Читать книгу Golden Fleece: The American Adventures of a Fortune Hunting Earl - David Graham Phillips - Страница 3

Table of Contents

TWO hours after Surrey’s letter came his sister Gwen rode over to Beauvais House eager to tell Evelyn the news of his luck in America. It was almost five o’clock in the beautiful autumn afternoon, and she found Evelyn at tea on the porch that looks out upon the Italian garden.

“It’s settled,” she said. “They’re to be married on the 5th of November—only two months! And George says she is sweet and lovely—not at all like the Americans we know. And her dot is a million and a half—he calls it seven and a half, but he means in their money, which sounds bigger, but counts smaller, than ours. She’ll get twice that when her father dies—and he’s nearly seventy and not strong. And I’m so glad and so sorry that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“What’s her name? You told me, but I forget.” Evelyn’s hand was trembling just a little as she gave Gwendoline a cup of tea. She spoke slowly, in the clear, monotonous, but agreeable, English tone. Her voice, always calm, seemed stagnant.

“Dowie—Helen Dowie. He sent me a proof of a photograph they had taken together.” Gwendoline took a letter from the bosom of her shirtwaist, drew from it the proof, and handed it to Evelyn. She took it, lowered her head so that Gwen could not see her face. She looked long and intently, and, if Gwen had seen, she would have wondered how eyes could be so full of tears without shedding a single one.

“Quite aristocratic,” she said at last, giving it back. “How much style those American girls have!”

“But don’t you think her rather pert-looking?” asked Gwen discontentedly. “She looks ill-tempered, too. I’m sure we sha’n’t get on. Mother and I are making ready to go to Houghton Abbey at once. We’d have a jolly uncomfortable time of it, I wager, if she were to catch us at the Hall.”

Evelyn was gazing into her tea and stirring it absently.

“It seems a shame to have an American nobody come in,” continued Gwen, “and throw us out neck and crop from a house where we’ve always lived. Now, if it were an English girl of our own class,—you, Evelyn,—we shouldn’t mind—at least, not so much, or in the same way.”

Evelyn paled, and her lips contracted slightly.

“But it’s of no use to think of that. We need her money—everything is in tatters at the Hall, and poor George is down to the last seventy pounds.” Gwen laughed. “Do you remember what a time there was getting the five hundred for his expenses out of Aunt Betty? We’ve got to cable him another five hundred—he can’t begin on her money the very minute he’s married, can he now?”

“Arthur must go over,” said Evelyn suddenly, with conviction. “We’re worse off than you are. Old Bagley was down yesterday. He and Arthur were shut in for two hours, and Arthur’s been off his feed—horribly—ever since.”

Gwen, two years younger than Evelyn, could not conceal her feelings so well. She winced, and a look of terror came into her big blue eyes.

“We can’t hold on another year,” continued Evelyn. “And it’s quite impossible for Arthur to take Miss Cadbrough. She’s too hideous, and too hideously, hopelessly middle-class. She could never, never learn not to speak to ladies and gentlemen as if she were a servant.”

Evelyn pretended not to notice Gwen’s unhappiness. She glanced in at the great drawing room, with splendid furniture, and ceiling wonderfully carved by a seventeenth-century Italian. Then her eyes wandered away to the left, to the majestic wing showing there, then on to the brilliant gardens, the fountains and statuary. Her expression became bitter. “And we’ve been undisturbed for nine centuries!” she exclaimed.

Gwen, in spite of her inward tumult, remembered that this boast was rather “tall,” that the Beauvais family had, in fact, been changed radically several times, and only the name had been undisturbed. Her mind paused with a certain satisfaction on these little genealogical discrepancies, because, though she was the sister and the daughter of a duke, she was the granddaughter of a brewer, who had begun life as an apprentice.

“George wishes Arthur to go over to the wedding,” she said reluctantly, after a silence.

A strongly-built, fairish young man of perhaps six and thirty

A servant appeared—his gaudy livery was almost shabby, but his manners were most dignified, and his hair was impressively—or ridiculously, if you please—plastered and streaked with powder. “His Lordship says he will have tea in his study, Your Ladyship.”

“Please tell him that Lady Gwendoline Ridley is here,” said Evelyn.

A few minutes later, a strongly-built, fairish young man of perhaps six and thirty came lounging out upon the porch. He had pleasing, but far from handsome, features—a chin that was too long, and hung weakly, instead of strongly, forward; uncertain blue eyes, with a network of the wrinkles of dissipation at the corners. A large, frameless, stringless monocle was wedged, apparently permanently, into the angle of his right eye-socket. He was dressed in shabby light grey flannels, and he looked as seedy as his clothes. He shook hands with Gwen. “Thanks. No tea. I’m taking whiskey,” he said to Evelyn. And he seated himself sprawlingly. The servant brought his whiskey and a note for his sister.

“Is the man waiting for an answer?” she asked, when she had read it.

“Yes, your ladyship.” She left her brother and Gwen alone.

“George is marrying the heiress,” Gwen began.

“So he wrote me,” replied Frothingham sullenly.

“Evelyn says you must go and do likewise.”

He scowled. “But I’d rather stay here and marry you.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Gwen, with a shrug of her athletic young shoulders. “You’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing. So—you must do your duty.”

“Duty go hang!” said Frothingham fretfully. “Sometimes, do you know, Gwen, I come jolly near envying those beggars that live in cottages, and keep shops, and all that.”

“Now, you’re slopping, Arthur. You know you don’t envy them; no more do I.”

“Did Eve tell you old Bagley was down?”

“Yes. Ghastly—wasn’t it?”

Frothingham sighed. “I shouldn’t be so cut up if I’d had the fun of spending it.”

“You did spend a lot of it.” She was thinking what a great figure the young Earl had cut in her girlhood days; she had always listened greedily when her brother, with admiring envy, or Evelyn, with sisterly pride, talked of his exploits on the turf, and let us say elsewhere, to shorten a long story.

“Only a few thousands that weren’t worth the keeping,” said Frothingham, a faint gleam of satisfaction appearing in the eye that was shielded by the monocle—he liked to remember his “career,” and he liked the women to remind him of it in this flattering way. “All I really got was the bill for the governor’s larks, and his governor’s, and his governor’s governor’s. It’s what I call rotten unfair—jolly rotten unfair. The fiddling for them—the bill for me.”

“Buck up, Artie,” said Gwen, stroking him gently with her riding whip. “See how Georgie has faced it. And perhaps you won’t draw such a bad one, either. She couldn’t be worse than Cadbrough.”

“But I want you, Gwen. I’m used to you, you know—and that’s everything in a wife. I hate surprises, and these American beggars are full of ’em.”

Evelyn came back. “Go away somewhere, both of you,” she said. “Charley Sidney’s just driving up. I wish to talk with him about the States.”

Gwen paled and flushed; Frothingham grunted and scowled. They rose, made a short cut across the garden, and were hidden by the left wing of the house. Almost immediately the servant announced “Mr. Sidney,” and stood deferentially aside for a tall, thin American, elaborately Anglicised in look and dress, and, as it soon appeared, in accent. He had a narrow, vain face, browned and wrinkled by hard riding in hard weather in those early morning hours that should be spent in bed if one has lingered in the billiard room with the drinks and smokes until past midnight.

“Ah, Lady Evelyn!” He shook hands with her, and bowed and smirked. “I’m positively perishing for tea.”

“You mean whiskey?”

“Ah, yes—to be sure. I see there is whiskey.”

Evelyn’s manner, which had been frank and equal before her friend and her brother, had frozen for Sidney into a shy stiffness not without a faint suggestion of superior addressing inferior. She had known Sidney for the ten years he had lived within two miles of Beauvais House, but—well, he wasn’t “one of us” exactly; he had a way of bowing and of pronouncing titles that discouraged equality. The conversation dragged in dreary, rural fashion through gossip of people, dogs, and horses, until she said:

“Have you heard the news of Surrey?”

“No—is His Grace coming home?”

“He’s marrying—a Miss Dowie, of New York. Do you know her?”

“I’ve heard of her. You know, I’ve not been there longer than a week at a time for fifteen years.” Sidney put on his extreme imitation-English air. “I loathe the place. They don’t know how to treat a gentleman. And the lower classes!” He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. He was at his most energetic when, in running down his native land to his English acquaintances, he reached the American “lower classes.”

Evelyn concealed the satire which longed to express itself in her face. She despised Sidney and all the Anglicised Americans; and, behind their backs, she and her friends derided them—perhaps to repay themselves for the humiliation of accepting hospitalities and even more concrete favours from “those American bounders.” The story among Sidney’s upper-class English tolerators was that his father had kept a low public house in New York or San Francisco, or “somewhere over there”—they were as ignorant of the geography of the United States as they were of the geography of Patagonia.

“So he’s to marry Dowie’s daughter?” continued Sidney. “He was brakeman on a railway thirty years ago.”

“How you Americans do jump about!” said Evelyn, forgetting that Sidney prided himself on no longer being an American. “He must be clever.”

“A clever rascal, probably,” replied Sidney spitefully. “Over here he’d have been put into jail for what they honour him for over there.”

“We’ve many of the same sort, no doubt,” said Evelyn, thinking it tactful to hold aloof when a son was abusing his mother.

“Yes, but usually they’re gentlemen and do things in a gentlemanly way.”

“Mr. Dowie is rich?”

“Just now he is—they say.” Sidney had the rich man’s weakness for denying, or at least casting doubt upon, the riches of other rich men. He knew that his was the finest and most valuable wealth in the world, and he would have liked to believe that it was the only wealth in the world. “I trust the Duke has looked sharp to the settlements.”

“Why?” asked Evelyn, preparing to make mental notes.

“He may never get anything but what’s settled on him and her now. Dowie is more or less of a speculator and may go broke. But that’s not the only danger in marrying an American heiress. You see, Lady Evelyn, over there they have the vulgarest possible notions of rank and titles. And often, if there isn’t a cash settlement when they ‘buy the title,’ as they describe it, they refuse to give up anything. Many of their rich men have the craze for founding colleges and asylums and libraries. They reason that they’ve got the title in the family, therefore it isn’t necessary to pay for it; and so they leave all their money to build themselves a monument. Dishonourable, isn’t it? But they stop at nothing.”

“Then,” said Evelyn, “an American heiress isn’t an heiress so long as her father is alive?”

“Exactly. It’s misleading to call her an heiress. She simply has hopes.”

“I hope Surrey knows this.”

“If he doesn’t it’s his own fault. I cautioned His Grace before he sailed.”

“That reminds me, Mr. Sidney. Arthur may be going over to the wedding. Could you——”

“I’d be delighted,” interrupted Sidney. “Anything I could do for Lord Frothingham it would be a pleasure to do. I can give him some useful letters, I think. Will he travel?”

“Possibly—I don’t know. He has no plans as yet.”

“I shall give him—if he will do me the honour of accepting them—only a few letters. The wisest plan is a proper introduction to the very best people. Then all doors will be open to him.”

“The Americans are hospitable to everyone, are they not?”

“Not to younger sons any more. And not to unaccredited foreigners. They’ve had their fingers jolly well burned. I knew of one case—a girl—quite a ladylike person, though of a new family from the interior. She married a French valet masquerading as a duke.”

“Poor creature,” said Evelyn, smiling with amused contempt.

“Yes, and another girl married—or thought she married—a German royal prince. And when she got to Germany she found that she’d bought a place as mere morganatic wife, with no standing at all.”

“Fancy! What a facer!”

“And she never got her money back—not a penny,” continued Sidney. “But, like you, I don’t sympathise with these upstart people who try to thrust themselves out of their proper station. The old families over there—and there are a few gentlefolk, Lady Evelyn, though they’re almost lost in the crowd of noisy upstarts—never have such humiliating experiences in their international marriages.”

“Naturally not,” said Evelyn.

“But, as I was about to say, a foreigner with a genuine title, the head of a house of gentle people, is received with open arms. Lord Frothingham would be overwhelmed with hospitalities. My friends would see to that.”

After a few minutes, without any impoliteness on Evelyn’s part, Sidney began to feel that it was time for him to go. As he disappeared Gwen and Arthur came strolling back.

“What a noisome creature Sidney is!” said Evelyn. “But he’ll be of use to you, Arthur.”

“Did he talk about the old families of America and the gentle birth?” asked Gwen. Her eyes were curiously bright, and her manner and tone were agitated.

“All that again.”

“He’s an ass—a regular tomtit,” growled Frothingham.

“I should think he’d learn,” said Evelyn, “that we don’t take him and his countrymen up because they’re well born—we know they aren’t.”

“If those that are sensible enough to fly from that beastly country are like Sidney,” said Gwen, “what a rowdy lot there must be at home.” She spoke so nervously that Evelyn, abstracted though she was, glanced at her and noticed how pale and peaked she was. When she had ridden away Evelyn looked at her brother severely—she was only three and twenty, but she managed him, taking the place of both their parents, who were long dead.

“You’ve been making love to Gwen,” she exclaimed reproachfully. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Frothingham removed his monocle, wiped it carefully in a brilliant plaid silk handkerchief, and slowly fitted it in place. Then he sent a mocking, cynical gleam through it at his sister. “You forget,” he drawled, “that I caught you and Georgie kissing each other and crying over each other the day he went off to the States.”

Evelyn flushed. “How does that excuse you?” she demanded, undismayed.

He was silent for a moment, then with tears in his eyes and a break in his habitual cynical drawl, “I can’t go, Eve. I can’t give her up.”

Evelyn’s heart ached, but she did not show it. She simply asked in her usual tone of almost icy calm, “Where’s the cash to come from?”

He collapsed helplessly into a chair. There was no alternative—he must go; he must marry money. He owed it to his family and position; also, he wanted it himself—what is a “gentleman” without money? And—why, if he did not bestir himself he might actually have to go to work! And “what the devil could I work at? I might go out to service—I’d shine as a gentleman’s gentleman—or I might do something as a billiard marker——”

With such dangers and degradations imminent, to think of love was sheer madness. Frothingham sighed and stared miserably through his monocle at the peacocks squawking their nerve-jarring predictions of rain.