Part 3 (1/2)

That is, she entertained him so gorgeously and did so many nice things for him, that he posed as her property; and as everyone was dying to meet him, it _made_ her. She'd been working killingly hard before that, for a whole year after taking her house on Fifth Avenue and building her cottage at Newport, but it was buying the Prince which did the trick. On the strength of that episode and its consequences, she went to Europe with very nice introductions, and as you know, deah, she has made some valuable as well as pleasant friends. To live up to them and her reputation, she will have to be busy for a while dropping a lot of old acquaintances.”

”How horrid!” I couldn't help exclaiming, though Mrs. Ess Kay was going to be my hostess.

”Yes, it seems rather miserable to me, because I'm a weak, lazy, Southern thing, who would be right down sick, if I had to hurt any human being's feelings. Yet perhaps it looks fair to her. She's so ambitious, and she's worked so hard, she _has_ deserved to succeed. As for poor me, she just regularly mesmerises me all through. She mesmerised me into coming up from Kentucky and visiting her this spring; then she mesmerised me into going with her to Europe. But I'm not sorry I went, for I've had a _right_ good time.”

”I'm so glad you went,” said I, ”because if you hadn't I shouldn't have met you. I'm sure I should love Kentucky if all the people there are like you. But these things you've been saying seem so odd. Do you mean to tell me that the people who lead Society in New York want to keep their set limited to a certain number, and refuse to know others, even if they're extraordinarily clever and interesting?

”They don't like them to be too clever, because they call such people '_queer_'--that is, unless they happen to be 'lions' of some sort from England or other places abroad. Then, so long as they're not _American_, they welcome them with open arms.”

”I'm glad Society isn't like that in England,” I said. ”There the _real_ people--the people who have the right to make social laws, you know--are delighted with anyone who can amuse them. Of course, deep down in our hearts, we may be proud if we have old names, which have been famous for hundreds of years in one way or another; but we are so used, after all those centuries, to being _sure_ of ourselves, that we just take our position for granted, and don't think much more about it.

If people who haven't got quite the same position are gentlefolk, and amusing, or clever, or beautiful, or anything like that which really matters, why, we're only too pleased with them.”

”That's all the difference in the world! You've been 'sure of yourselves for centuries.' You've said the last word, my deah. 'Out of the mouths of babes'--but Cousin Katherine's finished gus.h.i.+ng to that silly old Mrs. Van der Windt. We mustn't dare discuss these things from our point of view any more. I reckon she would faint.”

There are a good many young men on board, and some of them seemed to be quite devoted to Mrs. Ess Kay the first day out; but she was cold to them all, I couldn't think why, as some of them seemed very nice, and she had always appeared rather to like being with men. I asked Sally about it, but she laughed, and said I might perhaps solve the mystery for myself when we were at Newport, if I remembered it then.

I never heard of such breakfasts and luncheons as they have on this s.h.i.+p, and the first menu I saw surprised me so much, that I couldn't believe they really had and could produce all those things if anybody was inconsiderate enough to ask for them. I hardly supposed there were so many things to eat in the world. But the captain heard me exclaiming to Sally, so he smiled, and told me to test the menu by ordering a bit of everything on it; he'd guarantee that nothing would be missed out.

This was at breakfast the second day; and when he saw that I ate several dear little round things, shaped like cream-coloured doyleys, which are called pancakes (though they aren't a bit like ours) with some perfectly divine stuff named maple syrup, he said my taking such a fancy to American products was a sign that I should marry an American.

What nonsense! As if I would dream of marrying, especially a foreigner.

But for all that, pancakes and maple syrup are delicious. I've had them every day since for breakfast, after finis.h.i.+ng a great orange four times the natural size, which isn't _really_ an orange, because it's a grape fruit. You have it on your plate cut in two halves, with ice in each, and you scoop the inside out of a lot of tiny pockets, with a teaspoon. You think when you first see it, that you can't eat more than half; but instead, you eat every bit, and sometimes if the morning is hot, you even wish you could have more; though of course you wouldn't be so greedy as to ask.

It was on the second day out, too, that all my troubles began--and in a queer way which n.o.body could have guessed would lead to anything disagreeable.

In the afternoon I was reading in my deck-chair, drawn close to Mrs.

Ess Kay's side, when that Mrs. Van der Windt whom Sally called a silly old thing, toddled up and spoke to us. ”Do come and watch them dancing in the steerage,” she said. ”It's such fun.”

Mrs. Ess Kay likes sitting still on s.h.i.+pboard better than anything else, but it seems that Mrs. Van der Windt is so important that if all the Four Hundred Sally told me about were pruned away, except about twenty-five, she would be among the number left; so probably that is the reason why Mrs. Ess Kay takes long walks up and down the deck with her, though it makes her giddy to walk, and Mrs. Van der Windt is not in the least entertaining.

She got up now, like a lamb about to be led to the slaughter, except that she smiled bravely, which the lamb would not be able to bring itself to do. ”Come, Betty,” she said to me, ”it will amuse you.”

”Yes, do come, Lady Betty,” repeated Mrs. Van der Windt; whereupon I obeyed, little knowing what I was laying up for myself.

Our deck is amids.h.i.+ps. Aft, on a level with ours, is the second-cla.s.s deck; and for'rard, down below, like looking into a pit, is the steerage. We walked to the rail, over which quite a number of men were leaning, to see what was going on, and several moved aside to give us room. I didn't like to take their places away, especially as they were laughing and enjoying themselves, and I could hear the sound of dance music coming up from below (such odd-sounding music!), but Mrs. Ess Kay murmured to me that I mustn't refuse. ”American men are never so happy,” she said, ”as when they're giving up something for a woman.

They're used to it.”

And evidently she, as an American woman, was used to taking it. She and Mrs. Van der Windt slipped into the vacant s.p.a.ces with a bare ”thank you,” and I had to follow their example. We peered down over the rail; and there was a sight which would have been comical, if it hadn't been pathetic.

On rather a rough-looking deck, about twelve feet or more below us, a dense crowd was collected round two small squares, which they purposely left open. Besides those little squares, every inch was occupied. There wouldn't have been any more room for even a baby to sit down than there was in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In the crowd were old men, young men and boys, all poorly dressed; and old women, young women and girls, big and little. They wore crude, vivid colours, and more than half of them had bright handkerchiefs tied over their heads. They scarcely took any notice of the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers staring down superciliously or pityingly at their poor amus.e.m.e.nts; they were far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily--I can't say gaily--in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who looked almost half-witted, was monotonously sc.r.a.ping a battered fiddle, for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same axis. But the other ”dancing salon” was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a uniform with big red flannel epaulettes and pasteboard b.u.t.tons covered with gold paper, was pretending to conduct the band. And what a band it was!

It consisted of four sailors, rather sheep-faced and self-conscious.

One musical instrument was a wooden box rigged up with strings and a long handle; another was formed from a couple of huge soup-spoons tied together, on which the player beat rhythmically with a smaller spoon; the third was a poker, dangling from a string, banged heartily with an enormous nail as it swung to and fro; the fourth was a queer, home-made drum, which looked as if it had been made out of a wooden bandbox.

Somehow they contrived to coax out music of a sort, and a few young men and girls were solemnly gyrating to it in a way to make you giddy even to watch. When a man thought he had had enough, or wanted to dance with another girl, he dropped his partner with alarming suddenness, bowed stiffly without smile or word, and left her _plante la_. It was evidently etiquette not to speak to your partner. At the end of a dance, the conductor with the lobster-claw nose looked up to our deck, bowing low with his hand on his heart, and then all the audience leaning over the rail began fumbling in their pockets if they were men, or opening their purses or gold bags if they were women. Down poured a shower of small silver and copper, little boys scrambling to pick it up, and hand it to the conductor, who would, Mrs. Van der Windt said, divide the money among the members of his quaint band.

I had a few s.h.i.+llings with me, and I'd been so much amused that I felt like being generous. Luckily, Mother couldn't see me, and scold! I took half a dozen coins--s.h.i.+llings and sixpences--and wrapping them hurriedly up in half the cover torn off a magazine I was reading, I aimed the little parcel to fall at the comic conductor's feet.

Generally I can throw fairly straight, for Stan took some pains with that part of my education when I was a small girl; but just at that instant someone standing next me moved, knocked me on the elbow, and spoilt my aim.