"Oh, I was never much of a grind," the other cut in hastily. "I went in for other things. I was c.o.x----".
"It"s etiquette I"m thinking of," Nick confessed humbly. "You"d be born knowin" a lot about that, I dare say, in your family. And then, being at Oxford, too! I always notice college men have a different way from those who haven"t been to any university. It"s hard to explain the difference, but it"s there."
"Oh, rather," agreed the Englishman. "You know our King himself will send all his sons to Oxford and Cambridge. Nothin" like it, my dear fellow, what? Our family----"
"Could you give lessons, sort of object-lessons, in what to do and what not do in society?" inquired Nick, eager yet shy, not ashamed of his motive in asking, but fearful by instinct that he was not getting hold of the right man.
"Nothing easier," returned Montagu Jerrold, the prominent gooseberries, which were his eyes, looking somewhat less thoroughly boiled. "I was thinkin" of leavin" this beastly hole, don"t you know. Nothin" in it for a gentleman, what? But if you"ve somethin" to offer worth takin", why I might stick it out for a bit, I dessay."
Nick longed to box the" creature"s ears; but they were well-shaped and might be the ears of a man born with etiquette flowing with his blue blood, through azure veins. The shape of his nose wasn"t bad, but those eyes and that chin! They were, as Nick grimly expressed it to himself, the _limit_. Nevertheless, he would persevere, and try a course of lessons from the Dook.
They began to discuss terms, and Nick did not bargain. Mr. Jerrold was to have an advance payment of twenty-five dollars, on account of fifty, for ten "lessons"; and he was to come to Nick"s house every evening to "supper" at half-past seven, remaining until half-past nine. Hilliard was to be watched through the meal and corrected if he did anything wrong with his knife and fork, or his bread; and they were to have conversations and discussions covering various imagined emergencies.
Details were arranged, much to the satisfaction of Montagu Jerrold, whose real name was Herbert Higgins, and who had been a house decorator, employed--and discharged--by a small London firm. Never had he been inside an Oxford college: never had he seen the King--except on a post card. He returned joyously to his hotel, where, as Mr. Green was lying in wait, he had to part with most of his advance. And Nick tramped home torn in mind, fearing instinctively that he was about to jump from the frying-pan of ignorance into a fire of vulgarity at which Angela would shudder.
Every night for a week the Dook appeared promptly in time for Nick"s substantial supper, which, by the way, he advised his host to transform into dinner. "You simply can"t have "supper" at half-past seven, my deah fellow. It isn"t _done!_ Dinner should be at eight, at earliest. Our royalties prefer it at nine. If you have supper it is after the theatre or opera, don"t you know." But when Nick stolidly refused to be such an "affected donkey" as to call his evening meal by another name to make it sweeter, Mr. Jerrold did not scorn the meal because it lacked refinement.
On the seventh night, however, Hilliard gave his n.o.ble instructor notice.
"I"m real sorry," he remarked pleasantly, "but I can"t help it. I"d rather go on as I am, and pin myself to a p.r.i.c.kly pear, than shine in society by doing any of these monkey tricks you"ve been tryin" to put me on to. You say they"re "the thing" and the newest dope and all that, and maybe they"re real nice for your sort, but I tell you they"re not for mine! It seems to me you know a wonderful lot of fool things that ain"t so, and I can"t yoke up with "em. What"s more, I don"t mean to. And now I see they"re the only cards you"ve got in your hand I don"t want any more dealt out to me--Hook up my little finger when I come to grips with a coffee-cup! No, thank you! I _see_ myself doin" it or any other of the p.u.s.s.y-catisms you"ve been tryin" to unload on me. And you drop your "g"s"
just as bad as I do. No, you"ll have to switch off, doc; and after to-night you can go your way and I"ll go mine, for there"s nothin" doin"
here for you except this little roll of bills. Good night, bud. That"s all the trumps in the game!"
But the bills--which were the trumps for Jerrold--amounted to fifty dollars more than he had been promised for the whole course of lessons. So he had not done badly after all. And leaving Lucky Star City, which had no oil nor milk of human kindness for him, he drifted on somewhere else, as he will continue to drift until he stumbles into an ignominious grave.
But Nick was angry and thwarted--angry with himself because he had been a fool, and thwarted because he remained as before, handicapped by his own ignorance. In spite of Jerrold"s boasts, Nick"s instinct had told him after the first words exchanged that the man was not only a cad, but a rank pretender. Still, in his desire for social knowledge, he had refused at first to listen to the voice of instinct and had been punished for obtuseness. The very thought of the little drawling outsider who had delighted in his sobriquet of "the Dook" made Hilliard feel sick, and he opened wide all the windows and doors when the contemptible creature went out of the house. "Wanted to turn me into a dry-goods clerk, did he?" Nick grumbled. And the episode was closed.
One afternoon, not many days after the expulsion of Montagu Jerrold, Nick kept a long-made promise, by going to call on the wife of the Presbyterian minister, the only professional purveyor of religion who had yet settled in Lucky Star City. Mrs. Kenealy was out, but was coming back soon, and Nick was urged by her small daughter to wait. This he consented to do, and found the school-teacher also waiting in the pleasant little "living-room."
The young man and woman were introduced by the child, who, then relieved of responsibility, left them to each other"s mercy, and flew to a friend with whom she had been playing dolls on the back porch.
"I don"t suppose you remember me," said Miss Sara Wilkins rather wistfully. "But I remember you very well."
"So do I you," Nick was glad to reply with truth; and his heart warmed to the wisp of a woman to whom Miss Dene had been catty and Mrs. May kind.
"It was at Santa Barbara."
"Why, you _do_ remember!" she exclaimed delightedly. "I never thought you would. I always think there"s nothing about me that any one _could_ recollect. Oh, would you mind telling me how that lovely lady is who was so good to me? I often think about her. She was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life."
Nick could have kissed her hands--little thin hands--kissed them even in their gray lisle-thread gloves; Needless to say, however, he did nothing of the sort. He answered quietly that it was now some time since he had seen Mrs. May, but he supposed she was well, and still in California, probably in San Francisco. She was planning to build a house near Monterey. Though his voice and manner were particularly calm, his eyes were as wistful, perhaps, as the school-teacher"s smile had been. And just because Sara Wilkins knew well what it was to be wistful and try to hide it, perhaps she saw more clearly than a more attractive woman would.
"Something had happened," she said to herself. That splendid young couple, about whom she had built up such a gorgeous romance, had been parted, and this handsome fellow with the kind smile and heroic shoulders was unhappy, far unhappier than Sara Wilkins had ever been, strange as that might seem--he who had looked so fortunate! Sara wondered if the lovely lady were unhappy, too, or if she had been cruel; and because Miss Wilkins adored romance (having nothing more personally her own to adore), not because she was naturally curious, the little woman positively ached to know the story.
They had nearly half an hour together she and Nick before Mrs. Kenealy returned, and in that time they had come close to the beginning of a friendship, each being secretly in need of sympathy, and dimly detecting the need in the other. Their liking for one another enchanted Mrs.
Kenealy, who was a born matchmaker. To be sure, Miss Sara Wilkins was not pretty, and would never see twenty-nine again, but she was a good girl, clever and affectionate, and would make Nick Hilliard the best of wives if only he could be brought to see it. She sat between them, chattily telling each one nice things about the other, and soon she suggested bringing Miss Wilkins to visit Nick"s ranch. School was off now, and the poor dear had nothing to do but read and write letters home, whither it cost far too much to return for only a few weeks. Nick said that he would be delighted; and offered to send Miss Wilkins as many books as she liked to her boarding house. Books were great friends of his, he admitted somewhat shyly. She was welcome to borrow any she cared to have.
They saw a good deal of each other during the next fortnight, too much for the school-teacher"s peace of mind; for the oftener they met the more was she convinced that Nick was in love, perhaps hopelessly in love, with another woman as different from herself as a lily from a dusty sprig of lavender. Then, one day when Nick had started to carry her some books and they had met on the way, the two sat down and talked by the side of the blue, brackish lake, sheltering from the sun behind a bank of yellow sand that was like the high back of a queerly shaped throne. At a distance pa.s.sed Green, the landlord of the Eureka, out walking with his little daughter, and in speaking of him and the odd folk who stopped at the green hotel the "Dook" was mentioned. He had disappeared from Lucky Star City some time before, but Miss Wilkins had met and disliked him.
"Horrid little pretentious toad!" she exclaimed sharply. "He was always talking to every one he could get hold of about his family and his swell friends and Oxford. But I don"t believe any of his stories. He was just worse than n.o.body at all; and East I"ve met real nice Englishmen who had a _lovely_ accent, and wouldn"t be found dead drawling like he did."
Nick laughed. "You"re jolly right," he said; and then being in a humorous as well as confidential mood, he told the story of himself and Montagu Jerrold.
"Wasn"t I a Johnny?" he asked at the end. "Served me right for trying to make a silk purse of myself. Can"t be done, I guess."
"But you are a silk purse!" Sara protested indignantly. "How can you talk about yourself the way you do?"
"I"m a little down on my luck these days," he answered. "Did you ever read about the moth who loved a star? I guess, when that moth got to thinking of himself and his chances, he saw himself pretty well as he really was, poor old chap. Fusty brown wings, too many legs, antennae the wrong shape, and a clumsy way of usin" "em. I"ve gone and made a moth of myself, Miss Wilkins."
"Maybe the star doesn"t think you a moth, or anyhow not a common moth,"
the little school-teacher tried to comfort him loyally, though her heart ached as a lonely woman"s heart must ache when the man she could have loved, if she had dared, confides in her about the "other." She had known quite well that there was another, but to have the confession come out in words seemed to make her feel the grayness of life rather more intensely than she had felt it before. Yet she rallied her forces and longed to fight Nick Hilliard"s battles and wave his banner in the face of the enemy--if enemy there were.
"That"s just what the star does think!" laughed Nick. "She thinks I"m common."
Miss Wilkins stiffened with indignation. "I don"t believe it--if she"s a _real_ star. And you wouldn"t mistake an imitation one for real, would you?"
"She"s the brightest star in the heavens; as good as a whole constellation."
"Then she can"t think you common."
"Well, put in another way. She thinks me "impossible"--impossible for her, that is. She told me so. But I might have known it without telling. I guess she thought I would know. I had the cheek to hope, though, that I might polish myself up enough to pa.s.s muster in a crowd, even a crowd of _her_ sort of people, and that she might change her mind about me."
"As if that disgusting little Montagu Jerrold could teach you anything!"
"I found he couldn"t. Not anything she"d like me better for knowing."
"If she doesn"t find you good enough as you are she isn"t worth loving,"
insisted the school-teacher. "Oh, I know I"m not the same kind of woman she is! I"m only a little "provincial," as I expect she"d call me in her own mind, but--but I can tell a _man_ when I see him."
"Thank you a whole lot for sticking up for me," said Nick, boyishly. "But how do you know what kind of a woman my star is?"
Miss Wilkins blushed and was silent. She did not look pretty when she blushed, like Angela, but Nick thought she had one of the nicest little faces in the world.
"I expect I"ve gone and given myself away," he said. "Well, I don"t care, for you"re so good and sympathetic. You"ve seen my star, and you can judge just what kind of a blame fool I was to hope she could ever really care for a rough fellow like me--care enough to be yoked up with me for life."
"Are you sure she didn"t care?" asked the school-teacher.
If he had "given himself away" he did not intend to give away Angela. "I told you she said I was impossible," he answered discreetly. "Well, thank you again for listenin" to my whinings. It"s done me a lot of good. Now I"ve talked enough and too much about myself. Let"s talk about you."
"There"s nothing interesting to say about me," Miss Wilkins defended herself, with the faintest sigh that only a man who loved her would have heard. "We won"t talk about you any more, though, if you don"t want to.
That book of Mr. Muir"s you sent me is beautiful. I"ve been wishing to read it for years."
So they fell to discussing _The National Parks of America_; but Sara"s heart was not in the discussion, much as she admired the book. She was thinking about Nick and Angela.
"It doesn"t seem," she told herself, "that a woman who could be so kind to another woman as she was to me, when she didn"t even know me, could be cruel to a man she _did_ know and like, even if she didn"t love him. And could a woman he loved not love him back again?"
Miss Wilkins had resigned herself long ago, or thought she had, to going through life without any intimate personal interests of her own, and when her heart ached hardest that night in her mean little boarding-house bedroom, it was going out most warmly toward Nick, and yearning for the happiness of making him happy.
"If I could only do something!" she said to her mossy-smelling pillow.
"And I owe _her_ a good turn too, although maybe she doesn"t deserve it. I wonder what I _could_ do?"