"C Q", or, In the Wireless House/Chapter 3
III
The reader learns something of the career of an international beauty, and attends vicariously an artistic entertainment in the second-cabin saloon.
WHATEVER may have been her faults, it is not to be denied that only Mrs. Trevelyan prevented another and more serious explosion of wrath on the part of the Captain against his ne’er-do-weel Marconi operator. As a peacemaker she was beyond criticism. The Captain, pretending to be quite impervious to feminine charms, nevertheless allowed himself to be cajoled and flattered until he not only revoked his orders so far as visitors to the wireless house were concerned, but offered to accompany the lady there himself and explain everything to her. For the Captain, in spite of his appearance, was human, and, as he himself said aloud to himself in front of the looking-glass in his cabin: “She ’s a damned handsome woman!”
No one could possibly dodge this obvious fact. Lily Trevelyan was one of those international beauties who, like the Countess of Warwick, appear on the front pages of the morning dailies whenever there is a dearth of legitimate news. Born in a manufacturing town in eastern Massachusetts, she had escaped from it at an early age, and, with another girl, had taken up the study of art in Paris. Then for about five years she utterly disappeared, only to blossom forth suddenly in London as a dashing society favorite, a bit flamboyant for some of the more conservative, but one who patently had attracted the discriminating eye of royalty. From that time on, Lily Leslie had been the rage. Dukes named horses after her and their jockeys wore her colors; her photographs appeared in the shop windows; cigars were branded and banded in her honor; and she was followed from one European watering-place to another by a kitchen cabinet of Austrian, French, and English aristocrats and millionaires.
All this but six years after her departure from Nesmith Street, Lowell! Yet, such things happen more often than is suspected. Lowell has produced more than one English beauty, and so has Fall River! God bless them! And “lovely Lily Leslie from Lowell,” having boxed the ears of a prince and rolled him down a grass terrace at Sandringham, eventually accepted the hand of a complaisant commoner who was ready to sacrifice his domestic security to a vicarious social prominence. Now she was Mrs. Hubert Trevelyan—still of the inner circles, but without the flare that had made her the toast of English hunting-lodges. The white neck was still round, but almost imperceptibly it flowered at the top toward a chin once the ecstasy of sculptors, which now had lost by a dim shade its clearness of outline.
She was still spoken of as one of the most beautiful women in the world; but the exquisite hour of her perfection had passed. Then, perhaps feeling that her supremacy was no longer undisputed, a sense of pique at younger and fresher women had led her into certain too flagrant indiscretions that could not be overlooked. Lord Knollys had intimated that a knighthood might please her husband; and the directorate of the Royal Bank of Edinburgh, of which he was the London manager, by a coincidence no less extraordinary than it was timely, had proposed that he should open a similar branch in New York and temporarily become its resident agent. In other words, royalty had politely indicated that, although it was deeply pained to do so, it must, for policy’s sake, at least, withdraw that intimacy which it had previously been pleased to extend.
The slight did her moral character small good. She and her husband left England for New York, and at once a dozen other American beauties struggled furiously for her vacant place—beauties from Pittsburgh, from San Francisco, from Albany, and—be it whispered— from Brooklyn. Many a flower in the garden of English society has had its root in some vulgar suburb of an American city. Indeed usually the more vulgar the better, for it is the note of surprise, of unconventionality, of abandon, of irresponsibility and naïveté, which gives the American girl her vogue in London.
However, Mrs. Trevelyan’s dethronement in England was no obstacle to her social career in New York, and she cleverly made use of the notoriety surrounding her English life to give herself that last touch of smartness, that slight atmosphere of the risque, that tres chic suggestion of impropriety, that made her the success of the season the winter of her arrival. Into a society composed of men and women of puritanical traditions, or, what is worse, the traditional respectability of the honest merchant princes of the red-plush and brown-stone era in New York, whose pose is that of careless immorality and whose conversation often reeks of the road-house, but beneath whose war-paint and feathers are concealed characters as stodgy as that of a Methodist Sunday-school teacher or as devoid of temperament as a Baptist missionary—into, in short, a society of “bogus badness” and affected worldliness, Mrs. Trevelyan blew like a cool breeze off the mountains of actuality upon the parched plain of imitation. Here, they felt, was the real thing, and their sordid souls thrilled with excitement at the thought. Women gained vicarious smartness from being seen with her. Little bores, whose greatest peccadillo was to drink two cocktails instead of one before dinner, swelled with worldly pride as they swarmed around her. She was a sensation, an education, worthier far than the hypocrites about her, because she at least was genuine. Her house became the center of the smart Bohemian circle the Newport and Westbury crowds, and the stragglers of London and Parisian society, of whom there are always a few in New York eagerly gobbled up to lend a cosmopolitan touch to social gatherings otherwise banal by reason of the absence of aristocratic titles. Her husband passed unnoticed, “Is there a Mr. Trevelyan?” It was quite the thing to say, with a half-knowing, half-ingenuous expression. Indeed, as a topic of conversation for “society” women, who otherwise would have conversed of servants or children, she was inexhaustible. For this reason, if for none other, her transplantation was more than justifiable.
But the lure of the scenes of her earlier triumphs came ever upon her, and each summer saw her for a few weeks in London and a month or two at Carlsbad or Biarritz. Trevelyan no longer went with her. She came and went as she chose, and with whom she chose—a mocking, tragic figure of what might have been.
“Bah!” she cried that evening, throwing down her cards at the table in the men’s smoking-room, where she had made it fashionable for the women to gather after dinner. “It ’s stuffy as a zoo in here. Can’t you have some more port-holes opened, Ashurst?”
“They are all wide open now; so is the ventilator,” he answered. “What do you say—shall we chuck it?”
Their two opponents, a young Boston bride and her husband who belonged to the “hunting set” at Myopia and were regarded at home as ultra-exclusive, hastened to signify their assent, and the table broke up.
“My maid tells me there is a vaudeville show in the second cabin. What do you say—shall we take it in?” inquired the bride. She spoke languidly, lighting a thin Russian cigarette which she took from a dainty dangling case of gold, while the eyes of forty male passengers watched her eagerly.
“Let ’s,” said Mrs. Trevelyan. “I think we ought to be able to bribe the second-cabin steward to pass us into the menagerie. Anyhow, we can stand at the door.”
The quartet sauntered along the deck and descended cautiously into the region consecrated to the second class. Ashurst peeked through an open port, while Mrs. Trevelyan glanced into the saloon through another close by. From within came the strum of a banjo and the lilt of rag-time.
Ah ’l lend yo’ ma flat!
Ah ’l lend yo’ ma lovely overcoat of fur!
Ah ’l lend yo’ eberyting Ah ’ve got—exceptin’ ma wife!
An’ Ah ’I mak’ yo’ a present of her!”
Mrs. Trevelyan’s eyes swept along the motley rows of maids, valets, and their heterogeneous companions, all eagerly drinking in the piquant sentiment of the lyric, until catching a profile at the end of one of them, an expression of hopeless bewilderment slowly gathered upon her face. Cloud was sitting a little apart, his chin on his hand, a forced smile about his lips.
“It can’t be!” muttered Mrs. Trevelyan almost hysterically.
At the same instant the song ended, and a tumultuous round of hand-clapping and laughter showed that the audience was anything but unappreciative and that wives and matrimony were momentarily at a discount. Then the high-pitched masculine voice of the master of ceremonies—a cork merchant from Flatbush—began:
“Ladies and gentlemen: It gives me great pleasure to announce that our friend, that distinguished American statesman Colonel W. C. Spothal, of Bloomington, Illinois, will give us a few personal reminiscences of him who cast the shackles from the slave and preserved the Union from dissolution amid the throes of internecine warfare—President Abraham Lincoln, or, as we of the States love to call him, ‘Old Abe.’”
“What is internecine warfare?” giggled Ashurst.
“Now!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevelyan, with sudden animation. “Just slip in the door.”
In the flurry caused by the rising and coming forward of the distinguished statesman, the party managed to force their way into the saloon almost unobserved.
“Rather interesting,” carelessly remarked the horsey bride.
"Aw—lots of atmosphere, you know,” ventured Ashurst.
“Lots!” retorted Mrs. Trevelyan in a stage whisper. “More than I want!”
The statesman had now reached the platform amid mild applause, and, thrusting his onyx-buttoned cuff into his low-cut waistcoat, entered upon a sonorous, somewhat perspiring, and detailed history of his intimacy with the martyred President. The anecdotes were chiefly about himself with sporadic references to Lincoln. Still, the audience listened good-naturedly.
“And now I’ll tell yer,” he declared impressively, “’bout some Noo York fine-an-seers that come down to Washin’ton ter ask Ole Abe to release the gold in the treasury durin’ the gold panic. He listened patiently to ’em, and then he says: ‘Gents! You remind me o’ the farmers out in Illinois when I wuz a young feller. There wuz a hog plague out thar, an’ the hogs wuz a-dyin’ like flies. Finally a man come along and claimed he had discovered a cure—an’ he had. He said, ‘Cut off their tails and they ’ll get well.’ So the farmers cut off the, hogs’ tails and the hogs all got well. But the next year the plague come ag’in—and thar were n’t no more tails!”
There was a momentary silence, and then a roar of merriment, while the statesman bowed himself from the platform. Chauffeurs slapped fat thighs and the stewards crowded in the doorways stamped vigorously. Ashurst and the hunting gentleman from Boston stared vacantly before them. But Mrs. Trevelyan laughed heartily and threw a nod to Micky, whose smiling face appeared for a moment at the doorway.
“Edifying!” remarked the bride, with a deprecating shrug and a faint condescending smile.
“Our fellow passenger, Mr. Walter Anderson Savage, has kindly consented to sing ‘Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep’ next,” announced the cork merchant.
A sad-faced, black-bearded man in heavy boots and badly fitting clothes made his way forward. A glance sufficed to show that he was one of those unfortunate persons who regard it as a sacred duty to give pleasure to others by a display of their vocal accomplishments. With his eyes fixed on the ceiling and his hands folded on his abdomen, Mr. Savage in a thin bass began to sing, accompanied by a young lady in a vermilion demi-toilette:
I lay me down in peace to sleep!
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cray-dul of ther deep."
A slight tittering made itself heard in the corners of the saloon; but the vocalist remained stolidly gazing at the ceiling during the interlude, rendered with many quavers by the vermilion pianist. Ashurst had turned very red and was shaking violently. Even the Boston bride was biting her lips, while her husband delicately covered his narrow face with his hand. Mournfully Mr. Savage began again.
Through stormy winds sweep o’er the brine.
Or through the tempest’s fiery breath.
Rouse me from sleep to wreck and death.
And calm and peaceful is my sleep.
Rocked in the cray-dul of ther deep!”
But Mrs. Trevelyan was neither listening to the song nor watching the singer. From where she had carefully selected her seat, she commanded a full view of Cloud’s face, and during the five verses rendered by the gloomy vocalist she continued to scrutinize it intently.
“It can’t be! And yet it is!” she repeated blankly. “What on earth can he be doing here?”
Suddenly Ashurst gave a muffled explosion and stumbled out of the door, followed by the bride and her husband, and presently, after another last look at the second-class passenger, by Mrs. Trevelyan.
“Rahly!" Ashurst was exclaiming, in a convulsion of mirth. “Did you ever, now! Rahly! A man like that!”
“It was funny, was n’t it, Mrs. Trevelyan?” laughed the bride apologetically, as the latter joined the others outside in the moonlight.
“Rahly! Rahly! Rahly! Ashurst! Why do you make such an idiot of yourself?” snapped Mrs. Trevelyan. “I ’m going to bed. Good night, everybody!”
And she turned and moved quickly along the passageway leading to the main saloon. The rat-faced purser, a susceptible young English-man, was just finishing up his accounts. Mrs Trevelyan cast a dazzling smile upon him, and he, behind his grating, felt instantly like an eagle imprisoned in a cage with his mate soaring in the blue vault above.
“Let me see the second-cabin list, if you please,” she said in her sweetest tones.
“Certainly,” he smiled back at her, “the ship is yours if you want it, Mrs. Trevelyan.”