When young Lord Willowmere"s fiancee ran away from him and married Delancy Jones, that bereaved n.o.bleman experienced a certain portion of the universal shock which this social seismic disturbance spread far and wide over two hemispheres.
That such a girl should marry beneath her naturally disgusted everybody.
So both Jones and his wife were properly d.a.m.ned.
England read its morning paper, shrugged its derision, and remarked that n.o.body ought to be surprised at anything that happened in the States.
"The States" swallowed the rebuke and squirmed.
Now, among the st.u.r.dy yeomanry, gentry, and n.o.bility of those same British and impressive Isles there was an earnest gentleman whose ample waist and means and scholarly tastes inclined him to a sedentary life of research. The study of human nature in its various native and exotic phases had for forty years obsessed his insular intellect. Philologist, anthropologist, calm philosopher, and benignant observer, this gentleman, who had never visited the United States, determined to do so now. For, he reasoned--and very properly--a country where such a thing could happen to a British n.o.bleman and a Peer of the Realm must be worth exploring, and its curious inhabitants merited, perhaps, the impersonally judicial inspection of an F. R. B. A. whose gigantic work on the folk manners of the world had now reached its twentieth volume, without as yet including the United States. So he determined to devote several chapters in the forthcoming and twenty-first volume to the recent colonies of Great Britain.
Now, when the Duke of Pillchester concluded to do anything, that thing was invariably and thoroughly done. And so, before it entirely realised the honour in store for it, the United States was b.u.t.toning its collar, tying its white tie, and rushing down stairs to open its front door to the Duke of Pillchester, the d.u.c.h.ess of Pillchester, and the Lady Alene Innesly, their youthful and ornamental daughter.
For a number of months after its arrival, the Ducal party inspected the Yankee continent through a lens made for purposes of scientific investigation only. The ma.s.sed wealth of the nation met their Graces in solid divisions of social worth. The shock was mutual.
Then the ma.s.sed poverty of the continent was exhibited, leaving the poverty indifferent and slightly bored, and the Ducal party taking notes.
It was his Grace"s determination to study the folk-ways of Americans; and what the Duke wished the d.u.c.h.ess dutifully desired. The Lady Alene Innesly, however, was dragged most reluctantly from function to function, from palace to purlieu, from theatre to cathedral, from Coney Island to Newport. She was "havin" a rotten time."
All day long she had nothing to look at but an overdressed and alien race whose voices distressed her; day after day she had nothing to say except, "How d"y do," and "Mother, shall we have tea?" Week after week she had nothing to think of except the bare, unkempt ugliness of the cities she saw; the raw waste and sordid uglification of what once had been matchless natural resources; dirty rivers, ruined woodlands, flimsy buildings, ignorant architecture. The ostentatious and wretched hotels depressed her; the poor railroads and bad manners disgusted her.
Listless, uninterested, Britishly enduring what she could not escape, the little Lady Alene had made not the slightest effort to mitigate the circ.u.mstances of her temporary fate. She was civilly incurious concerning the people she met; their social customs, amus.e.m.e.nts, pastimes, duties, various species of business or of leisure interested her not a whit. All the men looked alike to her; all the women were over-gowned, tiresomely pretty, and might learn one day how to behave themselves after they had found out how to make their voices behave.
Meanwhile, requiring summer clothing--tweeds and shooting boots being not what the climate seemed to require in July--she discovered with languid surprise that for the first time in her limited life she was well gowned. A few moments afterward another surprise faintly thrilled her, for, chancing to glance at herself after a Yankee hairdresser had finished her hair, she discovered to her astonishment that she was pretty.
For several days this fact preyed upon her mind, alternately troubling and fascinating her. There were several men at home who would certainly sit up; Willowmere among others.
As for considering her newly discovered beauty any advantage in America, the idea had not entered her mind. Why should it? All the men looked alike; all wore sleek hair, hats on the backs of their heads, clothing that fitted like a coster"s trousers. She had absolutely no use for them, and properly.
However, she continued to cultivate her beauty and to adorn it with Yankee clothing and headgear befitting; which filled up considerable time during the day, leaving her fewer empty hours to fill with tea and three-volumed novels from the British Isles.
Now, it had never occurred to the Lady Alene Innesly to read anything except British fact and fiction. She had never been sufficiently interested even to open an American book. Why should she, as long as the three props of her national literature endured intact--curates, tea, and thoroughbred horses?
But there came a time during the ensuing winter when the last of the three-volumed novels had been a.s.similated, the last serious tome digested; and there stretched out before her a bookless prospect which presently began to dismay her with the aridness of its perspective.
The catastrophe occurred while the Ducal party was investigating the strange folk-customs of those Americans who gathered during the winter in gigantic Florida hotels and lived there, uncomfortably lodged, vilely fed, and shamelessly robbed, while third-rate orchestras play cabaret music and enervating breezes stir the cabbage-palmettos till they rustle like bath-room rubber plants.
It was a bad place and a bad time of year for a young and British girl to be deprived of her native and soporific fiction; for the livelier and Frenchier of British novelists were self-denied her, because somebody had said they were not unlike Americans.
Now she was, in the uncouth vernacular of the country, up against it for fair! She didn"t know what it was called, but she realised how it felt to be against something.
Three days she endured it, dozing in her room, half awake when the sea-breeze rattled the Venetian blinds, or the n.i.g.g.e.rs were noisy at baseball.
On the fourth day she arose, went to the window, gazed disgustedly out over the tawdry villas of Verbena Inlet, then rang for her maid.
"Bunn," she said, "here are three sovereigns. You will please buy for me one specimen of every book on sale in the corridor of this hotel. And, Bunn!----"
"Yes, my lady."
"What was it you were eating the other day?"
"Chewing-gum, my lady."
"Is it--agreeable?"
"Yes, my lady."
"Is it nourishing?"
"No, my lady. It is not intended to be eaten; it is to be chewed."
"Then one does not swallow it when one supposes it to be sufficiently masticated?"
"No, my lady."
"What does one do with it?"
"Beg pardon, my lady--one spits it out."
"Ow," said the girl.
VIII
She was lying on the bed when a relay of servants staggered in bearing gaudy piles of the most recent and popular novels, and placed them in tottering profusion upon the adjacent furniture.
The Lady Alene turned her head where it lay lazily pillowed on her left arm, and glanced indifferently at the multi-coloured battlement of books. The majority of the covers were embellished with the heads of young women, all endowed with vaudeville-like beauty--it having been discovered by intelligent publishers that a girl"s head on any book sells it.
On some covers were displayed coloured pictures of handsome and athletic American young men, usually kissing beautiful young ladies who wore crowns, ermines, and foreign orders over dinner dresses. Sometimes, however, they were kicking Kings. That seemed rather odd to the Lady Alene, and she sat up on the bed and reached out her hand. It encountered a book on which rested a small, oblong package. She took book and package. On the pink wrapper of the latter she read this verse:
Why are my teeth so white and bright?
Because I chew with all my might The gum that fills me with delight And keeps me healthy day and night.
Five cents.
The Lady Alene"s unaccustomed fingers became occupied with the pink wrapper. Presently she withdrew from it a thin and brittle object, examined it, and gravely placed it in her mouth.
For a while the perplexed and apprehensive expression remained upon her face, but it faded gradually, and after a few minutes her lovely features settled into an expression resembling contentment. And, delicately, discreetly, at leisurely intervals, her fresh, sweet lips moved as though she were murmuring a prayer.
All that afternoon she perused the first American novel she had ever read. And the c.u.mulative effect of the fiction upon her literal mind was amazing as she turned page after page, and, gradually gathering mental and nervous speed, dashed from one chapter, bang! into another, only to be occultly adjured to "take the car ahead"--which she now did quite naturally, and on the run.
Never, never had she imagined such things could be! Always heretofore, to her, fiction had been a strict reflection of actuality in which a dull imagination was licensed to walk about if it kept off the gra.s.s.
And it always did in the only novels to which she had been accustomed.
But good heavens! Here was a realism at work in these pages so astonishing yet so convincing, so subtle yet so natural, so matter of fact yet so astoundingly new to her that the book she was reading was already changing the entire complexion of the Yankee continent for her.
It had to do with a young, penniless, and athletic American who went to Europe, tipped a king off his throne, pushed a few dukes, counts, and barons out of the way, reorganized the army, and went home taking with him a beautiful and exclusive princess with honest intentions.