Читать книгу Golden Fleece: The American Adventures of a Fortune Hunting Earl - David Graham Phillips - Страница 5

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New York, 6 November.

My Dear Eve:

I ’M just sending you off the newspapers with the accounts of George’s wedding. Don’t show them about, please, as he’s frightfully cut up over them. He swears he’ll never set foot in this country again, or let his Duchess come. You’ll be tremendously amused as you read. You’ll never have seen anything so frank and personal. And the illustrations! We’ve done nothing but dodge cameras when we weren’t dodging reporters. I don’t agree with George—I think it’s great fun.

They let me off easy, as you’ll see, and some of the pictures of me are not half bad. But I don’t wonder that George is furious. Just read the descriptions of his looks—and really he’s looking horribly seedy. And don’t neglect the accounts of the new Duchess’ papa, and how he came by his cash. He must be a gory old vulture—though really he doesn’t look it, and except when he gets to going it hard his English is fairly good, of the nosey, Yankee kind.

George came down to the dock to meet me. He was in a blue fury. It seems the newspapers had been making a fearful row over him from the moment he left the other side. And then by illustrated accounts of his houses, his property, his family, and himself, not to speak of what they printed about the Dowies’ past and present, they set the crowds to collecting at his hotel, and to following him round the streets. They published even what he ate and drank, and the size of the tips he gave the servants. And after the engagement was announced the excitement became something incredible. He couldn’t poke his nose out of his rooms that somebody didn’t collect the crowd by shouting, “There’s his Dooklets, there’s the little fellow”—and you know Georgie is a bit sensitive about his size.

Well, the newspapers published everything—his height and weight, the tooth he has out on the left side, every rag in his boxes, pictures of them, everything in Miss Dowie’s trousseau—columns and columns. And how he did hop round when he found that the Dowies had actually hired a fellow and a woman to give out facts to the press! What do you think of that for a Yankee notion?

You can’t imagine the presents. You’d have thought the crown princess was marrying. The newspapers say they alone were worth a million and a half, American money. I and Cleggett went over them, and we decided they’d fetch more. You know, Cleggett—he’s Georgie’s solicitor—is over here looking after the settlements. He simply had to put the screws onto old Dowie. I got a good many hints from him on how to deal with these beggars in money matters. Dowie’s a shrewd chap. He and Cleggett did all the money talk. Georgie was supposed to know nothing about it. But maybe he wasn’t in a funk when it began to look as if the whole business were off at the last minute. I had to work hard to keep him up to the mark. Cleggett won out, though—got a hundred thousand pounds more than Georgie expected.

To go back to the presents, her uncle—one of the ha’penny rags here said he’s been in the penitentiary, but I hear it’s not true—he gave her a yacht, a regular ocean steamer. You’ll admire the necklace her aunt sent her—it can’t have cost less than fifty thousand, our money. It makes me ill to see these beggars wading and wallowing in money. By the way, I notice that while they talk of spending money, they talk of making it as much as they talk of spending it, if not more.

Wallingford, a fellow I’ve met here, said to me at dinner the other night, a few minutes after the women had gone: “Shall we stay here with the men and discuss making money, or shall we go up to the women and discuss spending it?”

But to go back to Georgie and his coming down to meet me. I saw him on the pier, his face like a sunset and his arms going like mad. He was haranguing a crowd in which there were several cameras. I shouted to him—I and Miss Longview and her father were at the rail together. As I shouted the crowd looked, and the cameras were pointed at us. Miss Longview darted away, and her father pulled at me.

“Come, come!” he said, all in a flurry and a sweat. “They’ll take your picture if you stay.”

“Who?” said I. “And why should they take my picture?”

“The reporters,” he answered, dragging at me. “You don’t understand about American newspapers.” I let him drag me away, and then he explained. “They know you are coming to the wedding,” he said, “and they’ll photograph you and interview you and print everything about you—insulting, impudent things. There’s no such thing as privacy in this horrible country. Didn’t I tell you they haven’t the faintest notion what a gentleman is, or what is due a gentleman?”

Barney,—I’m sure I told you about him in the letter I wrote you on the way over,—Barney was sitting near us. He burst in with, “I think your friend is unduly alarmed, Earl.” (He always calls me Earl. He says he’ll be blanked if he’ll call any man lord.) “You haven’t committed a crime, or done what you’d be ashamed to see in print. No honest man objects to having his face published, or anything else about him that’s true.” And he glared at Longview, who sniffed and walked away. Barney sent a jeering laugh after him, and said, “The scrawny little chipmunk!”

“What’s a chipmunk?” said I.

“A kind of squirrel,” said he, “only littler, and even easier to scare.”

We went to the rail, and there was George, with his crowd pushing and jostling him. As soon as the gangway was let down he rushed aboard, the crowd with the cameras on his heels. At the top he turned like Marius, or whoever it was, at the bridge. And he shouted to the officers, in a funny, shrill voice, “Drive those ruffians back!” But the officers were smiling at him, and only pretended to restrain the reporters and photographers. On they came, reaching us about as soon as George did. They poured round and between us, and began to ask me questions. I must admit they were polite, in the Yankee way, and friendly, and good-natured.

I said to one of ’em: “I say, my good fellow, can’t you give me time to get my breath?”

“No, I can’t, Lord Frothingham,” he said, laughing. “What would you do if you were I, and your paper were going to press in ten minutes and you were five minutes from a telephone?”

I got on famously with them. I didn’t in the least mind. They must have liked me, as you’ll read. But Georgie! How they have been dishing him!

It wasn’t until we got into the carriage that I and he had chance at each other. “Did you ever see or hear of anything like it?” he said. His hands were shaking, and the sweat was rolling down his cheeks. “They act like a lot of South Sea savages when a whale comes ashore. They are savages. I had heard it was a beastly country, but——” And he actually ground his teeth.

You know George is very touchy on his dignity, and has old-fashioned ideas of what’s due a Duke from his inferiors. It seems he got into a huff when he first came because they treated him in offhand fashion, as they treat everybody. And he tried to snub them. And when they snubbed back, only they had illustrated newspapers to do it in, he went wild, and has been making matters worse and worse for himself. Some of the papers have had leaders pitying Miss Dowie, and predicting that she’ll have him in the divorce court for brutality shortly—think of it—Georgie, quiet Georgie! Everyone is hating him, for he assumed that even Miss Dowie’s friends were like the newspapers that had slated him, and he snubbed right and left.

He took me to his hotel. He had an apartment that costs him fifteen pounds a day—ain’t that cruel? But he said he didn’t propose that these savages should sneer at his poverty—they’re doing it, anyhow, and they hint that the Dowies are paying his hotel bill, or will have to pay it. However, I think he did well to spread himself. There’s something about this country that makes you ashamed to seem poor. You spend money and pretend you’ve got plenty of it. They call it “throwing a bluff,” or “making a front.”

George had taken an apartment for me at a tall price, but I wouldn’t have it, as I wouldn’t saddle him with the expense—he hadn’t her money in hand then. Besides, I knew that as soon as he was gone I’d have to come down, and that would have looked bad. After I was installed in a very comfortable little apartment thirteen floors up—think of that!—at three pounds a day, we drove to Dowie’s. A crowd saw us off at the hotel, people pointed and stared at us all the way up the street, and there was a crowd waiting for us at Dowie’s. They live in a huge greystone castle,—there is no end of smart houses here, but a queer jumble—samples of everything. I hadn’t known old Dowie an hour before he told me the house and ground and all cost him six hundred thousand, our money.

The girl—but you’ll judge her for yourself. I rather fancied her. Affected, of course, and trying to act a duchess out of one of Ouida’s novels. Rather fat, too, and her hair is thin, and a mussy shade of yellow. I think she’ll waddle in about five years. Still, she’s sensible and quick, and dresses well. All the women here do that. But the money! It’s heart-rending to see it parade by. And they seem to be throwing it away, but they don’t. Everything is horribly dear here. I must look sharp or I sha’n’t last long.

The newspapers will give you all you want to know about the wedding—it was quite a show—perhaps vulgar and overdone, but really gorgeous. I like America, and I like the people. They’re jolly good-natured, and the nice ones here are much the same as nice people anywhere else. The Longviews have taken a big furnished house, and I’m staying with them. Next week a friend of Miss Longview—a Miss Hollister, who lives here, but her people are still in the country—is coming to visit her. Her (Miss Hollister’s) father owns a lot of railways and mines, and is no end of a financial swell. I’m too sleepy to write another word, except

Arthur.

How is Gwen? Be good to me, Evelyn—with love—

A.

He liked the very first glimpse of her