Lady Betty Across the Water Part 5

Whether people really do make ill-natured jokes or not, I don't know; but anyhow, Mrs. Ess Kay keeps hinting that they do, which is almost as disagreeable for me. She says that they have nicknamed the bronze man "Lady Betty's Hero"; and this has made me so self-conscious that I can't bear to go near the part of the deck where you look over into the steerage, for fear some silly creatures may think I'm trying to see him. I feel as if I had been a conspicuous idiot, and I'm so uncomfortable with Mrs. Ess Kay now, that I expect to be wretched in her house. I can't talk it over even with Sally, because, after all, she's Mrs. Ess Kay's cousin. I wish I had a nose two inches long, and green hair, and then perhaps Mother and Vic would have let me stop at home.

Still, I can't help taking an interest in ship life, and now that it's the morning of the last day on board, I look back on it all as if it ought to have been even more fun than it was.

I enjoyed hearing about the Marconigrams when they came; it seemed like living in a tale by Stan's favourite, Jules Verne, to have messages come flying to us in mid-ocean, like invisible carrier pigeons. I enjoyed having Mr. Doremus tell me about his luck in the big pools, when the men bet on the day's run; and I'm afraid I rather revelled in seeing a row on deck one evening, when one man accused another of being a cheat and a professional gambler, and almost cried about some money he'd lost. If I had been the first man, I wouldn't have trusted the other in the beginning, because he had fat lips, greasy black curls, and wicked eyes so close together you felt they might run into one, if he winked too hard on a hot day. But if I _had_ been so stupid as to trust him, I would have been ashamed to make a fuss afterwards. I think people ought to be sporting.

I liked the "Captain's dinner," too, in honour of the last night on board, with the flags and paper-flower decorations, the band playing military music, the dishes on the menu named after famous generals, and the stewards filing in, in a long procession, when the salon had been darkened, each carrying a bright-coloured, illuminated ice, and cake with tiny English, and American, and German flags stuck into the top.

Yes, I liked everything, except--but now it is nearly over. America is just round the corner of the world.

III

ABOUT NEW YORK

After you have seen nothing but water for days, it's odd how excited you are on seeing a little land. Just a little, little land, and not at all interesting to look at; a strip of grey sand, or a patch of green gra.s.s; and you have been only a few days away from such things, yet somehow you want to jump up and down and shout for joy.

More than half the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers on our ship were Americans, coming home, and I suppose they had gone away because they wanted to go. If they had liked, they could have stopped in their own country as well as not; and I heard some of them saying during the voyage that if they could, they would spend nine months out of the year in Paris; but they made as much fuss over the first lump of sand we saw as if we were discovering the North Pole. Some of them had taken this trip a dozen times or maybe more, but anyone would have thought it was as new to them as to me.

It seemed as if I were sailing, in a dream, to a dream land, and everything would be a dream, till I found myself waking up at home. If anyone had pinched me, I hardly believe I should have felt it, as I stood by the rail, while we steamed towards New York. We pa.s.sed a big fort, and some neat little houses, which looked like officers'

quarters. There were Long Island and Coney Island, which Mr. Doremus said I must be "personally conducted" to see, some day when I felt young and frivolous; and by and by I heard people exclaiming "There's Liberty--there she is! Bless the dear old girl!"

While I was wondering whether they were talking of a lady, or a ship, I caught sight of a majestic giantess, obligingly holding a torch up to light the world. Then I knew it was the Statue which I had read about.

"What do you think of her?" asked Mr. Doremus.

"She's a _grande dame_," I said. "Now I know why your girls hold themselves so well. They're trying to live up to the Ideal American Woman. But she isn't as big as I thought she would be. Nothing ever is as big as you think it's going to be, especially when Americans have told you about it; for one has been brought up to believe that their big things are bigger than anybody else's in the whole world."

"So they are," said Mr. Doremus, "only where all the things are big, you don't notice them, for the high gra.s.s. And over there's some of the gra.s.s."

He pointed, and I saw a great number of enormous objects, shaped like chimneys, and apparently about a mile high, scattered aimlessly along the horizon, which was a brilliant, limpid blue.

"What are they?" I asked. "Great, strange, factories of some sort?"

"No. Houses where pretty women live, and offices where men make the money for them to live on."

"You must be joking. Women would be afraid to perch up there in the sky. Besides, it would take too long to go up and down."

"Nothing takes long in America. And it comes natural to our women to perch up high. Statues aren't the only things we buy pedestals for, this side of the porpoise-tank. You just wait and see."

"I don't need to wait to see that American men are nice to women," said I; "perhaps no nicer than Englishmen, really, only you seem to take a great deal more trouble. Fancy all the men at Mrs. Van der Windt's table drawing lots every night for the right to sit by her and the two Miss Eastmans; I don't believe it would have occurred to Englishmen.

The ones who _really_ wanted to sit there, would have tried to get to their places first, that's all. I do think it was pretty of you."

"Wasn't it? especially supposing none of us particularly wanted--but never mind. Talking of pretty things, here are the docks."

They were big enough to satisfy even my expectations, and I wished that I'd insisted on being taken by someone long ago, to visit the London docks, so that I might know whether ours were better or worse. One never thinks of going to see things at home; but I began to suspect that I might some day be stabbed with jealous pangs and need to be stuffed with a lot of facts about England--though until I knew Americans I've been in the habit of thinking facts the least interesting things in the world. They seemed like chairs to sit on or floors to walk on without noticing what you were doing; but I suppose it might be awkward without chairs and floors.

Soon we were near enough to New York to see the tremendous chimney things clearly, and they sharpened the impression that I was sailing straight into a dream. There could be no such things in the real world; they wouldn't be possible. But the dream felt very interesting and intense all of a sudden, and I didn't want to wake up from it just then, in spite of Mrs. Ess Kay.

The tall shapes were bright and vivid now, as giant hollyhocks growing in irregular rows. Still, they did not look one bit like houses, or offices where people could work without going stark, staring mad. I got a queer idea in my head that the houses themselves must be buried deep underground, like bulbs, with only their towers sticking up.

The next thing that happened in the dream, was slowing majestically into our own dock, and that was wonderful. The whole place was alive with faces, mostly pretty girls' faces, under fascinating hats, gay as flowers in a flower-show; parterre above parterre of brilliant blossoms; and they had all been grown in honour of us.

There was a wild waving of handkerchiefs on the ship, and a frantic fluttering of white among the flowers, as if a flock of b.u.t.terflies had been frightened up into the air. Still we were a long time getting in, and I grew quite impatient; but finally Louise, who had attended to my packing, took charge of my handbag, my sunshade and coat, with her mistress's and Miss Woodburn's things. The moment had come to bid the ship good-bye.

"Now," said Mrs. Ess Kay, slipping her arm into mine, "I wonder, dear child, if you would mind being left alone to deal with the custom-house people? You'd stand under your own letter 'B,' of course."

"Oh, Katherine, do you think even Letter B, which sounds so like a warning to young men, a proper chaperon for a d.u.c.h.ess's daughter?"

exclaimed Sally Woodburn.

I laughed, but Mrs. Ess Kay didn't. She evidently considers things connected with the American Custom House no fit subject for frivolity.

She went on, without answering; "I'm under 'K,' and Sally 'W.' We'll both have all we can attend to wrestling with our own Fiends, and Louise will be just as busy. But you're a British subject, on a short visit to this country, and they won't be as diabolical to you, dear. I did all the swearing necessary for you in the saloon, with my own, when the tiresome man came on board, and there's really nothing left for you to bother with on the dock, except to open your boxes and say you have nothing to declare."

I was glad that since profanity had been called for in the saloon, owing to the tiresomeness of a man, it had been Mrs. Ess Kay who was obliged to give vent to it, not I; but I felt rather defrauded that I couldn't have heard, and I wondered if she had gone so far as to mention "d.a.m.n." All I said out loud, however, was that I was sure I could manage very well in the docks, and Mrs. Ess Kay appeared much relieved. "That's perfectly sweet of you, Betty," she said, launching a daggery glance at poor, inoffensive Sally, for some reason which I couldn't understand. "I hope you won't think I'm horrid not to have asked you to label your baggage 'K,' so it could go with mine. It's better not, for _everyone_ concerned; I'll explain afterwards _why_; and Louise shall take you to 'B.'"

Louise did take me to "B," which they had thoughtfully printed very large and black on a wooden wall of the dock, in a row with all the other letters of the alphabet. A good many people from the ship were collecting beneath theirs, as if they were animals getting ready to join the procession for the ark, under the heading of Cat or Elephant, as the case might be; and they all seemed worried and apprehensive, as you do at the dentist's, even when you try to distract your mind by looking at the pictures in _Punch_.

Louise put my bag on the wooden floor, and folded my coat on it.

"Miladi will do well to sit down," said she. "It may be that the baggage do not come _immediatement_." With this she bustled away to the Louise rabbit warren, wherever it was, leaving me to the tender mercies of fellow "B's," who began to swarm round me and buzz distractedly.

I subsided on the bag, which was very like sitting on the floor; but it was stifling down there among people's feet; besides, mine soon got "pins and needles"; so presently I popped up like a Jack out of his Box, and almost knocked off a man's nose with the crown of my hat.

I said "I _beg_ your pardon!" though what the nose was doing so near the top of my head I couldn't conceive, until its owner (fumbling with one hand for his handkerchief to staunch a drop of blood, and s.n.a.t.c.hing off his straw hat with the other, already full of notebooks and things) blurted out abruptly: "Are you Lady Bulkeley?"

I _was_ surprised!

"No," said I. "I'm Lady Betty Bulkeley."

"That's all right," said the nose man, as if he forgave me for being myself. "I didn't know but you'd want to be called Lady Bulkeley by strangers."

"It isn't my name," I said, more puzzled than ever. I would have tried to be dignified, as he was a perky-looking young man in an alpaca coat; but when you have just made a person's nose bleed with your hat, it would seem unfeeling to be too frigid,--though I believe an application of ice is supposed to be beneficial.

"Shall I call you Lady Betty then?" asked the man, patting his nose with his handkerchief, which luckily for my nerves had already a pattern of pink dots on it.

"I don't see why you should call me anything," said I.

With that, he produced a card, with a whole string of words printed on it, and poked it under my eyes. "I was just going to introduce myself,"

he said. "I represent _The New York Flashlight_, and I've been sent by my paper to get something from you, if you'll oblige me."

"Something from me?" I repeated, bewildered. "Is it anything to do with the Customs? I've nothing to declare."

"Just tell me, please, something about your family. Your brother's the Duke of Stanforth, isn't he?" (He p.r.o.nounced it "Dook.")

"Yes, but----"

"Thanks. Young and unmarried, isn't he?"