Lady Betty Across the Water Part 3

That is, she entertained him so gorgeously and did so many nice things for him, that he posed as her property; and as everyone was dying to meet him, it _made_ her. She'd been working killingly hard before that, for a whole year after taking her house on Fifth Avenue and building her cottage at Newport, but it was buying the Prince which did the trick. On the strength of that episode and its consequences, she went to Europe with very nice introductions, and as you know, deah, she has made some valuable as well as pleasant friends. To live up to them and her reputation, she will have to be busy for a while dropping a lot of old acquaintances."

"How horrid!" I couldn't help exclaiming, though Mrs. Ess Kay was going to be my hostess.

"Yes, it seems rather miserable to me, because I'm a weak, lazy, Southern thing, who would be right down sick, if I had to hurt any human being's feelings. Yet perhaps it looks fair to her. She's so ambitious, and she's worked so hard, she _has_ deserved to succeed. As for poor me, she just regularly mesmerises me all through. She mesmerised me into coming up from Kentucky and visiting her this spring; then she mesmerised me into going with her to Europe. But I'm not sorry I went, for I've had a _right_ good time."

"I'm so glad you went," said I, "because if you hadn't I shouldn't have met you. I'm sure I should love Kentucky if all the people there are like you. But these things you've been saying seem so odd. Do you mean to tell me that the people who lead Society in New York want to keep their set limited to a certain number, and refuse to know others, even if they're extraordinarily clever and interesting?

"They don't like them to be too clever, because they call such people '_queer_'--that is, unless they happen to be 'lions' of some sort from England or other places abroad. Then, so long as they're not _American_, they welcome them with open arms."

"I'm glad Society isn't like that in England," I said. "There the _real_ people--the people who have the right to make social laws, you know--are delighted with anyone who can amuse them. Of course, deep down in our hearts, we may be proud if we have old names, which have been famous for hundreds of years in one way or another; but we are so used, after all those centuries, to being _sure_ of ourselves, that we just take our position for granted, and don't think much more about it.

If people who haven't got quite the same position are gentlefolk, and amusing, or clever, or beautiful, or anything like that which really matters, why, we're only too pleased with them."

"That's all the difference in the world! You've been 'sure of yourselves for centuries.' You've said the last word, my deah. 'Out of the mouths of babes'--but Cousin Katherine's finished gushing to that silly old Mrs. Van der Windt. We mustn't dare discuss these things from our point of view any more. I reckon she would faint."

There are a good many young men on board, and some of them seemed to be quite devoted to Mrs. Ess Kay the first day out; but she was cold to them all, I couldn't think why, as some of them seemed very nice, and she had always appeared rather to like being with men. I asked Sally about it, but she laughed, and said I might perhaps solve the mystery for myself when we were at Newport, if I remembered it then.

I never heard of such breakfasts and luncheons as they have on this ship, and the first menu I saw surprised me so much, that I couldn't believe they really had and could produce all those things if anybody was inconsiderate enough to ask for them. I hardly supposed there were so many things to eat in the world. But the captain heard me exclaiming to Sally, so he smiled, and told me to test the menu by ordering a bit of everything on it; he'd guarantee that nothing would be missed out.

This was at breakfast the second day; and when he saw that I ate several dear little round things, shaped like cream-coloured doyleys, which are called pancakes (though they aren't a bit like ours) with some perfectly divine stuff named maple syrup, he said my taking such a fancy to American products was a sign that I should marry an American.

What nonsense! As if I would dream of marrying, especially a foreigner.

But for all that, pancakes and maple syrup are delicious. I've had them every day since for breakfast, after finishing a great orange four times the natural size, which isn't _really_ an orange, because it's a grape fruit. You have it on your plate cut in two halves, with ice in each, and you scoop the inside out of a lot of tiny pockets, with a teaspoon. You think when you first see it, that you can't eat more than half; but instead, you eat every bit, and sometimes if the morning is hot, you even wish you could have more; though of course you wouldn't be so greedy as to ask.

It was on the second day out, too, that all my troubles began--and in a queer way which n.o.body could have guessed would lead to anything disagreeable.

In the afternoon I was reading in my deck-chair, drawn close to Mrs.

Ess Kay's side, when that Mrs. Van der Windt whom Sally called a silly old thing, toddled up and spoke to us. "Do come and watch them dancing in the steerage," she said. "It's such fun."

Mrs. Ess Kay likes sitting still on shipboard better than anything else, but it seems that Mrs. Van der Windt is so important that if all the Four Hundred Sally told me about were pruned away, except about twenty-five, she would be among the number left; so probably that is the reason why Mrs. Ess Kay takes long walks up and down the deck with her, though it makes her giddy to walk, and Mrs. Van der Windt is not in the least entertaining.

She got up now, like a lamb about to be led to the slaughter, except that she smiled bravely, which the lamb would not be able to bring itself to do. "Come, Betty," she said to me, "it will amuse you."

"Yes, do come, Lady Betty," repeated Mrs. Van der Windt; whereupon I obeyed, little knowing what I was laying up for myself.

Our deck is amidships. Aft, on a level with ours, is the second-cla.s.s deck; and for'rard, down below, like looking into a pit, is the steerage. We walked to the rail, over which quite a number of men were leaning, to see what was going on, and several moved aside to give us room. I didn't like to take their places away, especially as they were laughing and enjoying themselves, and I could hear the sound of dance music coming up from below (such odd-sounding music!), but Mrs. Ess Kay murmured to me that I mustn't refuse. "American men are never so happy," she said, "as when they're giving up something for a woman.

They're used to it."

And evidently she, as an American woman, was used to taking it. She and Mrs. Van der Windt slipped into the vacant s.p.a.ces with a bare "thank you," and I had to follow their example. We peered down over the rail; and there was a sight which would have been comical, if it hadn't been pathetic.

On rather a rough-looking deck, about twelve feet or more below us, a dense crowd was collected round two small squares, which they purposely left open. Besides those little squares, every inch was occupied. There wouldn't have been any more room for even a baby to sit down than there was in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In the crowd were old men, young men and boys, all poorly dressed; and old women, young women and girls, big and little. They wore crude, vivid colours, and more than half of them had bright handkerchiefs tied over their heads. They scarcely took any notice of the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers staring down superciliously or pityingly at their poor amus.e.m.e.nts; they were far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily--I can't say gaily--in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who looked almost half-witted, was monotonously sc.r.a.ping a battered fiddle, for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same axis. But the other "dancing salon" was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a uniform with big red flannel epaulettes and pasteboard b.u.t.tons covered with gold paper, was pretending to conduct the band. And what a band it was!

It consisted of four sailors, rather sheep-faced and self-conscious.

One musical instrument was a wooden box rigged up with strings and a long handle; another was formed from a couple of huge soup-spoons tied together, on which the player beat rhythmically with a smaller spoon; the third was a poker, dangling from a string, banged heartily with an enormous nail as it swung to and fro; the fourth was a queer, home-made drum, which looked as if it had been made out of a wooden bandbox.

Somehow they contrived to coax out music of a sort, and a few young men and girls were solemnly gyrating to it in a way to make you giddy even to watch. When a man thought he had had enough, or wanted to dance with another girl, he dropped his partner with alarming suddenness, bowed stiffly without smile or word, and left her _plante la_. It was evidently etiquette not to speak to your partner. At the end of a dance, the conductor with the lobster-claw nose looked up to our deck, bowing low with his hand on his heart, and then all the audience leaning over the rail began fumbling in their pockets if they were men, or opening their purses or gold bags if they were women. Down poured a shower of small silver and copper, little boys scrambling to pick it up, and hand it to the conductor, who would, Mrs. Van der Windt said, divide the money among the members of his quaint band.

I had a few shillings with me, and I'd been so much amused that I felt like being generous. Luckily, Mother couldn't see me, and scold! I took half a dozen coins--shillings and sixpences--and wrapping them hurriedly up in half the cover torn off a magazine I was reading, I aimed the little parcel to fall at the comic conductor's feet.

Generally I can throw fairly straight, for Stan took some pains with that part of my education when I was a small girl; but just at that instant someone standing next me moved, knocked me on the elbow, and spoilt my aim.

Instead of falling in front of Mr. Lobster-Claw, the parcel hit the ear of a very tall young man among the crowd below, who had been standing with his back to me. He turned quickly, not knowing what had happened, glanced up and caught my eyes, as I was looking down quite distressed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_He turned around quickly, glanced up and caught my eyes, as I was looking down, quite distressed_"]

I had noticed his figure in the crush, because he towered nearly a head over everyone else, and I had a dim impression that he had good shoulders; but seeing his face gave me a great surprise.

It was as different from all the rest of the steerage faces as day is from night, and somehow it gave me quite a shock that such a man should be among those others, as if something must be wrong with the world, or it could not happen. I had even a guilty sort of thrill, as if I had no right to be well-dressed and prosperous, staring at him and his companions as though they were a show which we others paid to see--daring to amuse ourselves with the hard, strange conditions of their lives.

I've heard Mother say that good blood is sure to prove itself; that a gentleman can't look like a common man, even in rags. Stan disputes that theory with her, when he isn't too lazy, and wants to bet he could so disguise himself that she would take him for a green grocer or a fishmonger, who have the air of being commoner than other men, I think--at least in our village at Battlemead--because they wear fat tufts of curls frothing out over their foreheads from under their caps, which are always plaid and made of cloth.

Anyway, if Mother is right, this man in the steerage must have the bluest of blood in his veins, for I never saw one with clearer, n.o.bler features. And yet, he doesn't give the impression of a broken-down gentleman who has gone the pace and paid for it by stumbling into the depths. I thought, as he looked up straight into my face that first time, (and I think still) that no face could be finer or more manly than his. Brown--deep brown it is, like bronze, and clean-shaved (not rough and scrubby), with dark grey eyes (I knew at once they were grey because the light struck into them) rimmed with black lashes, so long you couldn't help noticing them; black eyebrows and hair short and sleek like Stan's, or any other well-groomed man one knows. Besides, commonness shows in people's mouths more than anywhere else; it's hard to define, but it's there; and this man's mouth is the best part of his face--unless it's the chin; or perhaps the nose, I'm not quite sure which, though I've thought a good deal about them all, because of the mystery of finding such a man in such an unsuitable place. It would be just the same if you saw a tall palm suddenly shooting up in the kitchen-garden, and couldn't find out how it had been planted there.

I'm afraid I must have shown how surprised I was, and admiring, too, maybe (how can one keep from admiring what is fine and n.o.ble, whether it's a strange person's face, or the profile of a mountain against a sky at sunset?) for the handsome steerage pa.s.senger looked at me a long, long instant as if he were as much astonished as I was; and yet with such a nice look, that instead of being annoyed, I couldn't help being pleased.

In the meantime the little packet of money had fallen on the deck; but though it had struck him from behind, he seemed to realise exactly what had happened, and stooping down, he picked it up. Then he raised his hand high, so that I could see he had the crumpled ball of paper in it; and edging his way determinedly but not at all roughly, through the crowd, he opened the parcel and gave the money to the conductor.

"What a splendid-looking man!" I said in a low voice to Mrs. Ess Kay.

"Isn't it extraordinary that he should be in the steerage?"

"Come away, my dear child," she answered. "I can't have you standing here to be stared at by low creatures like that. The fellow's not in the _least_ splendid-looking. He's only a big, hulking animal. Don't take to making up romances about the steerage pa.s.sengers, my love.

They're not worth bothering your little head about, because if they weren't born for that sort of thing, they wouldn't be there, I a.s.sure you."

I didn't say anything more, though I was vexed with her, both for being so stupidly conventional, and for speaking to me in such a loud tone that she attracted people's attention.

We went back to our deck-chairs, and there was nothing to remind me of the little episode except the torn cover of my magazine, on which, I now remembered, Sally Woodburn had scrawled my name over and over again in pencil, just in idleness, while she and I had been talking that morning. If Mrs. Ess Kay had known, no doubt she would have been furious that a piece of paper with my name on it should have gone down into the steerage. But I didn't mind, for I remembered that the young man had opened the parcel, given the money to the conductor, and kept the cover, which probably he had soon after thrown overboard, or twisted up to light a pipe.

Nothing more happened that day; but there are two nice American girls on board, about my own age or a little older (they _seem_ years older, for they are so charming and self-possessed) and Mrs. Ess Kay encourages me to like them, as they are in Mrs. Van der Windt's party. I grew quite well acquainted with them the third day out, and they asked me to go and watch the people in the steerage, who had a little trick dog which was lots of fun. I went, and saw the bronze young man again. He was standing with his arms folded across his blue-flannel-shirted chest, leaning against one of the supports of a kind of bridge, looking up towards the first-cla.s.s deck. Our eyes met as they had before, and I was so absurd that I felt myself blushing. I could have boxed my own ears; and though the trained dog really was a pet, I didn't stay long.

It is strange how certain kinds of eyes haunt one. You, see them in the air, as if they were really looking at you--especially when you are just dropping off to sleep. I think grey ones do this more than others.

Perhaps it is because they are more piercing.

But it was on the fourth day that the climax came,--the climax which has ended by upsetting me so much, and has made everything so uncomfortable.

The weather was glorious--all blue and gold after a sulky, leaden day--and there was dancing down on the steerage deck again. Though it was so fine, the water was not smooth like a floor as it had been at first, but broken into indigo waves ruffled irregularly with silver lace and edged with shimmering pearl fringe.

The same performance was going on, down there on the crowded deck, that I'd seen the first day, and Sally Woodburn and I, who had been walking--counting the times we went round, to make two miles--stopped to glance at the show.

"There's that good-looking man Cousin Katherine cla.s.sifies as a hulking animal," said Sally. "I must really consult the dictionary for a definition of the word 'hulking.' I don't know whether it's a verb or adjective, do you?"

"No, I don't," said I. "But whichever it is, I'm sure he doesn't or isn't. He's a gentleman, and something strange has happened or he wouldn't be there. I do think it's a shame. It must be horrible."

"Don't you think Cousin Katherine knows more about such persons than you?" asked Sally, and there was such a funny quaver in her voice that I turned to see what it meant. She was laughing, but whether at me or at Mrs. Ess Kay, or at the man with the Lobster-Claw nose, I couldn't tell; and before I could answer her question by asking another, something happened which put the whole conversation out of my mind.

The ship curtseyed to a wave of more importance than any that had gone before, then righted herself quickly. We slid a little, everybody who could catching hold of the rail or of some friend's arm, laughing; but down on the steerage deck there rose a cry which wasn't laughter.

"Child overboard!" someone screamed. And I realised with a horrid feeling like suffocation, that a tiny boy down below, who had climbed up on the rail to watch the dancing, was missing.

It was a woman who had screamed, and everything followed so quickly that my mind was confused, as if a whirlwind had rushed through it and blown all the impressions on top of one another, in a heap. There was a babel of voices on the steerage deck, more cries, and shouts, and screams, and people surged in a solid wave toward the rail to look over. But out of that wave sprang one figure separating itself from the other atoms; and then I heard myself give a cry, too, for the man who had been in my thoughts had thrown off his coat and vaulted over the rail into the sea.

"Jove! he'll be caught by the propeller!" I heard somebody near me say.