

"By Jove! Well, supposing I do try, what's your opinion? Do you think I stand a good chance of bringing it off?"

"It's rather soon for me to judge."

"You seem to have made up your mind quickly about some of my other qualities. About my wanting to do things which pay, for instance."

"You haven't forgiven me that? It might pay to 'try' and marry an American girl."

"Well," admitted Loveland on an impulse, "no matter how much I might want to, I couldn't marry one if it didn't pay."

"Now you are being frank," replied Miss Lesley. "I like people to be frank."

"So do I," said Loveland, "when that doesn't mean being disagreeable, as it generally does from one's relations, especially one's maiden aunts."

"England expects that every aunt will do her duty."

"Luckily you're not my aunt, so please don't do yours if it's unpleasant. But couldn't we be frank – and friends? I should like most awfully to have you for my friend. You could be no end valuable to me, you know, about giving me good advice, if you would."

She laughed. "I dare say. But could you be valuable to me?"

Loveland wished that he might dare to be dangerous; but the idea of having her for a friend, into whose pink shell of an ear he could pour confidences, really attracted him – since her value, not being cash value, could be realised by him in no other way. And, of course, if she would promise to be his friend, it would be caddish to make love to her. He felt very virtuous as he laid down this rule for himself.

"I'll let you study me as much as you like, and put me into your next story."

"As the villain?"

He looked rather blank. His conception for himself was always the part of hero.

"But after all, it's usually baronets who're villains – in stories and plays," she went on. "A Marquis – you are a Marquis, aren't you – may perhaps be a fellow being."

"Please treat me as such, then," said Loveland.

"I will, anyway till further notice. Now you may begin to tell me frank things, and I'll give you frank advice about them, as a friend."

"How I wish you were rich!" exclaimed Loveland, thinking aloud, as he did sometimes.

"How do you know I'm not? Oh, of course Major Cadwallader Hunter found out for you. He would! He's the sort of man who takes a worm's eye view of the world, and of women and wealth. But never mind if I'm not rich."

"I do mind. I shouldn't want you for a friend if you were."

"You wouldn't – oh! Well, now you are being still franker, aren't you?"

"You said you liked people to be frank."

"Ye – es."

"I haven't offended you, have I?"

"No. I'm just getting used to you. It's quite interesting. What do you want my advice about? Other girls, I suppose?"

"It may come to that," Loveland admitted.

"Anyone in particular, at the moment?"

"Well, supposing I were forced to marry money, for the sake of – of – my estates and all that, is there anyone on board you'd recommend?"

"You've two very eligible girls at your table."

"Yes. But hang it all, it's too much of a good thing having them at one's elbow like that, you know. If only it were you, instead – "

"On the principle of having the poor always with one. But for that you'd have to change and sit at mine. We're all poor there, I think. It's the Ineligible's Table, for both sexes. Would you care to come?"

"I'd care to, but I couldn't afford it," said Val. "I must stop where I am and take the goods the gods provide."

"You mean the dining-room steward who arranged the seats."

"What else did Miss Milton say about me?"

"That you were very good-looking – as we're being frank."

"I hope you agreed with her?"

"Oh, yes, I had to. Your looks are so obvious – so much a part of your stock-in-trade, if you don't mind my saying so, it would be silly to deny that the shop windows are well decorated. It was apropos of your marrying that she spoke. I said a handsome man oughtn't to be driven into the obscurity of marriage, by necessity. He ought simply to be supported by the nation, become a sort of public institution, and be the pride of his country; be sent, beautifully got up, to walk in Parks, and dance at balls, and make life pleasant for girls."

"Thank you. Anything else?"

"From Miss Milton or me?"

"From you."

"Nothing more from me. The rest was silence."

"From Miss Milton, then?"

"Let me see. She said it seemed as if you'd bought your eyelashes by the yard, and been frightfully extravagant."

"Wish I could pawn them!"

"If you marry as you intend, you won't need to."

"I say, I'm afraid you're frightfully sarcastic," said Loveland, who had never had an American girl for a friend before, and found that having one kept his hands full. "You think I'm a beast to marry a girl for her money."

"First catch your hare."

"You mean I mayn't get one to take me."

"One never can tell. There have been slips between cup and lip."

"Although I'm poor, I can give my wife a lot of things a woman likes to have."

"Second best things."

"Oh, come! You haven't stopped to think what they are."

"I've stopped to think that love's the best thing – the thing a girl cares most for a man to give her."

"It seems to me that all the girls I know would be pretty well satisfied with the right to walk into a dining-room behind a Duchess, and – "

"Do you? What a lot you've got to learn about girls."

"I don't think I have," said Val. "I think I know most of it."

"About life, then, and about yourself."

"Oh, I know nearly all there is to be known about them."

"You really do need a friend," laughed the girl.

"To keep me from being bored?"

"To keep you from heaps of things."

"Well, go on being my friend, and giving me good advice, please," said Loveland. "There's Miss Coolidge, too. She's a beautiful creature. Are there many other girls in the States as beautiful as she?"

"As beautiful, but few more beautiful."

"Any beautiful ones richer?"

"I'm not up in that kind of statistics. Major Cadwallader Hunter is."

"Yes. But I don't care for the fellow. I'd rather take counsel with you. Do you know Miss Coolidge?"

"No."

"I wish you did."

"Would you like me to use my influence with her?"

"I should like you to use your influence with me to keep me up to the mark. She's rather hard to talk to. So different from you."

"She knows her value. She's 'worth' several millions, as we say in America. (I wish we didn't!) Why should she worry to make herself agreeable? She can get all the attention she wants without bothering. Whereas, we poor girls have to work hard, if we want to be popular in spite of our poverty."

"I suppose there's something in that," said Loveland, too deeply absorbed in his own affairs not to take her in earnest. And the girl would have liked to turn a scornful shoulder upon him, if his voice had not been so nice, and if he had not been so handsome. As it was, she wanted to turn upon herself, because she knew that she was influenced by the nice voice, the clear features, and the black-lashed blue eyes. "He is a perfectly worthless young man," she reflected savagely, yet she did not tell him, as he deserved, that she had reconsidered and would not after all undertake the extra hard work of being his guide, philosopher and friend.

"It will be an experience for me," she thought. And she remembered that she had summed up his character from the first. The revelations he had just made of his inner self ought not now to surprise her.

So the days went on. And the pair remained friends; a state of affairs which took more of Val's time than he should have spared from his real ambitions.

Loveland had tried at intervals to be nice to Miss Coolidge and Miss Milton, and he met other pretty girls to whom he felt obliged to be agreeable, because Major Cadwallader Hunter said that they were heiresses. But it is difficult to be equally nice to five or six charming young women at once and within a comparatively limited area, when you have not made up your mind which of them you want to marry, or whether you will not in the end throw them all over to marry someone else whom you have not yet seen. And it is a particularly difficult task when you would prefer to be nice to someone else whom you have already seen.

Besides, Lord Loveland thought too much of himself to pretend love-making successfully when, so far from being in love, he was considerably bored. Each girl he knew on the ship bored him in her own separate way, except his friend Miss Dearmer, to whom he went frequently for good advice about the others. Perhaps if he had not known her, the other girls, or some of them, would not have bored him. But as it was, they were occasionally tiresome in his eyes when he would have liked to be with Lesley instead; and though Lord Loveland was clever, he was not clever enough to hide his feelings. Sometimes, so sure was he of their forgiveness if he wanted it, he was downright rude; and there is nothing a nice American girl forgives less easily than rudeness which springs from a man's self-conceit.

At first, all the girls had admired Loveland, not only because he had a title, but because he was himself; and some of the younger ones, like Fanny Milton and Madge Beverly, had been inclined to regard him as a starry Paladin. Fanny said he was "so handsome, it almost hurt," and that she "could hardly talk to him for gazing at his Gibson chin." But when the more sophisticated Eva Turner, Elinor Coolidge, Kate Wood and a few others realised that their starry Paladin was impudently inspecting them all with a view to the possible purchase of the most satisfactory, each began to hate him secretly with forty-woman power. Secretly, because there was a kind of glory in him as an asset, and a rivalry for the asset, just as there might be among smaller girls with only one doll – an unlovable but expensive doll – to play with. Not one of the number would sacrifice all right in the doll, and give it up to her companions.

They were worldly, though good-hearted, girls to whom Major Cadwallader Hunter had introduced his prize, and they foresaw that handsome Lord Loveland would be petted, perhaps fought for, in Society, when he had left the little world of the Mauretania for the bigger world of New York. There would be an advantage in having known him first in case he should become the "rage," as he was sure to do, if not too insufferably rude and offensive. Thinking of this, each girl clung to her share of him, and refrained from trampling on the expensive doll, as, for her pride's sake, she ached to do. Nor did Elinor Coolidge and Fanny Milton and the rest speak their true feelings frankly out to one another. Each wished her friends to believe that he was nice to her alone, that his insolence was charmed into lamb-like docility in a duet with her; for in that way self-respect could be maintained and jealousy aroused.

Val was unaware of the hatred, but conscious of the rivalry, and was altogether kept very busy. He forgot to Marconi to his mother that he had sailed on the Mauretania, as Jim Harborough had thought he might forget. As for writing, he had not a moment for any such sedentary employment. Once or twice he did make up his mind to begin a letter to Lady Loveland; but, when he could get a few minutes off duty, it seemed such a waste of time not to go and ask for good advice from Lesley Dearmer, that somehow pen was never put to paper.

And so at last came the day for landing.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Hail to the Land: Goodbye to the Girl

The Mauretania passed the noble statue of Liberty enlightening the world, and Loveland admired her impersonally, but felt that had she been a live millionairess he would not have dared propose to her.

Then, presently, the hugeness of the great city loomed monstrous, mountainous in purple shadow against such a blue sky as Italy and New York know.

A crowd was massed on the dock to welcome the Mauretania and her passengers; and for the first time since he had left England, Val felt a vague homesickness stirring in his breast. Almost everyone else on board seemed to have at least one handkerchief-waving friend, and some had half a dozen, but all the smiling eager faces looking up were strange to his eyes. There was no one for him; and he had a sudden, queer sensation of not being at home in the world. This, in spite of invitations from everybody he had met on the ship – except one: the One who mattered.

Mr. Coolidge and several other fathers and uncles of pretty girls had asked him to make their house his home; but he had taken Jim Harborough's advice to heart, and excused himself warily. His idea was to let New York society pass before his eyes in review, before risking a premature entanglement. To this course he committed himself in cold blood. Since he could not have Lesley Dearmer, all that mattered to him in a girl was decent manners, decent looks, and – many millions.

He should have rejoiced that it was time to land, and have felt keen to set to work upon the business which had brought him across the sea, but he was in no mood to rejoice at anything; and it was Lesley Dearmer's fault.

He had planned a moonlight farewell for the night before, but Lesley thwarted him by talking the whole evening long with a sporting youth, whom Val wrathfully stigmatised in his mind as suffering from motor bicycle face, bridge eye, clutch knee and tennis elbow. Then when she had tired of her flirtation she went to bed.

Next morning it was only as the Mauretania neared her slip that the girl appeared again. Without seeming to notice Loveland she stood leaning her elbows on the rail, not far from him. It occurred to Val that after all it was a matter of no importance to her that their lives were to be lived apart. And the separation was at hand. He had thought of this hour, but now it was here. He was going to lose her. Tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, he would have no sweet, merry, mysterious-eyed friend to advise him and listen half-amused, half in earnest, to his confidences.

Suddenly his heart felt like a large, cold boiled beetroot in his breast. He went and stood behind the girl, dumb with a strange new misery he could not understand, and, as though she had heard the "unerring speech" of his silence, she turned.

At first her beautiful brown eyes flashed a laughing challenge at him, as if they said, "Wouldn't you like to make me think you really care? But I don't think it, and won't. And neither do you care. We've both been playing."

Then, something in his look softened hers. She smiled kindly, though not wholly without guile.

"Aren't you excited?" she asked.

"Why should I be excited?" he grumbled.

"Because – well, you're a soldier, and know what war is like. I've heard that the most exciting thing which can happen is a call to make a sortie in the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream – and on an empty stomach. But I should think the call to a matrimonial sortie – "

"On an empty purse?"

"Yes; when it's a question of selling yourself to fill it."

"I don't mean to sell myself. I shall still belong to myself and to one other. I won't say who that other is, for I've pretty well told you already."

"It's no use pretending not to understand. I know what you want me to think you mean."

"If I never knew before how much I do mean it, I know now, when I've got to say 'goodbye.'"

"You needn't say it."

"You've tried hard to keep me from saying it, haven't you? But look here, Lesley – do look at me. I'm awfully cut up at leaving you."

"You're not to call me Lesley."

"You can't prevent my calling you Lesley to myself."

"You'll soon forget the name."

"Never. I can never forget you – worse luck. The thought of you is going to come between me and – other things."

"The thought must learn better manners. Not to 'butt in,' as we say over here. Oh, it will soon be tamed. You'll have so much to do."

"I hope I shall," said Loveland. "I say, are you going to forget me as soon as we're parted?"

The girl was silent for a moment. Then she laughed. Yet her laugh had not quite the frank lightheartedness which was usually one of its charms. "I shall make a note of you for my next story but one," she answered.

"You're not very kind."

"Are you sure you deserve kindness?"

"I'm sure I want it – from you."

"How you have always got what you wanted in your life, haven't you – one way or another?"

"Life wouldn't be worth living if one didn't."

"Oh, it's not much good saying to you that that's a selfish way of looking at life. But you've never had any lessons, and I suppose you never will have. You'll go on getting what you want, and taking it for granted that you ought to get it, till the end."

"I hope so, sincerely," said Val, without shame. "But I shan't get one of the things I want most, unless you promise to write to me."

She shook her head. "I can't promise that. I wouldn't if I could. As for getting your news, I shall read it in the papers, which are sure to chronicle all Lord Loveland does and says, and a lot he doesn't do or say. The Louisville papers will have things about you, copied from New York, in the Sunday editions. Yes, I shall be able to read about you every Sunday – lots of things you wouldn't tell in letters if I let you write. I shall see rumours of your engagement, then an announcement. I wonder if it will be the survival of the prettiest; Miss Coolidge – or if you'll be knocked down – on your knees – to a higher bid?"

"You're not letting me get much pleasure out of my last moments with you," he complained, his blue eyes really pathetic. "Do you despise me, after all?"

She looked up at him. "Only one side of you," she answered, a little sadly. "But – you're rather like the moon. We see only one of her sides. The other we have to take on faith. Perhaps it's silly of me, yet sometimes – in some moods – I do take your other side on faith."

"What is there, – on that side?" he asked, eagerly.

"I don't know. And I'm sure you don't. You probably never will. For the light shines so brightly on the one turned towards the world. Now it must be 'goodbye.' There's my dear little aunt – who's been on deck ever since we passed Governor's Island – looking for me."

"Are these to be our last words together, then?" Val had a sickening pang. He had not known it was going to be as bad as this. And it wouldn't have been so bad, if she had seemed to care more.

"Yes, they must be the last, unless just a snippy 'goodbye, very pleased to have met you,' as we leave the ship. I wish you the best luck. Shall I say 'Thine own wish, wish I thee'?" She spoke in a hard, bright tone, just poising like a bird on the wing, before flitting to her aunt.

"Don't forget me. Think of me sometimes," Loveland implored, as he wrung the little hand she held out. And perhaps never in his life had there been so much true feeling in his voice.

"I will think of you sometimes," she said, as if mechanically repeating the words.

"Try and think the best of me."

"Yes. I'll try to do that, too. Goodbye."

But he would not let her hand go. It seemed to him that he could not – although he knew he must. It was all he could do to keep back a plea that she would love him, that she would marry him, even though the crumbling walls of Loveland Castle fell. But instead he stammered, "Am I never to see you again? Can't you stop in New York for a few days, and let me call on – on you and your aunt – just to break the blow of parting?"

"No, we can't stop," she said. "We've been away from home too long already. We have lots to do. You know I work for my living."

"Those stories! Yes. But couldn't you write them in New York?"

"No, I couldn't, indeed. Aunt Barbara and I start for Louisville this afternoon. We live not far away."

"Mayn't I go with you to the train?"

"What! desert valuable friends whom it's your duty to cultivate – if you're to have flowers in the garden of your future?"

"I'd desert anyone or anything for you."

"Thank you. I believe you really mean that – this minute."

"I – "

"No. Don't protest. Sufficient for the minute is the meaning thereof. I must go – I want to go – while you still mean it all. And I'd rather not see you again, because I'd like to keep the memory of you as you look and are in this minute – nothing less. It will seem afterwards to justify our temporary partnership, in case I ever ask myself – Why?"

And before he could answer she was gone.

He dared not follow, and instantly lost sight of her in the crowd that poured to the rail to greet the waiting crowd below. Afterwards, on the dock, he saw her again, but only at a distance, for her aunt's luggage had been marked "D," that it might chaperon Miss Dearmer's, and enable the two ladies to keep each other company during the tedious time of waiting.

From the far off stall under the big letter "L," Loveland gazed sadly at the back of his lost friend's head, her face, either by accident or design, being turned from him. His boxes were long in coming, and as it happened that none of his ship-acquaintances were "L's," he had no one to talk to, nothing pleasanter to do than look at Miss Dearmer's back and gradually lose hope of her relenting.

She had brought a little camp-stool for her aunt, and that lady sat facing Loveland, her eyes so destitute of interest when now and then they strayed in his direction, that he began to believe her niece had never mentioned his existence. More than once he had pictured Lesley describing her aunt's distinguished namesake; had fancied Mrs. Loveland asking questions; and wished that he might hear the answers. The lady's indifference was not flattering to his self-esteem; but Mrs. Loveland did not look a woman to claim a relation because he was a peer.

Lesley's aunt was a little woman with dove-grey hair, folded like dove's wings that slanted softly down her forehead, covering her ears. Hers was a gentle face, with eyes that gazed kindly, and somehow impersonally, out upon the world. She had the air which many American mothers wear, of having contentedly stepped aside from the fore-front of life in favour of a younger generation, and of having lost interest in herself as a separate entity.

Lesley and Mrs. Loveland all got their luggage dumped down under letter "D," before a single "L" box had appeared. Then, when Val's did come, and the property of other impatient "L's" at the same time, the outside world was lost to view. Loveland got hold of a good-natured Custom House man, who, considering the indubitable fact that he was dealing with a British subject, and believing the "Britisher's" statement that he was merely on a visit to America, made no unnecessary trouble. He was in a hurry, like everybody else, and did little more than casually open the leather portmanteaux, the cabin trunk, the hat box, and the fitted suit-case glittering with coronets, which constituted Lord Loveland's luggage.

Very few minutes were wasted in the examination, though Americans all around were suffering severely. Nevertheless, when his keys were in his hand again, and Val was ready to separate himself and his belongings from the seething mass of anxious "L's," Miss Dearmer and her aunt had vanished off the face of the dock.