A FOOTMAN had taken the Duke of Bosworth’s cards up to Miss Mabel Creighton and her mother. The young man had arrived but an hour before and still wore his travelling gear, but had been given to understand that an English peer was welcome in a New York drawing-room on any terms. The drawing-room in which he awaited the American maiden who had taken his attenuated fancy was large and sumptuous and very expensive. There were tables of ormolu, and cabinets of tortoise-shell containing collections of cameos, fens and miniatures, a lapis lazuli clock three feet high, and a piano inlaid with twenty-seven different woods. The walls were frescoed by a famous hand, and there were lamps and candle-brackets and various articles of decoration which must have been picked up in extensive travels.
The Duke noted everything with his slow listless gaze. He sat forward on the edge of his chair, his chin pressed to the head of his stick. He was a small delicately-built man, of thirty or more. His shoulders had rounded slightly. His cheeks and lower lip were beginning to droop. The pale blue eyes were dim, the lids red. He was a debauchee, but “a good sort,” and men liked him.
He did not move during the quarter of an hour he was kept waiting, but when the portière was pushed aside he rose quickly, and went forward with much grace and charm of manner. The girl who entered was a dainty blonde fluffy creature, and looked like a bit of fragile china in the palatial room.
“How sweet of you to come so soon,” she said, with frank pleasure. “I did not expect you for an hour yet. Mamma will be down presently. She is quite too awfully anxious to meet you.”
The Duke resumed his seat and leaned back this time, regarding Miss Creighton through half-closed eyes. His expression was much the same as when he had inventoried the room.
“I came to America to see you,” he said.
The colour flashed to her hair, but she smiled gracefully. “How funny! Just as if you had run over to pay me an afternoon call. Did the trip bore you much?”
“I am always bored at sea when I am not ill. I am usually ill.”
“Oh! Really? How horrid! I am never ill. I always find the trip rather jolly. I go over to shop, and that would keep me up if nothing else did. Well, I think it was very good indeed of you—awfully good—to brave the horrors of the deep, or rather of your state-room, just to call on me.”
She had a babyish voice and a delightful manner. The Duke smiled. He was really rather glad to see her again. “You were good enough to ask me to call if I ever came over,” he said, “and it occurred to me that it would be a jolly thing to do. I only had little detached chats with you over there, and there were always a lot of Johnnies hanging about. I felt interested to see you in your own surroundings.”
“Oh—perhaps you are going to write a book? I have always felt dreadfully afraid that you were clever. Well, don’t make the mistake of thinking that we have only one type over here, as they always do when they come to write us up. There are just ten girls in my particular set—we have sets within sets, as you do, you know—and we are each one of us quite different from all the others. We are supposed to be the intellectual set, and Alexandra Maitland and Augusta Forbes are really frightfully clever. I don’t know why they tolerate me—probably because I admire them. Augusta is my dearest friend. Alex pats me on the head and says that I am the leaven that keeps them from being a sodden lump of grey matter. I have addled my brains trying to keep up with them.”
“Don’t; you are much more charming as you are.”
“Oh, dear! I don’t know. Men always seem to get tired of me,” she replied, with just how much ingenuousness the Duke could not determine. “Mrs. Burr says it is because I talk a blue streak and say nothing. Hal is quite too frightfully slangy. Augusta kisses me and says I am an inconsequential darling. She made me act in one of Howell’s comedies once, and I did it badly on purpose, in the hope of raising my reputation, but Augusta said it was because I couldn’t act. Fletcher Cuyler, who is the most impertinent man in New York said—— Have you seen Fletcher?”
“He came out on the tug to meet me, and left me at the door.”
“I believe if Fletcher really has a deep down affection for anyone, it is for you—I mean for any man. He is devoted to all of us, and he is the only man we chum with. But we wouldn’t have him at the meeting to-day. Do you know that I should have lent my valuable presence to two important meetings this afternoon?”
“Really?” The Duke was beginning to feel a trifle restless.
“Yes, we are going in frightfully for Socialism, you know—Socialism and the vote—and—oh, dozens of other things. Alex said we must, and so we did. It’s great fun. We make speeches. At least, I don’t, but the others do. Should you like to go to one of our meetings?”
“I should not!” said the Duke emphatically.
“Well, you must not make fun of us, for I am simply bent on having all the girls adore you, particularly Augusta. The other day we had a lovely meeting. It was here. I have the prettiest boudoir: Alex designed it. It looks just like a rainbow. I lay on the couch in a gown to match, and the girls all took off their stiff street frocks and put on my wrappers, and we smoked cigarettes and ate bon-bons, and read Karl Marx. It was lovely! I didn’t understand a word, but I felt intellectual—the atmosphere, you know. When we had finished a chapter and Alex had expounded it, and quarrelled over it with Augusta, we talked over all the men we knew, and I am sure men would be lots better if they knew what girls thought about them. Alex says we must regenerate them, quicken their souls, so to speak, and I suppose I may as well begin on you, although you’re not an American, and can’t vote—we’re for reforming the United States, you know. What is the state of your soul?” And again she gave her fresh childlike laugh.
“I haven’t any. Give me up. I am hopeless.” He was arriving at the conclusion that she was more amusing in detached chats, but reflected that she was certainly likeable. It was this last pertainment, added to the rumour of her father’s vast wealth, that had brought him across the water.
“I don’t know that I have ever seen one of the—what do they call them?—advanced women? But I am told that they are not Circean. That, indeed, seems to be their hall-mark. A woman’s first duty is to be attractive.”
“That’s what Fletcher says. Augusta is my most intimate friend, my very dearest friend, but I never saw a man look as if he was thinking about falling in love with her. How long shall you stay?” she added quickly, perceiving that he was tiring of the subject.
“I?—oh—I don’t know. Until you tell me that I bore you. I may take a run into Central America with Fletcher.”
“Into what? Why that’s days, and days, and days from here, and must be a horrid place to travel in.”
“I thought Chicago was only twenty-four hours from New York.”
“Oh, you funny, funny, deliciously funny Englishman! Why Central America doesn’t belong to the United States at all. It’s ’way down between North and South America or somewhere. I suppose you mean middle America. We call Chicago and all that part of the country West.”
“If it’s middle it’s central,” said the Duke, imperturbably. “You cannot expect me to command the vernacular of your enormous country in a day.”
He rose suddenly. A woman some twenty years older than Mabel had entered. Her face and air were excessively, almost aggressively refined, her carriage complacent, a trifle insolent. She was the faded prototype of her daughter. The resemblance was close and prophetic.
“My dear Duke,” she said, shaking him warmly by the hand, “I am so flattered that you have come to us at once, and so glad to have the opportunity to thank you for your kindness to Mabel when she was in your dear delightful country. Take that chair, it is so much more comfortable.” She herself sat upon an upright chair, and laid one hand lightly over the other. Her repose of manner was absolute. “The happiest days of my life were spent in England, when I was first married—it seems only day before yesterday—my husband and I went over and jaunted about England and Scotland and Wales in the most old-fashioned manner possible. For six months we rambled here and there, seeing everything—one was not ashamed of being a tourist in those days. We would not present a letter, we wanted to have a real honeymoon: we were so much in love. And to think that Aire Castle is so near that terrible Strid. I remember that we stood for an hour simply fascinated. Mr. Creighton wanted to take the stride, but I wouldn’t let him. He has never been over with me since—he is so busy. I can’t think how Mr. Forbes always manages to go with his wife, unless it is true that he is jealous of her—although in common justice I must add that if she has ever given him cause no one knows it. I suppose it is on general principles, because she is such a beauty. Still I must say that if I were a man and married to a Southern woman I should want to get rid of her occasionally: they are so conceited and they do rattle on so about nothing. Virginia Forbes talks rather less than most Southern women; but I imagine that is to enhance the value of her velvety voice.”
The Duke, who had made two futile efforts to rise, now stood up resolutely.
“I am very sorry——” he began.
“Oh! I am so sorry you will rush away,” exclaimed his hostess. “I have barely heard you speak. You must come with us to the opera to-night. Do. Will you come informally to an early dinner, or will you join us in the box with Fletcher?”
“I will join you with Fletcher. And I must go—I have an engagement with him at the hotel—he is waiting for me. You are very kind—thanks, awfully. So jolly to be so hospitably received in a strange country.”
When he reached the side-walk, he drew a long breath. “My God!” he thought, “Is it a disease that waxes with age? Perhaps they get wound up sometimes and can’t stop.... And she is pretty now, but it’s dreadful to have the inevitable sprung on you in that way. What are the real old women like, I wonder? They must merely fade out like an old photograph. I can’t imagine one of them a substantial corpse. I shall feel as if I were married to a dissolving view. She is charming now, but—oh, well, that is not the only thing to be taken into consideration.”
The Creighton house was on Murray Hill. He crossed over to Fifth Avenue and walked down toward the Waldorf, absently swinging his stick, regardless of many curious glances. “I wonder,” he thought, “I wonder if I ever dreamed of a honeymoon with the one woman. If I did, I have forgotten. What a bore it will be now.”