CHAPTER XII
The more he reflected, the more he was convinced of it; in marriage lay his chance of contentment. And during the ensuing fortnight his approval of Miss Pierways deepened. The house would not fill until the following month, and the smallness of the party there at present was favourable to the development of acquaintance.
Excepting that she was a trifle cold, there was really no scope for adverse criticism upon Miss Pierways. She was unusually well read, took an intelligent interest in matters on which women of her age were rarely informed, and was accomplished to the extent that she played the piano after dinner with brilliant execution and admirable hands and wrists. Her coldness, theoretically, was no drawback to him, and Heriot was a little puzzled by his own attitude. Her air was neither so formal as to intimate that his advances would be unwelcome, nor so self-conscious as to repel him by the warmth of its encouragement; yet, in spite of his admiration, the idea of proposing to her dismayed him when he forced himself to approach the brink.
His vacillation was especially irritating since he had learned that the ladies were at the point of joining Van Buren in New York. The opportunity of which he was failing to take advantage would speedily be past, and he dreaded that if he suffered it to escape him, he would recall the matter with regret. He perceived as well, however, that if he were precipitate, he might regret that too, and he was sorry that they were not remaining in Europe longer.
One evening, when their departure was being discussed, the mother expressed surprise that he had never visited America, though she had had no curiosity about it, herself, until she married an American; and in answer Heriot declared that he had frequently thought of "running across during the long vacation."
"If you ever do," she said, "I hope you will choose a year when we are there."
"To tell you the truth, I was thinking of it this year."
"We may see you in New York, Sir George?" said Miss Pierways. "Really? How strange that will seem! I've been eager to go to New York all my life; but now that I'm going, I'm rather afraid. The idea of a great city where I haven't any friends——"
"But you will have many friends, Agnes."
"By-and-by," answered Miss Pierways. "Yes, I suppose so. But it's very fatiguing making friends, don't you think so? And I tremble at the voyage."
"How delightful it would be," remarked Mrs. Van Buren, "if we were going by the same steamer, Sir George!"
Heriot laughed.
"It would be very delightful to me to make the voyage in your company. But I might bore you frightfully; a week at sea must be a severe test. I should be afraid of being found out."
"We are promised other passengers," observed Miss Pierways, looking down with a faint smile. Her archness was a shade stiff, but her neck was one of her chief attractions.
"Why don't you go, George?" said Lady Heriot cheerfully. "You'd much better go by Mrs. Van Buren's boat than any other; and you've been talking of making a trip to America 'next year' ever since I've known you!"
This amiable fiction was succeeded by fresh protestations from Mrs. Van Buren that no arrangement could be more charming, and Heriot, half against his will, half with pleasure, found himself agreeing to telegraph in the morning to inquire if he could obtain a berth.
He hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad when he had done so. That the step would result in an engagement might be predicted with a tolerable degree of certainty, and he would have preferred to arrive at an understanding with himself under conditions which savoured less of coercion.
Since a state-room proved to be vacant, however, he could do no less now than engage it; and everybody appeared so much pleased, and Miss Pierways was so very gracious, that the misgivings that disturbed him looked momentarily more unreasonable than ever.
The night before he sailed, in their customary chat over whisky and cigars, Sir Francis said to him:
"'Ask, and it shall be given unto you'!"
"I'm inclined to think you're right," said his brother. "I suppose it will end in it.... She's a trifle like a well-bred machine—doesn't it strike you so?—warranted never to get out of order!" The other's look was significant, and Heriot added, "Very desirable in a wife, of course! Only somehow——"
"'Only somehow' you're eccentric, George—you always were!"
"It's not my reputation," said Heriot drily; "I believe that I'm considered particularly practical."
"Reputations," retorted the Baronet, attempting an epigram, as he sometimes did in the course of his second whisky-and-potash, and failing signally in the endeavour, "are like tombstones—generally false." He realised the reality of tombstones, and became controversial. "I've known you from a boy, and I say you were always eccentric. It was nothing but your eccentricity that you had to thank before. Here's a nice girl, a girl who will certainly have a good settlement, a girl who's undeniably handsome, ready to say 'yes' at the asking, and you grumble—I'm hanged if you don't grumble!—because you see she is to be depended on. What the devil do you want?"
"I want to be fond of her," answered Heriot. "I admit all you've said of her; I want to like her more."
"So you ought to; but what does it matter if you don't? All women are alike to the men who've married them after a year or two. She'll make an admirable mother, and that's the main thing, I suppose?"
Was it?
Heriot recalled the criticism during his first day on board. Neither of the ladies was visible until Queenstown was reached, and he paced the deck, pursuing his reflections by the aid of tobacco. She would "make an admirable mother, and that was the main thing"! Of the second half of the opinion he was not so sure. To marry a woman simply because one believed she would shine in a maternal capacity was somewhat too altruistic, he thought. However, he was fully aware that Miss Pierways had other recommendations.
She appeared with her mother at the head of the companion-way while he was wishing that he hadn't come, and he found their chairs for them, and arranged their rugs, and subsequently gave their letters to the steward to be posted.
After leaving Queenstown, Mrs. Van Buren's sufferings increased, and the girl, who, saving for a brief interval, was well and cheerful, was practically in his charge. It was Heriot who accompanied her from the saloon after breakfast, and strolled up and down with her till she was tired. When the chair and the rug—the salient features of a voyage are the woman, the chair, and the rug—were satisfactorily arranged, it was he who sat beside her, talking. Flying visits she made below, while her mother kept her cabin; but for the most part she was on deck—or in the saloon, or in the reading-room—and for the most part Heriot was the person to whom she looked for conversation. If he had been a decade or two younger, he would probably have proposed to her long before they sighted Sandy Hook, and it surprised him that he did not succumb to the situation as it was. A woman is nowhere so dangerous, and nowhere is a man so susceptible, as at sea. The interminable days demand flirtation, if one is not to perish of boredom. Moonlight and water are notoriously potent, even when viewed for only half an hour; and at sea, the man and the girl look at the moonlight on the water together regularly every evening. And it is very becoming to the girl. Miss Pierways' face was always a disappointment to Heriot at breakfast. The remembrance of its factitious softness the previous night made its hardness in the sunshine look harder. He wondered if it was the remembrance of its hardness at breakfast that kept him from proposing to her when they loitered in the moonlight. He was certainly doing his best to fall in love with her, and everything conspired to assist him; but the days went on, and the momentous question remained unuttered.
"We shall soon be there," she said one evening as they strolled about the deck after dinner. "I'm beginning to be keen. Have you noticed how everybody is saying, 'New York' now? At first no one alluded to it—we mightn't have been due for a year—and since yesterday nobody's talking of anything else!"
"Nearly everyone I've spoken to seems to have made the trip half a dozen times," said Heriot. "I feel dreadfully untravelled in the smoking-room. When are you going to Niagara? Niagara is one of the things I'm determined not to miss."
"I was talking to some girls who have lived in New York all their lives—when they weren't in Europe—and they haven't been there yet. They told me they had been to the panorama in Westminster!"
"I have met a Londoner who had never been to the Temple."
"No? How perfectly appalling!" she exclaimed, none the less fervently because she hadn't been to it herself. "Oh yes, I know I shall adore Niagara! I want to see a great deal of America while I'm there."
"I wish I had time to see more; I should like to go to California."
"I wouldn't see California for any consideration upon earth!" she declared. "California, to me, is Bret Harte—I should be so afraid of being disillusioned. When we went to Ireland once, do you know, Sir George, it was a most painful shock to me! My ideas of Ireland were founded on Dion Boucicault's plays—I expected to see all the peasants in fascinating costumes, with their hair down their backs, just as one sees them on the stage. The reality was terrible. I shudder when I recall the disappointment."
"I sympathise."
"Of course you're laughing at me! I shall have my revenge, if you don't like New York. But, I don't know—I may feel guilty. You mustn't blame us if you don't like New York, Sir George. Fortunately you won't have time to be very bored, though; will you?"
"'Fortunately'?"
"Fortunately if it doesn't amuse you, I mean. When does the—how do you say it? When does your holiday end?"
"I must be back in London on the twenty-fourth of next month; I'm almost American myself. I shall have such a fleeting glimpse of the country, that I must really think of writing a book about it."
"You have something better to do than write vapid books. To me your profession seems the most fascinating one there is. If I were a man, I'd rather be called to the Bar than anything. You'd be astonished if you knew how many biographies of eminent lawyers I've read—they enthralled me as a child. I don't know any career that suggests such power to me as the Bar. Don't smile: sometimes, when we're talking and I remember the tremendous influence you wield, I tremble."
She lifted her eyes to him, deprecating her enthusiasm, which was too palpably a pose, and again Heriot was conscious that the opportunity was with him, if he could but grasp it. They had paused by the taffrail, and he stood looking at her, trying to speak the words that would translate their relations to a definite footing. He no longer had any doubt as to her answer; he could foresee her reply—at least the manner of her reply—with disturbing clearness. He knew that she would hesitate an instant, and droop her head, and ultimately murmur correct phrases that would exhilarate him not at all. In imagination he already heard her tones, as she promised to be his wife. He supposed, as they were screened from observation, that he might take her hand. How passionless, how mechanical and flat it would all be! He replied with a commonplace, and after a few moments they continued their stroll. When he turned in, however, he reproached himself more forcibly than he had done yet, and his vacillation was by no means at an end. He was at war, not with his judgment, but with his instinct, and it was the perception of this fact that always increased his perturbation.
They landed the following day, and, after being introduced to Mr. Van Buren in the custom-house, Heriot drove to an hotel. The hotel he found excellent; New York he found wonderful, but a city different from what he had expected. He had vaguely pictured New York as a Paris where everybody talked English. This was before the introduction of the automobile had changed the face of Paris, and the face of the Parisian—before it incidentally reduced the number of half-fed horses barbarously used in that city, which is the negro's paradise, and the "horse's hell"—and the Boulevard was even more unlike Broadway then than now. Broadway, broad in name only till it spread into the brightness of Union Square, suggested London more than Paris—London in an unprecedented burst of energy. The tireless vigour of the throng, the ubiquitous rush of the Elevated Railway confused him. Though he paid homage to the cuisine of America, which proved as much as much superior to that of England as the worst transatlantic train was to our best of that period, he told himself that he was disappointed. The truth was that, not wishing to take the Van Burens' invitations too literally, and having no other acquaintances here, he was dull.
American hospitality, however, is the most charming in the world, and he spent several very agreeable hours inside the big brownstone house. Nothing could have exceeded the geniality of Van Buren's manner, nor was this due solely to the position of his visitor and a hope of their becoming connected. The average American business man will show more kindness to a stranger, who intrudes into his office, than most Englishmen display to one who comes to them with a letter of introduction from a friend, and Van Buren's welcome was as sincere as it was attractive.
Heriot stayed in New York a week, and then fulfilled his desire to visit Niagara. On his return he called in Fifth Avenue again. He was already beginning to refer to his homeward voyage, and he was still undetermined whether he would propose to Miss Pierways or not. The days slipped by without his arriving at a conclusion; and then one morning he told himself he had gone too far to retreat now—that the step, which was doubtless the most judicious he could take, should be made without delay.
He called at the house the same afternoon—for on the next day but one the Etruria sailed—and he found the ladies at home. He sat down, wondering if he would be left alone with Miss Pierways and take his departure engaged to her. But for half an hour there seemed no likelihood of a tête-à-tête. Presently there were more callers and they were shown into another room. Mrs. Van Buren begged him to excuse her. He rose to leave, but was pressed to remain.
"I want to talk to you when they've gone," she said; "I haven't half exhausted my list of messages to London."
Heriot resumed his seat, and Miss Pierways smiled.
"Poor mamma wishes she were going herself, if she told the truth! Now that we're here, it is I who like New York, not she."
"We're creatures of custom," he said; "your mother has lived in London too long to accustom herself to America very easily... Of course you'll be over next season?"
"Oh yes. Shall you ever come to America again, Sir George?"
"I—I hardly know," he answered. "I certainly hope to."
"Oh, then, you will! You're your own master."
"Is anybody his own master?"
"To the extent of travelling to America, many people, I should think!"
He remembered with sudden gratification that he had never said a word to her that might not have been spoken before a crowd of listeners. What was there to prevent him withholding the proposal if he liked!
"I've no doubt I shall come," he said abstractedly.
She looked slightly downcast. It was not the reply that she had hoped to hear.
"I shall always owe a debt of gratitude to you and to Mr. and Mrs. Van Buren for making my visit so pleasant to me," he found himself saying next. "My trip has been a delightful experience."
She murmured a conventional response, but chagrin began to creep about her heart.
Heriot diverged into allusions which advanced the position not at all. They spoke of New York, of England, of the voyage—she perfunctorily, and he with ever-increasing relief. And now he felt that he had been on the verge of the precipice for the last time. He had escaped—and by the intensity of his gratitude he realised how ill-judged had been his action in playing around it.
When Mrs. Van Buren reappeared, followed by her husband, her daughter's face told her that the climax had not been reached; and bold in thanksgiving, Heriot excused himself when he was asked to dine with them that evening. Had he been offered the alternative of the next evening, he could not without rudeness have found a pretext for refusing; but on the morrow, as luck would have it, the Van Burens were dining out.
The footman opened the big door, and Heriot descended the steps with a sensation that was foreign to him, and not wholly agreeable. He knew that he did not want to marry Miss Pierways, and that he had behaved like a fool in trying to acquire the desire, but he was a little ashamed of himself. His conduct had not been irreproachable; and he was conscious that when the steamer sailed and the chapter was closed for good and all, he would be glad to have done with it. He had blundered badly. Nevertheless he would have blundered worse, and been a still greater fool, if the affair had terminated in an engagement. Of course his brother would say distasteful things when they met, and Lady Heriot would convey her extreme disapproval of him without saying anything. That he must put up with! Of two evils, he had at any rate chosen the lesser.
He repeated the assurance with still more conviction on Saturday morning during the quarter of an hour in which the cab rattled him to the boat. The experience had been a lesson to him, and he was resolved that henceforward he would dismiss the idea of marriage from his mind. He saw his portmanteau deposited in his cabin, and he returned to the deck as the steamer began to move. The decks were in the confusion that obtains at first. Passengers still hung at the taffrail, taking a farewell gaze at friends on the landing-stage. The chairs were huddled in a heap, and stewards bustled among stacks of luggage, importuned at every second step with instructions and inquiries.
The deep pulsations sounded more regular; the long line of sheds receded; and the figures of the friends were as little dark toys, waving specks of white. Even the most constant among the departing began to turn away now. The hastening stewards were importuned more frequently than before. Everybody was in a hurry, and all the women in the crowd that flocked below seemed to be uttering the words "baggage" and "state-room" at the same time.
A few men were temporarily in possession of the deck, striding to and fro behind pipes or cigars. The regulation as to "No smoking abaft this" was not in force yet, or was, at least, disobeyed at present. Heriot sauntered along the length of deck until it began to fill again. The pile of chairs received attention—they were set out in a row under the awning. The deck took a dryness and a whiteness, and a few passengers sat down, and questioned inwardly if they would find one another companionable. He bent his steps to the smoking-room. But it was empty and uninviting thus early, and he forsook it after a few minutes. As the door slammed behind him, he came face to face with the woman who had been his wife.