An American Girl in India/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
AN AUTHORESS, A DUCHESS, AND A POMPOUS MAN
I can't say that I had altogether recovered my temper by the time we reached Dover. Certainly the elements there didn't exactly tend to soothe one. Can anything in the world be more detestable than getting one's self and one's belongings from the train to the steamer in a good steady downpour of rain? There was only one thing that cheered me up, and that was the sight of Marjory as she prepared to descend in her garden-party frock. I don't mind admitting now that of course she did look much smarter than I did at Charing Cross, but I had my revenge at Dover. Not the longest and most enveloping of ulsters could save that dress altogether. I smiled with unholy joy. There was probably worse to come. In a plaintive little voice on the way down Marjory had said she did so hope the crossing would be calm. I guessed she was just one of those sailors who are ill before they get on board.
We descended. Fortunately, I had been wise, and had taken nothing but the smallest of handbags and a roll of rugs into the carriage with me. Ermyntrude followed close behind, heavily laden, but very cool, very determined to get there somehow. When Ermyntrude's countenance assumes that grim, determined look, I get chilled. I always think she looks as if she were holding the most frightful flow of violent language but lightly in reserve, and as if the smallest provocation would unloose it. It's a most serviceable look at times to go about with, as it kind of clears the way in front. I've seen people just glance at Ermyntrude and shelve off straight away; I've even heard them meekly apologetic when they haven't done anything at all. Ermyntrude is quite invaluable on a railway platform. Even Marjory had gumption enough to see that, and clung to her like a shadow. Lady Manifold trudged along behind with her skirts held high, practically regardless of the rain overhead or the slush underfoot. I suppose a moment like that when she is caught in the rain in company with people better dressed than herself is the only time when the shabbily-dressed woman feels a passing glow of triumph. But it isn't worth while dressing with an eye to that shower of rain. I prefer the perpetual glow with the moments of depression of the well-dressed woman.
Marjory was on the verge of tears by the time we got on the boat. It was just a bit squashy getting on. Marjory wasn't carrying anything. She had quite enough to do to take care of herself. I forged ahead with my bundle of rugs in front, and got on the boat long before she did. Marjory is no good at the polite and gentle art of pushing. She ought to go and get practice at the autumn sales in town. She loves a bargain, so perhaps that might make her keen. But I guess her only real hope is to get a husband to push for her, though from the note I've taken of them, husbands are not much use in that line. Any woman if she tries can push past any man any day.
That Dover-Calais boat I don't just remember with a gleam of pleasure. I admit I felt downright ill before we had fairly got under weigh. I left Marjory, green and crumpled up in a deckchair, with Lady Manifold marching up and down in front of her exhorting her to do the same. Lady Manifold is one of those objectionable people—a good sailor. I don't think there is any callousness quite equal to the callousness of the good sailor towards the bad. Lady Manifold, marching up and down, the picture of robust and perfect health, looked positively obnoxious. She even turned to me with offensive cheeriness and asked me to walk up and down too. Now the boat had not begun to roll much as yet, but I felt that to walk up and down was a physical and absolute impossibility. A strange and unholy desire for absolute seclusion seized me. A great wave of hatred and disgust of mankind in general suddenly swept over me. The impulse to get away was irresistible—anywhere out of sight of the crowd, where I could not see Lady Manifold still walking briskly up and down and balancing herself with unsteady steps as the awful rolling of the ship increased.
I groped my way towards the ladder, careless now that I was of the emerald hue known of yore to little Johnnie Jones and his sister Sue. I swung unsteadily at the top of the steps, clinging to the hand rail.
'Let me give you a hand,' said a familiar deep bass voice in my ears.
I half turned feeling the desire for loneliness too great even to welcome this well-intentioned interruption, yet doubting withal if without help I could attain my end. Yet when I saw who it was, I steadied myself. Now I could not suffer myself to be rescued from my straits, however bad, by the friend of Dukes and Duchesses, who had sold me so horribly in the matter of his top-hat. So by a great effort I smiled. I even thought of speaking, but I felt just in time that that would be too dangerous. Even the smile threatened to cost me dear. Just then the roll of the boat was awful, and that wave of longing for solitude engulfed me. In a moment of mortal weakness I was about to give myself over into the hands of the enemy.
Then something happened. One of the Dukes suddenly rushed past us and stumbled rather than ran down the companion way. I just caught sight of his face as it flashed by. He was the Duke who had walked the platform at Charing Cross with his head erect and his glance fixed straight in front of him. Now he still looked straight ahead, but his expression wasn't quite the same. His chest somehow seemed to have fallen in and his back got hunched up—altogether a pitiable figure of a man. No self-respecting man ever ought to get seasick. I don't know what I should do if I married a man who turned out to be a bad sailor. I think it would be a justifiable ground of divorce. It probably is somewhere in the States, but not being married yet I'm naturally not well up in the subject. Anyway, that Duke put me right off seasick husbands.
But I was soon to have it demonstrated that there are other drawbacks to a seasick husband besides the fact that he looks such a loon. No sooner had the seasick Duke disappeared than his Duchess, in the same case with himself, came staggering along the deck clutching for support at anything she came across in the most ungracelike way. She had almost reached the companion ladder when there was a most awful lurch that made you feel kind of churned up inside. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the boarding, murmuring feebly to the pompous man at my side, 'Oh, take me away—anywhere—oh, take me away!' I put out my hand towards the place where he stood. But no reply came, and I suddenly felt that he was no longer there. I opened my eyes. There was that perfidious monster tenderly helping the stricken Duchess past me down the ladder. I drew myself together, and followed with all the dignity I could. I remember distinctly a passionate desire to be revenged, and I pride myself upon the thought because it proves that I could not have really been so very bad at the time, as you don't even care about revenge when you are real seasick.
Alone and unaided I reached the ladies' cabin at last. Great heavens, it was like the Black Hole! There wasn't a place vacant anywhere, and people lay about on the floor in a limp, helpless, don't-care-for-anything-more-in-this-life sort of way that seemed to catch right on to you, and make you feel the same as soon as ever you saw it. The Duchess was clinging to the doorway, feeling, I guess, if she felt anything like I did, real bad. Suddenly, I don't know how it happened, but we found ourselves in each other's arms. We both laughed for a second in a weak hysterical sort of way, and then another lurch upset us altogether, and we fell over on the ground right on top of a prostrate form. Now, if I had not a Duchess to corroborate me, I should hesitate to say anything about the remark that came from that prostrate form, but there is really no denying the fact that the Duchess and I were sent to perdition by a muffled voice that struggled out from under the Duchess's skirts. Unfortunately that prostrate form travelled second-class on board ship, and we never met again. I felt that she might have been quite interesting. I always admire a woman who says what she thinks, and I guess it wasn't just comforting to have even a Duchess fall heavily upon you when you are feeling right-down seasick. The only thing I ever heard about the woman afterwards was that her name was O'Davitt. I suggested to the Duchess then that perhaps we were doing her an injustice and, unlikely as it might seem, she was only telling us her name when we fell upon her, and the indistinctness naturally caused by the oppression of the Duchess's skirts caused us to misunderstand. But the Duchess was quite certain that she used the second personal pronoun and not the neuter gender, and I, of course, can't venture an opinion against a Duchess.
That Duchess and I made quite friends as we lay on the floor. I happened by good luck to have fallen near a pillar to which I had to cling to prevent myself rolling over when the floor took on too acute an angle. The Duchess had no pillar, so I said in one of my speakable moments, 'You just cling on to me,' which she did to the extent of some twelve stone. I congratulated myself that I had practised Sandow exercises hard for the last six months. We didn't talk much, but I am sure the Duchess felt grateful. She apologised several times when she had to cling extra hard. I remembering wondering if our pompous friend had made the acquaintance of any of his four Dukes and Duchesses in this casual sort of way. Perhaps even then he was attending to the Duchess's husband in the men's saloon. I suppose if you wanted to scrape up an acquaintance with anyone and took enough trouble, you could manage to manipulate circumstances so as to get an unconventional introduction. I guess some people would have just jumped at being as seasick as I was in order to scrape up an acquaintance with a Duchess. Now, I'm not lacking in the bump of veneration, but I've known a Duchess at home, and well, I don't mind confessing that I don't think that Duchess just exactly wants me to become a Duchess too. You see, Lord Hendley happens to be the son of a Duke, so I'm in the running myself.
I felt a perfect wreck when I got off that boat at Calais. It had been one of the worst crossings they had known for years. But I had not quite lost all sense of shame, as most of the passengers had. I did do my best by smiling and rubbing my face surreptitiously to get rid of my greenish hue, and I did put my hat straight and push in a few stray hairpins with Ermyntrude's help—an Ermyntrude a little pale, but grim and determined as ever—I flattered myself that I soon looked all right again. Marjory looked like a dissipated doll that had been roughly played with, and she sat helplessly on a seat without trying to make herself look decent. I wondered if she would have bucked up if Tommy Lovelace had been around. Lady Manifold and Ermyntrude were wrestling with the baggage question, and the latter, laden with parcels, was indignantly rejecting the proposals of a French porter. Ermyntrude scorns to speak anything but English, so on the Continent she has to rely chiefly on the determined glitter in her eye.
We were in the train at last. I found I had to share a double berth compartment with a woman I had never seen before. We looked at each other furtively with that mutual distrust and suspicion with which English people always do regard one another until they have been properly introduced. Now, of course, I know that, being an American, I ought to have been friendly with that stranger right away. But I think long residence in England must have stamped out my natural affection for the human race. An Englishman doesn't like being caught on to right away. He thinks it bad form, and that anybody who is just eager to know him must be without friends himself, and that probably there is something real fishy about him. Nobody in England wants to know anybody else unless they can get something out of them. I don't mean necessarily anything tangible or pecuniary. But they want to know them so as to get a card for their parties, to get introductions through them to people more important still, to marry off their daughters to them, or to make a present to them of their younger sons. Dorothy is just like that. She won't look at anybody unless she thinks they are what she calls worth knowing. I suppose Dorothy is a snob, but at least she shares that appellation with nine-tenths of the other women in society, and a good half of the men.
So that's how it is that I'm impregnated with British aloofness, and have lost my native primitiveness that regarded my fellow men as brothers, and not merely as so many stepping-stones to my own advancement. I was summing-up my fellow-traveller and wondering if she was what Dorothy would call worth knowing. At first sight I didn't think she was. She was rather the kind of woman that I haven't much use for. Her hat came from Paris, there was no doubt about that. But her dress bore an unmistakably English look about it, and it was put on as only an Englishwoman does put on her clothes. I always think it such a pity that the gods didn't bestow just that one more favour on Englishwomen—the knack of putting on their clothes. It's rather a terrible defect in the race. That's why I'm always real grateful I'm an American by birth. The gods were liberal to us when they doled out this gift, and though they placed us geographically far from Paris, they planted Parisian instincts in our hearts. Of course, I admit that Americans can be real dowdy. The love of guide-books, which the gods gave us in such ample measure too, blunts all the finer instincts, if you don't keep it within due bounds. That's why English, French, and Germans get such wrong impressions of us, since those who have let themselves get under the influence of the guide-book-habit are naturally most in evidence. Now if you give yourself over, body and soul, to the love of guide-books, you get hustled in trying to see too much. And if you're hustled you don't have time to put your clothes on properly, and soon get a sort of scraggy, worried look all round.
That woman who travelled with me had certainly got hustled. She never kept still, and that's disconcerting to any dress. Her luggage fairly blocked the compartment, and even then she seemed anxious lest it might not all be there. It was she who spoke first.
'I guess,' she said, settling herself in the corner seat at last, 'I guess we're mostly Americans on board this car.'
I positively jumped with astonishment. I hadn't even suspected her nationality. I felt at once that she was a guide-book American, and marvelled that I hadn't spotted it. I opened my handbag and took out a book as I answered her. A book was the best defence I had to keep off conversation if she bored me.
'Oh,' I said politely, 'are there so many Americans going by this train?'
'Guess you haven't seen the passenger list,' she said in a tone of hurt surprise; 'why, it's just cram full with the very best American names. A good seventy-five per cent, on board this car, I reckon, come from the States. Why, there's——'
And she proceeded to give me the names and addresses of all the Americans on the train. Some of the people everybody had heard of, most of them, however, were unknown to fame this side. I murmured polite interest, and opened my book. I hadn't any use for a woman like this. But she was not to be shaken off so easily. She leaned forward and looked at the title of my book.
'What!' she exclaimed, 'are you reading "Number 2001, 25th Street"?'
'Yes,' I said coldly.
She was leaning forward, curiously eager.
'How do you like it?' she asked.
I felt downright annoyed at being interfered with like this. I made myself comfortable in my corner of the carriage, and deliberately opened the book at the place where I had left off reading it the day before.
'I think it's one of the most fascinating books I've ever read and I'm just longing to see how it ends,' I said, fixing her with a glassy stare, and then beginning to read straight away.
I don't know if I exactly expected her to speak again after that. Anyway, I felt somehow surprised at her silence, and was weak enough to glance up.
A momentary flash of hesitation and embarrassment was struggling with gratified pleasure on her face. It was the only look of the kind I ever saw there. I wondered.
'I value that speech of yours just cent per cent,' she said smiling. 'A compliment like that is downright fascinating when it comes out just unconscious and spontaneous.'
I looked at her in amazement. What on earth could she mean? I suppose I looked a bit at sea. My fellow-traveller smiled her smile of horrible complacency.
'I wrote that book,' she said.
I suddenly felt that somehow that book had lost all interest for me straight away.
'What!' I cried, sitting up in my surprise, 'you are Argustus Strong?'
She smiled again, satisfaction radiating all around her.
'I guess that's me,' she said.
I sank back into my corner again. If only she had shown a little more of the saving grace of modesty, whether she had it or not, I should have been quite pleased at meeting her. I always like meeting people who have made a name for themselves in any walk of life. It's stimulating. But I do like them to be modest and retiring as most of them are. It is so interesting trying to draw them out, whereas nobody cares to hear anything that someone else is dying to tell them. It's only the things that there's a chance of your not getting to know that you are really keen on hearing. But still, whatever there might be against 'Argustus Strong,' it was impossible to ignore the woman who had written a book like 'Number 2001, 25th Street,' that had run into seventy-four editions.
'Yes,' she was saying with a purr of self-congratulation, 'they are just bringing out the seventy-fifth edition. That will make the total number up to seven hundred thousand copies. But I'm just going to bustle round until it tops the million. I guess that'll be a record that no one on earth can sneeze at.'
I looked at her sadly. Could this really be the woman who had written that charming, touching tale of the poorest quarter of the great American city, which had found its way to the hearts not only of her fellow-countrymen, but of all the English-speaking world—the very book that I was now so deeply interested in, and should have doubtless enjoyed until the end if I hadn't been unfortunate enough to meet its authoress? I looked at her. She still wore that complacent smile, and I felt that she was going to boast some more about the popularity of the book. I understood now why it was that I had felt at the very first that she lacked something. It was the saving grace of modesty. That woman positively shone with pride in her work. Ordinary legitimate pride I should not have minded, but to go and boast of a beautiful, inspired book like that was to take away half its charm.
'How very interesting,' I murmured.
'That book took me just six months to write,' she was saying, as if I were an interviewer and had asked for all these facts. 'The first two months I only just dotted down things. I was living right away back in the slums as one of them. I guess you wouldn't have recognised me from one of those flower-women on the London pavements. I just did things wholesale. Then I went straight home and wrote hard. I revised it three times, and got writer's cramp twice, and thought I should have had to give over. But no, I kept on. I couldn't be bothered with a typewriter, though I've just been offered five hundred pounds—five hundred pounds,' she repeated impressively 'to say that I typed it with a Brinton typewriter. I own up I hesitated a bit. Five hundred pounds is five hundred pounds, and I could easily have typed the thing through afterwards so as to have had the type copy by me if anybody came along to nose around to see it.'
I gasped at her effrontery. The book was ruined for me utterly and for ever. I had no desire to finish it now, and closed it sadly and put it on the seat beside me. For an hour its authoress rattled on about it, until, fortunately, it was time for dinner, and I got a respite. Needless to say, I escaped her in the dining-car, where she was joined by a common-looking little man whom she called 'Phil.'
Back in our wretched little compartment the question arose as to which of us should have the lower berth. I was quite ready to take either, but 'Argustus Strong' insisted on tossing.
'I guess I'll win,' she said as she spun the coin; 'I'm on the crest of the wave just now with a seventy-fifth edition.'
I could have throttled her as the coin came down for her declaration. She promptly took the lower berth, and I climbed up above, furious with the world in general. The authoress still bustled about among her packages, and finally pounced upon my copy of her book, which I had left below.
'I guess you'd like me to write my name in this,' she said, picking it up and opening it. It wasn't a question, it was a statement of fact. I forced myself to mutter some conventional word of thanks.
She produced a stylographic pen and wrote.
'There,' she said, as she handed the book up to me, 'I guess that'll make your friends just green with envy.'
Again I murmured something, and read what she had written.
'The authoress is glad to find that Nicola Fairfax is one of the millions who appreciate her book, and guesses that she and the authoress will be lifelong friends.'
An hour later, as I heard the authoress snoring violently below, I leaned down quietly and dropped that book out on to the line. It was only then that I felt it possible to sleep.