Part 5 (1/2)
”Very,” answers Erma. ”But my father, in his railroad enterprises, must be thrown among men of all ranks, grades and conditions.”
”Oh, certainly,” a.s.sents Oliver. ”You remember that individual with the free and easy manners who invited himself to mother's supper party the other night.”
”If you mean Captain Lawrence,” remarks Ferdie, tossing himself into the conversation, ”I can tell you he didn't invite himself--I did that part of the business myself. And as to his manners being free and easy, I think, considering he hadn't spoken to a pretty woman for a year, he did very well--under the circ.u.mstances. If I'd been in his place I'd have probably kissed the ladies all round.”
This a.s.sertion is greeted by a very horrified ”Oh, Ferdinand!” from Mrs.
Livingston, and screams of laughter from Louise.
Miss Travenion, who remembers Captain Lawrence's last glance and hand squeeze and words, grows slightly red about her cheeks and sinks upon a seat and gazes out of an open car window.
As for Mr. Kruger, the moment he has left Erma Travenion, he has dropped all the laziness of a Newfoundland dog, and a.s.sumes the activity of a terrier. He has said hurriedly but determinedly to his satellite, ”Jenkins, you stay and wait for the four hundred coming on the Scotia.
Forward the other three hundred by Davis, who came from Wales with them.”
”But--” Jenkins is about to interrupt.
”No time to discuss this 'ere matter,” says Kruger with a snap. ”I must go West on this train. It's somethin' you can't understand, but more important than all the Welsh cows that we've brought over these ten years--you do as I tell ye.”
”Yes, Bishop,” answers the man humbly and goes away, as Mr. Kruger, whose plans the sudden meeting with Miss Travenion seems to have changed, produces a pa.s.s from the New York Central Railway, hurries to the sleeping-car office, buys a ticket to Chicago, and boards the train almost as it begins to move out for the West, and placing himself in a smoking compartment, goes to chewing tobacco in a meditative but seemingly contented manner, as after a little time he remarks to himself, ”How things seem to be coming to Lot Kruger and Zion together.”
CHAPTER IV.
MR. FERDIE BEGINS HIS WESTERN INVESTIGATIONS.
The train rattles out of New York, and crossing the Harlem, skirts that pretty little salt water river; as Miss Travenion settles herself lazily in her seat, with a graceful ease peculiar to her, for the girl has a curious blending of both style and beauty, giving her a patrician elegance of manner that makes gracious even the slight tendency to _hauteur_ in her manner and voice.
The sun s.h.i.+nes upon her face, and she turns it from the morning beams, and gazing towards the West, thinks of her father. Her eyes grow gentle, her mobile features expectant with hope, and tender with love; and Oliver Livingston, who is reading a New York journal, glances up from it, and noting Erma's face thinks, ”She really does love me, dear girl, though she is so cold, which is much better form till we are regularly engaged,” and decides to give her a chance to admit her affection to him formally before the end of their summer tour, for this prim gentleman actually adores the young lady he is looking at as much as his diminutive soul can love anything, except himself.
At present he does not know how small his soul is, but rather thinks it is large and n.o.ble and very magnanimous. He has had no occasion so far to test its dimensions, his life up to this time having been quite narrow; and though he has travelled, it has not brought much into his brain, save some strong, high church notions he has imported from Oxford, to which university this young gentleman had been sent to complete his education after Harvard; his mother having an idea it might get him into English society, and perhaps permit him to make a great European match. This was before Erma's father had made his million dollar settlement upon her; Mrs. Livingston having been one of the first of those pioneers from New York who pa.s.sed over to England and replaced the social chains of the Mother Country upon her,--those her grandfather and other American patriots had fought to throw off, together with the political ones of George the Third, his Majesty of glorious memory.
Upon his return to New York, Mr. Ollie had signalized his advent by dragging his mother and sister to Saint Agnes's from their old pew at Grace Church, the ritual of that place not being sufficiently Puseyitic for his views; his father, the elder Livingston, who had no religion to mention save certain maxims of business and the rules of his club, being, fortunately for his son's high church movement, dead.
This performance of the heir of the house had made his mother think him a saint; as, indeed, to do the young man justice, he wished to be; and had Ollie Livingston elected to follow any profession, he would doubtless have turned to the ministry; but his million of dollars perhaps dulled his incentive for work, and after his return from England, the young man had done nothing; but as Ferdie had irreverently expressed it, ”had done that nothing GRANDLY.”
And why should he work? He had money enough to command any ordinary luxury of life. As for position, was he not a Livingston, and could he add additional honor to that old Knickerbocker name? thought his mother.
There was only one trouble in all their family affairs, and that was removed by the settlement Mr. Travenion had made upon Ollie's _fiancee_, for as such Mrs. Livingston already regarded Erma. In order to make the settlement upon his son, the elder Livingston had culled his best securities and most gilded collaterals; those left for the support of his widow and daughter, not being so stable, had depreciated in the last few years, and Mrs. Livingston's income had dwindled until it was not what she considered it should be for a lady of her station. Now, of course, if Ollie married a very rich wife, he could be very liberal to his mother and sister, and that point had been happily settled by the million-dollar settlement upon Miss Travenion.
It is some thought of this that is in Erma's mind once or twice in her first day's journey towards the West. The girl loves Mrs. Livingston, who had been a companion of Erma's mother, and had been very kind to the child even after her father's reverses, and had frequently visited Miss Hines' Academy in Gramercy Park, and had the little Erma, now wholly orphaned by her mother's death and father's absence, to her great house on Madison Square, where she had been regaled _en princess_ and sent back to the boarding school made happy with good things to eat and presents that make children's hearts glad.
This, Miss Travenion does not forget, now that her father's settlements upon her have made her probably as great an heiress in her own right as any girl of her circle in Manhattan society.
This peculiar position of Mrs. Livingston had been pretty well known to Erma, and it seemed to compel her to make no protest when the widow had taken her from the seclusion of Miss Hines' Academy at the beginning of the winter and brought her out, with much blowing of social trumpets and flowers and fiddling at Mrs. Livingston's Madison Square mansion--and also had chaperoned her at Newport.
Therefore, she has rather grown to consider herself set apart for Oliver's wife, and as such has turned a deaf ear to the many men who, on slight encouragement, would be more than happy and more than ready to woo a young lady who has gorgeous beauty, a million of dollars of her own and a father of indefinite Western wealth, which, magnified by distance, has increased to such Monte Cristo proportions, that it has gained for her the t.i.tle, among her set, of ”Miss Dividends.”
Besides any notion of grat.i.tude to Mrs. Livingston, Erma knows that this match with Ollie is her father's wish. On one of his visits to New York, she had once hinted her desire to visit and live with him in the West, and had been promptly refused in terms as stern as Ralph Travenion could bring himself to use to his daughter, for whom he seemed to have a very tender love, and in doing so he had indicated that his wishes were that she fulfil the arrangement he had made with his old-time friend, the elder Livingston.
”Marry Oliver,” he had said. ”He is in your rank--the position to which you were born, Erma. Live in the East. The West is, perhaps, the best place to make money, but New York is _par excellence_ the place to enjoy it. Some day--perhaps sooner than you expect, I shall join you here, and settle down to my old life as club man again,” and Ralph Travenion looks towards the Unity Club, upon whose lists his name still stands, and of whose smoking-room he is still an _habitue_ on his visits to Manhattan, rather longingly from his parlor in the Brevoort House, at which hotel he always stopped, in contradistinction to most of his comrades from the Plains, who are more apt to register at the Fifth Avenue or the Hoffman.