Читать книгу Lord Loveland Discovers America - Williamson Alice Muriel, Williamson Charles Norris - Страница 8

The Mauretania passed the noble statue of Liberty enlightening the world, and Loveland admired her impersonally, but felt that had she been a live millionairess he would not have dared propose to her.

Then, presently, the hugeness of the great city loomed monstrous, mountainous in purple shadow against such a blue sky as Italy and New York know.

A crowd was massed on the dock to welcome the Mauretania and her passengers; and for the first time since he had left England, Val felt a vague homesickness stirring in his breast. Almost everyone else on board seemed to have at least one handkerchief-waving friend, and some had half a dozen, but all the smiling eager faces looking up were strange to his eyes. There was no one for him; and he had a sudden, queer sensation of not being at home in the world. This, in spite of invitations from everybody he had met on the ship – except one: the One who mattered.

Mr. Coolidge and several other fathers and uncles of pretty girls had asked him to make their house his home; but he had taken Jim Harborough's advice to heart, and excused himself warily. His idea was to let New York society pass before his eyes in review, before risking a premature entanglement. To this course he committed himself in cold blood. Since he could not have Lesley Dearmer, all that mattered to him in a girl was decent manners, decent looks, and – many millions.

He should have rejoiced that it was time to land, and have felt keen to set to work upon the business which had brought him across the sea, but he was in no mood to rejoice at anything; and it was Lesley Dearmer's fault.

He had planned a moonlight farewell for the night before, but Lesley thwarted him by talking the whole evening long with a sporting youth, whom Val wrathfully stigmatised in his mind as suffering from motor bicycle face, bridge eye, clutch knee and tennis elbow. Then when she had tired of her flirtation she went to bed.

Next morning it was only as the Mauretania neared her slip that the girl appeared again. Without seeming to notice Loveland she stood leaning her elbows on the rail, not far from him. It occurred to Val that after all it was a matter of no importance to her that their lives were to be lived apart. And the separation was at hand. He had thought of this hour, but now it was here. He was going to lose her. Tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, he would have no sweet, merry, mysterious-eyed friend to advise him and listen half-amused, half in earnest, to his confidences.

Suddenly his heart felt like a large, cold boiled beetroot in his breast. He went and stood behind the girl, dumb with a strange new misery he could not understand, and, as though she had heard the "unerring speech" of his silence, she turned.

At first her beautiful brown eyes flashed a laughing challenge at him, as if they said, "Wouldn't you like to make me think you really care? But I don't think it, and won't. And neither do you care. We've both been playing."

Then, something in his look softened hers. She smiled kindly, though not wholly without guile.

"Aren't you excited?" she asked.

"Why should I be excited?" he grumbled.

"Because – well, you're a soldier, and know what war is like. I've heard that the most exciting thing which can happen is a call to make a sortie in the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream – and on an empty stomach. But I should think the call to a matrimonial sortie – "

"On an empty purse?"

"Yes; when it's a question of selling yourself to fill it."

"I don't mean to sell myself. I shall still belong to myself and to one other. I won't say who that other is, for I've pretty well told you already."

"It's no use pretending not to understand. I know what you want me to think you mean."

"If I never knew before how much I do mean it, I know now, when I've got to say 'goodbye.'"

"You needn't say it."

"You've tried hard to keep me from saying it, haven't you? But look here, Lesley – do look at me. I'm awfully cut up at leaving you."

"You're not to call me Lesley."

"You can't prevent my calling you Lesley to myself."

"You'll soon forget the name."

"Never. I can never forget you – worse luck. The thought of you is going to come between me and – other things."

"The thought must learn better manners. Not to 'butt in,' as we say over here. Oh, it will soon be tamed. You'll have so much to do."

"I hope I shall," said Loveland. "I say, are you going to forget me as soon as we're parted?"

The girl was silent for a moment. Then she laughed. Yet her laugh had not quite the frank lightheartedness which was usually one of its charms. "I shall make a note of you for my next story but one," she answered.

"You're not very kind."

"Are you sure you deserve kindness?"

"I'm sure I want it – from you."

"How you have always got what you wanted in your life, haven't you – one way or another?"

"Life wouldn't be worth living if one didn't."

"Oh, it's not much good saying to you that that's a selfish way of looking at life. But you've never had any lessons, and I suppose you never will have. You'll go on getting what you want, and taking it for granted that you ought to get it, till the end."

"I hope so, sincerely," said Val, without shame. "But I shan't get one of the things I want most, unless you promise to write to me."

She shook her head. "I can't promise that. I wouldn't if I could. As for getting your news, I shall read it in the papers, which are sure to chronicle all Lord Loveland does and says, and a lot he doesn't do or say. The Louisville papers will have things about you, copied from New York, in the Sunday editions. Yes, I shall be able to read about you every Sunday – lots of things you wouldn't tell in letters if I let you write. I shall see rumours of your engagement, then an announcement. I wonder if it will be the survival of the prettiest; Miss Coolidge – or if you'll be knocked down – on your knees – to a higher bid?"

"You're not letting me get much pleasure out of my last moments with you," he complained, his blue eyes really pathetic. "Do you despise me, after all?"

She looked up at him. "Only one side of you," she answered, a little sadly. "But – you're rather like the moon. We see only one of her sides. The other we have to take on faith. Perhaps it's silly of me, yet sometimes – in some moods – I do take your other side on faith."

"What is there, – on that side?" he asked, eagerly.

"I don't know. And I'm sure you don't. You probably never will. For the light shines so brightly on the one turned towards the world. Now it must be 'goodbye.' There's my dear little aunt – who's been on deck ever since we passed Governor's Island – looking for me."

"Are these to be our last words together, then?" Val had a sickening pang. He had not known it was going to be as bad as this. And it wouldn't have been so bad, if she had seemed to care more.

"Yes, they must be the last, unless just a snippy 'goodbye, very pleased to have met you,' as we leave the ship. I wish you the best luck. Shall I say 'Thine own wish, wish I thee'?" She spoke in a hard, bright tone, just poising like a bird on the wing, before flitting to her aunt.

"Don't forget me. Think of me sometimes," Loveland implored, as he wrung the little hand she held out. And perhaps never in his life had there been so much true feeling in his voice.

"I will think of you sometimes," she said, as if mechanically repeating the words.

"Try and think the best of me."

"Yes. I'll try to do that, too. Goodbye."

But he would not let her hand go. It seemed to him that he could not – although he knew he must. It was all he could do to keep back a plea that she would love him, that she would marry him, even though the crumbling walls of Loveland Castle fell. But instead he stammered, "Am I never to see you again? Can't you stop in New York for a few days, and let me call on – on you and your aunt – just to break the blow of parting?"

"No, we can't stop," she said. "We've been away from home too long already. We have lots to do. You know I work for my living."

"Those stories! Yes. But couldn't you write them in New York?"

"No, I couldn't, indeed. Aunt Barbara and I start for Louisville this afternoon. We live not far away."

"Mayn't I go with you to the train?"

"What! desert valuable friends whom it's your duty to cultivate – if you're to have flowers in the garden of your future?"

"I'd desert anyone or anything for you."

"Thank you. I believe you really mean that – this minute."

"I – "

"No. Don't protest. Sufficient for the minute is the meaning thereof. I must go – I want to go – while you still mean it all. And I'd rather not see you again, because I'd like to keep the memory of you as you look and are in this minute – nothing less. It will seem afterwards to justify our temporary partnership, in case I ever ask myself – Why?"

And before he could answer she was gone.

He dared not follow, and instantly lost sight of her in the crowd that poured to the rail to greet the waiting crowd below. Afterwards, on the dock, he saw her again, but only at a distance, for her aunt's luggage had been marked "D," that it might chaperon Miss Dearmer's, and enable the two ladies to keep each other company during the tedious time of waiting.

From the far off stall under the big letter "L," Loveland gazed sadly at the back of his lost friend's head, her face, either by accident or design, being turned from him. His boxes were long in coming, and as it happened that none of his ship-acquaintances were "L's," he had no one to talk to, nothing pleasanter to do than look at Miss Dearmer's back and gradually lose hope of her relenting.

She had brought a little camp-stool for her aunt, and that lady sat facing Loveland, her eyes so destitute of interest when now and then they strayed in his direction, that he began to believe her niece had never mentioned his existence. More than once he had pictured Lesley describing her aunt's distinguished namesake; had fancied Mrs. Loveland asking questions; and wished that he might hear the answers. The lady's indifference was not flattering to his self-esteem; but Mrs. Loveland did not look a woman to claim a relation because he was a peer.

Lesley's aunt was a little woman with dove-grey hair, folded like dove's wings that slanted softly down her forehead, covering her ears. Hers was a gentle face, with eyes that gazed kindly, and somehow impersonally, out upon the world. She had the air which many American mothers wear, of having contentedly stepped aside from the fore-front of life in favour of a younger generation, and of having lost interest in herself as a separate entity.

Lesley and Mrs. Loveland all got their luggage dumped down under letter "D," before a single "L" box had appeared. Then, when Val's did come, and the property of other impatient "L's" at the same time, the outside world was lost to view. Loveland got hold of a good-natured Custom House man, who, considering the indubitable fact that he was dealing with a British subject, and believing the "Britisher's" statement that he was merely on a visit to America, made no unnecessary trouble. He was in a hurry, like everybody else, and did little more than casually open the leather portmanteaux, the cabin trunk, the hat box, and the fitted suit-case glittering with coronets, which constituted Lord Loveland's luggage.

Very few minutes were wasted in the examination, though Americans all around were suffering severely. Nevertheless, when his keys were in his hand again, and Val was ready to separate himself and his belongings from the seething mass of anxious "L's," Miss Dearmer and her aunt had vanished off the face of the dock.