Читать книгу Lord Loveland Discovers America - Williamson Alice Muriel, Williamson Charles Norris - Страница 2

One of Loveland's most easily detected virtues was his careless habit of telling the truth. He had never lied, or even fibbed whitely, as a small boy, an idiosyncrasy which had often seriously inconvenienced his mother and other relations whose pet failings or economies he had ruthlessly exposed. But Lady Betty Bulkeley had always maintained that this bold truthfulness of her cousin's was the result of inconsiderateness rather than nobility of soul.

She said (and she ought to have known, as she had been acquainted with him since she was two, and he eight, years old) that he did not bother to think of polite fibs, simply because the feelings of others were not for him of enough importance to seem worth saving at the cost of mental effort. Besides, according to Betty, Val took an impish delight in shocking people. As for blurting out the truth about his own affairs, the habit sprang from that impishness, in idle moods, and a sublime indifference to public opinion in serious states of mind. Now, in his letter to Betty asking for introductions, he made no attempt to cover his real intentions with the roses of pretty fiction.

He let it appear plainly that he thought his cousin, having visited America and snatched a millionaire from the matrimonial grab-bag, ought gladly to help him succeed in the same game.

"The wretch!" said Betty, in the midst of reading Loveland's brutally frank letter to Jim, her American trophy, "I believe he has the impudence to think I married you for money! I'd like to shake him, and box his silly, conceited ears."

"They may be silly and conceited, but they're exactly the shape of yours, darling, so I couldn't find it in my heart to box them, no matter how much good it might do their owner," said Jim Harborough, who had been Betty's husband for nearly a year, and was joyously watching her triumphs as a young married woman.

Naturally Betty kissed him for this speech, as they were at breakfast alone together, the servants banished.

"Well, anyway, we won't give him the letters," she said when she had gone back to her own place – not far away.

"Won't we?" asked Jim, with a thoughtful air.

"No, certainly not," returned Betty. "I like your country-women, and I won't deliberately let Loveland loose to prey upon them."

"I 'guess' they can take care of themselves," said Jim, putting on his Yankiest accent.

"I don't know. Some of them might fall in love with him," suggested Betty doubtfully. "He's awfully good-looking, with a kind of winning, boyish way, and – a voice that's far too nice to express him, really. One often feels too lenient with Val, as if he were one of one's own pet weaknesses come alive and walking about."

"As for his looks, he's more like you than your own brother is," said Jim, "eyes, dimples, curly hair and all; so you wouldn't want me to hate him, would you? And as for his voice, it's occurred to me that maybe it expresses something in his real self – the hidden self that he and nobody else knows anything about – the self he's never had a chance to develop or find out, because his mother and other people have spoiled him from his babyhood."

"That's very subtle of you, Jim, as well as very kind – and like you," said Betty. "I wish I could think it's true, as he's my cousin. But thank goodness, I for one never spoiled him. I scratched his face once when I was a small girl, and I'm glad. I wish it had left a mark."

"It would have been even a more honourable scar than the one South Africa gave him. But I admit, he is rather an unlicked cub, – at present. I pity the girl who falls in love with him – as he now is."

"Always was and probably ever will be, Loveland without end," finished Betty, flippantly. "The cheek of him, expecting me to ask you for letters, so that he can go over to your country and do his best to make some nice American girl miserable for life – and spend all her money. I shall punish him – since I can't do anything worse – by telling him exactly what I think of him."

"There are other ways of punishing him – more fitting to the crime, perhaps," remarked Jim, thoughtfully.

"What ways?"

"Giving him the letters."

"Jim!"

"And then – and then – well, a lot depends upon whether he's a born egoist, or merely a made one. I haven't quite worked out the idea yet. It's simmering – it'll soon begin to boil."

Whether Jim Harborough's idea had already boiled or not, at all events that same afternoon a fat envelope went out by post, registered, and addressed to The Marquis of Loveland, Cragside Lodge, Dorloch, N. B. In it there were at least ten letters of introduction, all to names the bare mention of which had power to raise the circulation of Society papers in America, or create a flutter in Wall Street. Each envelope enclosed in the big one was left open, so that Loveland might acquaint himself with the terms in which his cousins described him to their millionaire friends.

Perhaps he was slightly aggrieved that they did not paint him in more glowing terms, or dwell upon the honour conferred on the recipients of the letters. But there was no real fault to find, and – as Jim would perhaps have said – it was "up" to Loveland to make his own impression. On the whole, Val was satisfied with what he had got, and condescendingly wrote two lines of thanks to Betty.