THE NEWSPAPER PRESS OF NEW YORK.
One of the most remarkable features of this most remarkable century is the unparalleled growth of that branch of ephemeral literature known par excellence as the press. This increase has not been confined to any particular nation or locality, but is as observable in conservative Europe as in expansive America. Still, in this country, and particularly in New York, newspapers have multiplied during the last fifty years with a rapidity that has astonished not only the public but even their projectors and proprietors. It is within the memory of many now living when our city knew not the luxury of a daily journal, and its most inquisitive and anxious inhabitants were obliged to wait a whole week for current news and editorial comments thereon. Now we are so imbued with a craving for early information that few persons in active life are satisfied with a morning paper, but must have likewise two or three evening editions. The last generation were content to wait for an indefinite period for intelligence of what was going on in the Old World; to-day we are sadly disappointed if we cannot read over our toast and coffee of what has happened a few hours previously at the principal points of interest throughout Christendom. Business enterprise, competition, steam power, and the telegraph have been mainly instrumental in changing the character of journalism and creating wants hitherto unfelt; increase of population and a love of superficial reading, which, like jealousy, makes the food it feeds on, have done the rest.
Before proceeding to point out some of what seem to us to be the grave defects of the secular press, we freely and thankfully admit that its tone as regards the Catholic Church has greatly improved within the last few years. Those who remember the scoffs and sneers, the outrageous calumnies and downright falsehoods, which were usually associated with everything Catholic in so many New York journals a quarter of a century ago, now look with more than complacency on the comparative fairness which at present characterizes their reports, correspondence, and editorials. The manner in which the life and death of the late Pope, the venerable Pius IX., was treated and commented upon is a notable example of this growing spirit of liberality and good sense alike gratifying to their Catholic readers and honorable to themselves. Now and then, of course, we found expressions and sentiments opposed to our sense of historical truth and moral rectitude; but as a whole the non-Catholic press have expressed very just and impartial views of the multifarious labors and shining virtues which distinguished the career of the wonderful man who was lately called to his reward. The same may be said of their allusions to his successor, Leo XIII. Abandoning the senseless and mischievous course of their European contemporaries previous to the meeting of the conclave, they gave us a truthful and succinct account of the meeting of that august body, the result of its solemn deliberations, and excellent sketches of the life and services of the illustrious prelate selected to bear the burden laid down by Pius IX. For all this, considering how Catholic questions were formerly treated, we ought to be, and are, thankful. Again, looking nearer home, the services and ceremonies of the church are described with much more regard to their sanctity and less to the gratification of idle curiosity and insensate popular prejudice than formerly. Some of the press accounts of the nature and reason of fasts and feasts, abstinence, prayer, and good works, which are especially enjoined at particular periods, have been so precise and discriminating that the conviction is forced upon us of their having been written, or at least dictated, by persons fully in accord with Catholic teachings.
Yet while we cannot but admit this salutary change and admire the variety, system, and attention to details exhibited in the mechanical arrangement of news, and the extraordinary industry displayed in the general manufacture of our modern newspapers, it must be confessed with regret that in elevation of tone and honesty of purpose there has been little or no improvement on the slower and less attractive productions of our ancestors. We may take as an example the metropolitan press of New York, which in point of ability, influence, and circulation far surpasses that of any other city on the continent. Let any impartial person, after the careful perusal of any one of our five or six prominent daily newspapers which are supposed to control and lead public opinion, ask himself what there is in its pages to command the attention of the moralist, or to move the sceptical or thoughtless to a sense of his duty to God and his neighbor: what stern rebuke has been administered to the growing spirit of peculation and heathenism which is constantly gnawing at the vitals of society. How seldom do we find in the labored essays, the disjointed platitudes, the pretentious diatribes, the ornate editorials, or the epigrams which distinguish our prominent journals a sentiment or an argument based on sound views of morality and religion! With a constituency at least professedly Christian, they bandy with words and phrases, opinions and speculations, essentially anti-Christian. One sneers at the Catholic Church and everything we hold sacred; another patronizes us in a manner more insulting than complimentary; while the others, when not openly misrepresenting and maligning us, allude to our faith in a manner even more objectionable. All without exception, possibly without knowing it, are the advocates of the secret societies abroad, which are endeavoring to undermine the fabric of social order and Christian civilization, and the apologists for those home fanatics who seek to excite public prejudice against us, and oppose class to class and creed to creed for their own selfish and diabolical ends.
Of course we do not expect secular newspapers to become active exponents of the great truths of religion, nor should it even be required of them to give undue prominence to the publication of matters of a religious character. That is not their province. But appearing as they do in a Christian community, and being supposed to reflect in a great measure the feelings, views, and moral status of the people who support them, we have a right to demand that they adhere to the teachings of that moral law which ought to govern us all, and that when they treat of sacred things, and deal with questions affecting faith and religion, it shall be done with that serious reverence which persons are bound to observe in social life. Neither do we ask that they advocate the superior claims of Catholics, nor even enter upon our defence against the many unscrupulous enemies who are constantly rising up against us; but we do insist that we shall not be insulted, that our opinions be respected, and that the code of morals which all who profess to be Christians acknowledge be not constantly and persistently outraged.
The secret of this apparently unanimous anti-Catholic feeling which we lament in the New York daily press is to be found in the mental, not to say moral, inferiority of the editorial fraternity as a class. Since the death of Greeley and Raymond and the practical retirement of Bryant we have had no really able journalist among us; while, unlike Paris, Berlin, London, and other European cities, where the foremost statesmen and most profound thinkers scorn not to take up the editorial pen occasionally, we have no voluntary contributors above the level of mediocrity. A New York editor is usually a man paid to write something or anything on certain subjects, whether he be familiar with them or not. He writes not to express his own well-considered convictions, or to give the public the benefit of his study and experience of a particular topic, but simply to meet a special emergency, and to embody, more or less lamely, the half-formed notions of his employer, who is as likely as not an uncultured man himself. Hence the greater number of what are called leading articles which appear in our daily papers, instead of presenting clear views, sound reasoning, and reliable information artistically epitomized, are seldom other than a mass of hasty, crude, and shallow speculations on topics of the greatest importance. With the mass of casual readers, who are too busy to look beneath the surface, such productions pass for gospel truths, and therefore are likely to do more harm than more elaborate articles; but to the intelligent reader it soon becomes obvious either that the heads of the writers are astray or that their hearts are not in their work. The latter surmise, we are inclined to believe, is more generally correct. How can a Hebrew, for instance, write a eulogium on the glories of the Catholic Church; a Catholic, no matter how lukewarm, praise the Communists and applaud the Carbonari; or a follower of the stern precepts of Calvin glorify free love and exalt the doctrines of universalism? Yet such anomalies are frequently found in New York journalism, where every man seems to be in the wrong place. The well-known fact that the editorial staff of all our large dailies is principally made up of persons of diverse nationalities, creeds, and opinions accounts for the discordance noticeable in every one of their pages. They have no fixed principles. No matter what political party journals may support, and how emphatic they may be in their advocacy of this or that public measure, when they come to treat a great social question, or one of vital importance to the honor and reputation of the republic, one column of the same paper is usually found to contradict the other, and the principles advanced to-day are in imminent danger of being condemned to-morrow.
To this rule, however, there is an exception. It seems to be a canon of the press of this city, and we might add of the entire country, that Catholics can be abused, scoffed at, and misrepresented with impunity. Their religion is unfashionable; their social, commercial, and political influence small in comparison with their numbers; the world is not their friend, nor the world’s law, and therefore the generous and large-minded editors of our newspapers, when at a loss for something else to say, have always an arrow in their quiver for the “tyranny of Rome,” and the dangers to which their beloved country is exposed from the “machinations and encroachments of Romanism.” Vulgar nicknames and insulting epithets applied to the church and the religious orders, which have long since been banished from the vocabularies of other countries, are freely used with a coolness and a facility which show that the writers are either too ignorant to know when they are vulgar, or so barren of ideas and expressions that they are compelled to borrow those which have done service in the days of a bigoted and fanatical generation.
But turning from the editorial page to what constitutes the bulk of our journals, we find their dangerous character revealed. What mainly fills their capacious pages and constitutes their principal attraction for the generality of purchasers? Extended reports of divorce cases, criminal trials, matrimonial escapades, and the minutiæ of executions; “spicy” paragraphs and indecent anecdotes to which the ordinary and instructive news of the day is only an adjunct. The sensational style of reporting, the dressing-up of disgusting topics in romantic phraseology, though unknown a few years ago, or confined to a few disreputable weekly papers, is fast becoming a distinctive feature in New York journalism. It is a growing evil, as well as a most insidious one, and the keen competition which exists between proprietors of daily journals for popular patronage has a direct tendency to develop it still further. So much, indeed, do our papers, big and little, vie with each other in catering to the depraved taste of a certain portion of the people that it has become a matter of serious consideration with many persons whether they can safely introduce into their families the papers they are obliged to take for business purposes.
It is very safe to assert that too many of those who collect the city and suburban news for the daily press are as devoid of conscience in their method of communicating as they are often shameless in their manner of procuring their information. They seem to think that a reporter, in his official capacity, has no moral responsibility, and act consistently with the supposition. They fairly revel in scandal; consider vice only something to be elaborately depicted in their respective newspapers, and crime, no matter how heinous, a fitting theme for their nimble and facile pens. Their excuse for all this prostitution of ability which might be turned to some good account is that the public demand this highly-seasoned style of reporting, forgetting that they themselves have excited this prurient taste, and that if, repenting of their past misdeeds, they were to return to the old-fashioned method their present admirers would soon follow them.
It is certain that the degeneracy of the newspaper press in this respect is fast sapping the morals of the community, particularly the younger portion of it. Once familiarized with crime of every sort and degree through the florid descriptions of the reporters, our young men and women must necessarily become mentally debased. Their thoughts, unbidden, will stray to matters of which they have lately read, a dangerous curiosity will be excited, and from constant reflection they will begin to lose that horror of sin which is one of the safeguards of virtue, which every pure-minded youth should keep constantly before his eyes. The mind once disturbed, the imagination led astray, every defaulter and swindler, if he be a criminal on a large scale, is apt to appear to them as “a smart fellow”; the betrayer of female innocence, the faithless husband or disloyal wife, as one more sinned against than sinning; and even the murderer, whose sayings and doings are faithfully chronicled, and whose solemn exit from the world is made the occasion of a grand dramatic scene, becomes in some degree a hero and a victim of revengeful law.
Of course it is easier to point out the evils which disgrace the editorial profession, and so materially impair the usefulness of the press, than to suggest an adequate remedy for them. It is useless to appeal to the conductors of newspapers; for as long as Catholics can be abused with impunity, and the moral sense of the community be shocked by vile and obscene descriptions of crime and criminals with profit to themselves, they will heed neither advice nor remonstrance. The cure rests with the public who purchase and support such journals. As far as Catholics are concerned, the true course would be to establish a daily paper of their own, which would reflect their sentiments and opinions, and furnish them with reliable foreign and domestic news collated in unobjectionable style; but this, it seems, is impossible at present. The embarrassed financial condition of the country is opposed to the initiation of such an enterprise. Our only present resource, as long as so many of us must read daily papers, is to concentrate our patronage on that journal which presents the least objectionable features, and, by encouraging it to do better things, prove to its contemporaries by the strongest of all arguments to them—their decreased circulation—that the Catholics of this city and vicinity will no longer pay to be abused and calumniated. But there are many among us who from habit take daily papers with which we can well dispense. We advise them to discontinue their misdirected patronage and bestow it on our struggling weekly Catholic journals. They will thus administer a wholesome lesson to bigotry and immorality, and at the same time give encouragement and life to Catholic serial literature.
There are, however, other and more cogent reasons why the reading of daily papers, now so prevalent, should be discouraged, or at least confined within reasonable limits. There can be little doubt that their constant and persistent perusal is apt to create a distaste for more profound and healthful reading. Drawing our opinions mainly from the hastily composed contributions of overworked correspondents and editors, we are pretty sure to fall into the habit of reaching conclusions and entertaining views of life neither logical nor well considered. Like those who feast overmuch on sweets, we conceive a dislike for solids and as the body suffers in the one case, the mind naturally is impaired by indulgence in the light and meretricious literature of which newspapers are, if not the worst, certainly the most widespread and exemplary, types.
Americans, to paraphrase a well-known expression, are a newspaper-ridden people. We must have some sort of paper at breakfast, dinner, and supper. We are not even satisfied with one each day, but require two or three more every twenty-four hours. The time that should be devoted to the study of good books, wherein can be found solid instruction and food for reflection, is thus too often wasted on the lucubrations and speculations of half-informed men who are as incapable of emitting sound ideas as they are of appreciating the immoral drift of much that daily falls from their own pens. Hence inordinate readers of newspapers necessarily become shallow-minded, superficial thinkers; their intellectual tastes are vitiated, and their judgment is weakened and perverted. Like a shattered mirror, their minds are incapable of reflecting one entire well-defined image, but present only fragments of thought in forms indefinite and distorted. The higher aspirations of our nature, those sublime conceptions which lift us above the grosser things of earth, and, even in this life, bring us nearer and nearer to our Creator, can never be generated by ephemeral newspaper literature. While we may feel compelled by business considerations or a natural political curiosity to glance over the columns of our daily journals, we should not forget that the intellect receives neither health nor strength from prolonged indulgence in such enervating pursuits. Newspapers undoubtedly have their use and mission; they have become an important factor in our present system of civilization, and are capable of accomplishing much good in their own sphere; but their effect and scope are limited, and should be circumscribed so that they be not permitted to interfere with the reading of solid history, the works of our best writers, and the essential duties of life, among which must be considered the pursuit of Christian knowledge and the elevation and purification of the immortal part of our being.
MY FRIEND MR. PRICE.
A STORY OF NEWPORT.
The summer was upon me, and with it the yearning for the dulcet plash of the salt sea wave.
“Whither?” became the vexed question of the hour, and Newport made reply to it.
To Newport I accordingly transported myself. I shall not say whether it was last season, or the season before, or even the season before that again. The readers of this narrative must determine the exact date. I refuse point-blank to do so.
Newport was in the height of the season when I entered my humble name, John V. Crosse, Lexington Avenue, New York, on the leaf of the register at the Ocean House.
It was a lovely evening in August, and the piazza of the hotel was crowded with high, mighty, and fashionable humanity. Dinner was a thing of the past, and the drive was looming in the near future. Ladies were chatting in parti-colored groups, men smoking in acrobatic postures. A delicious stillness prevailed—a warm, life-caressing glow. A wooing message from the sea, laden, as it sped upon its errand inland, with the perfume of a myriad glowing flowers, fanned the cheek. The sun shot bars of molten gold between the trellised branches of the slumbering trees, and the indolence of waking repose descended upon everything like a rosy cloud.
I went on the piazza, and, selecting an able-bodied wooden chair, flung myself into it, placing my feet on the iron railing in front of me, ere proceeding to light a cigar. When I had succeeded in emitting half a dozen puffs of my most excellent weed I looked right and left of me.
On my right sat a man of about thirty, or perhaps more, apparently tall, and slender to leanness. He was dark as a gipsy, with coal-black hair waving naturally but sparse upon the temples—he had removed his hat—which had a craggy look. His large eyes were deep-set, while his mouth wore an expression of superb self-complacency. He was clean-shaved, except for a fringe of long, silky black whisker far back upon the cheek, but both moustache and beard were clearly marked by the blue-black shade on his lip and jaw. The man was not ugly—just escaping ugliness by a very narrow margin. He was well dressed in a suit of light Scotch tweed that fitted him like “the paper on the wall,” whilst a certain je ne sais quoi bespoke the Englishman.
On my left lounged a handsome young fellow with clear blue eyes, a fair moustache, and one of the brightest smiles I have ever seen upon a human countenance. He twirled an unlighted cigar between his red lips, and as vehicle after vehicle dashed up to the “ladies’ entrance” fair dames and damosels gave him cheery and gracious salutation, cheerily and graciously responded to, accompanied by the flourish of a rakish little straw hat perched on the side of his superbly-set head.
With these two personages the narrative has much to do.
I sat smoking the one post-prandial cigar allowed me by my doctor, contemplating with indolent satisfaction the fragrant greenery in front of me, when my meditations apropos of nothing were brought up with a sudden jerk by the young fellow on my left asking to be permitted to light his cigar from mine.
Now, as a matter of fact, I have a very decided and deep-rooted objection to surrendering my cigar to anybody, rich or poor, gentle or simple; I like no one to handle it but myself; and therefore, instead of transferring the glowing weed to his expectant fingers, I dived into the breast-pocket of my coat, and producing a tin box containing wax matches, placed it, together with its contents, at his disposal.
“You are an Englishman,” he gaily exclaimed, extracting a vesta as he spoke.
“No, but very English on the subject of the handling of my baccy,” I laughed.
“You are not far astray. You should have seen the tramp that deprived me of a genuine Lopez this morning. I couldn’t refuse him, so I left him the weed.”
“I consider that the——”
“Per Bacco! there she goes,” he suddenly interposed, and, flinging my match-box into my lap, he vaulted over the railing into the carriage-drive beneath.
Two ladies seated in a pony-phaeton flashed past.
“I’m English,” exclaimed my right-hand man, tapping the ash from his cigar with a finger white and delicate as wax, “and I’m glad to find that one American sees the abomination of handing every cad his cigar who chooses to ask for it.”
Being very Starry and Stripey, I was about to defend the practice in vogue amongst my countrymen, although thoroughly against my convictions, when he asked:
“Do you know who that fellow is?”
“What fellow?”
“That long-eared, long-legged jackass who took that railing as if he was at school.”
“I never saw him before.”
“You’ll see him again. I lay seven to two. And I’ll take the odds that he tells you that he’s Grey Seymour, whatever that may be; that he’s over his long ears in love with a Miss Hattie Finche, whom he followed here from Martha’s Vineyard; and that she has five hundred thousand dollars.”
“I suppose that one of the ladies in the pony-carriage was Miss Hattie Finche?”
“The whip—yaas.”
“I wonder can she be a daughter of Wilson Finche, of New York?”
“The tallow-man, Beaver Street and Fifth Avenue?”
“Ay, and Chicago and ’Frisco,” I added.
“That’s the identical geranium.”
“And is Wilson Finche in Newport?”
“He has taken a cottage on the Ocean Drive for the season.”
“I must look him up.”
“Are you acquainted with him?” the languor of manner disappearing, and a vivid interest rushing to the front.
“Very well indeed.”
“And with his daughter?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Stop a minute!” fumbling in his breast coat-pocket. “You’ll introduce me.”
The coolness of this proposition actually staggered me. Introduce a man of whose name even I was in total ignorance!
“I could not venture to do such a thing,” I responded somewhat gruffly. I did not relish the idea of being treated in this off-hand way—of being openly and deliberately made a cat’s-paw.
“Oh! yes, you will. Here’s my card. Let’s have one of yours,” thrusting his pasteboard almost into my reluctant hand.
With very considerable deliberation I searched for my double eye-glass hidden away somewhere in the depths of my capacious waistcoat—I was fat, and fair, and fifty-five at that date—and, carefully wiping it with a scarlet silk handkerchief, adjusted it to my eyes and read:
Mr. Herbert Price,
Temple, London, E. C.
“Let’s have your card,” said Mr. Price, as though I were a tradesman with whom it pleased his high mightiness to have dealings.
“I am not in the habit of”—
“There, now, you’re going to put me aside. Where’s the use? Why wouldn’t you help a poor hungry, briefless English barrister to this piece of gilded gingerbread? You’re not going for her yourself?”
Oho! I inwardly chuckled.
“Not much. I have seen too many of my peers wrecked upon the rock-bound coast of matrimony to permit my argosy within those shallow and treacherous waters.”
“I guessed you were a bachelor,” observed Price facetiously.
“And might I ask, sir, how you were led to imagine this?” I felt curious to hear what the fellow would say.
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Smith.”
“I am not Mr. Smith.”
“Well, Mr. Jones.”
“I am not Jones.”
“Robinson.”
“Your pertinacity, sir, ought to make your fortune at the Old Bailey.”
“Well said, Thompson. Now, you wish me to tell you how I guessed you were a bachelor. Firstly,” putting up his finger and tapping it with his cigar, “your general complacency; secondly, your linen—no married man ever commands the linen of a bachelor; thirdly, your gaiters—such fit, such polish!—fourthly, your isolation; and, fifthly, the methodical way in which you do everything, from lighting a cigar to playing a fantasia on your handkerchief with your nasal organ.”
“I am not aware that I am more methodical than other men of my age and habits.”
“Are’n’t you? Then just watch yourself.”
“You are a very peculiar specimen of your country, Mr. Price.”
“I can return you the compliment; and as one good turn deserves another, you’ll introduce me to Miss Finche.”
“You must excuse me, Mr. Price.”
“But I won’t.”
“I beg to differ from you.”
“We shall see.”
“We shall.”
Mr. Price rose and quitted the piazza, returning after a brief absence.
“Now, Mr. John V. Crosse, of Lexington Avenue, New York, as you say in this queer country, I have posted myself. You are confoundedly rich, living on your dollars, and are not a half-bad sort of elderly gentleman.”
“May I ask to whom I am indebted for this portrait, sir?”
Somehow or other I couldn’t get up a feeling of anger. I tried, but it wouldn’t come.
“The clerk inside. I know you now, and you know me. I am the son of Sir Harvey Price, of Holten Moat, Sevenoaks, in Kent. The Moat is about one of the last of the Tudor residences in England. We have been in that one corner since the battle of Hastings, and the Moat has never run dry since Queen Bess visited us, when the waters were turned off and red wine turned on. I am the sixth son, and poor as a sixth son ought to be. I was sent to the bar because I had an uncle on the bench. My uncle died while I was keeping my terms. I am an honor-man of Oxford, and last year my brief-book showed one hundred and fifty pounds. About ten weeks ago my godmother died; she left me five hundred pounds. I paid my tailor just enough to maintain a doubtful confidence in me, my boot-maker ditto. Like an able general, who always prepares beforehand for a retreat—although Wellington, our best man, failed to do this at Waterloo, having the forest of Soignies at his back—I have paid for the rent of my chambers in advance. I have come here just to ascertain for myself if red Indians are to be met with on Broadway, and buffalos to be potted on Fifth Avenue. This is the story, and here is the man. Will you introduce me to Miss Finche now?”
I must confess that the story, brief though it was, and told in a short, sharp, jerky way, somewhat interested me. I had no reason to doubt it, and yet I was too old in the devious paths of the world to accept either the narrative or the man at sight. Surely, if he were so well connected, he should be able to obtain letters of introduction to some persons in society, and then it would be plain sailing enough for him.
“You won’t take me on trust?” he exclaimed after I had said as much to him.
“I have arrived at that time of life, Mr. Price, when I take nothing on trust. I must know my butcher, my baker, my wine merchant, my boot-maker, et hoc genus omne.”
“Never mind,” he gaily cried. “You’ll be sorry by and by, when you see me engaged to Miss Finche.”
“You seem to have a tolerably strong belief in your powers of—”
“Audacity. You are right. Toujours de l’audace. I am a man of a single idea; the idea at present on my groove of thought is the gold Finche. The lion in my path is Grey Seymour. If he were poor I wouldn’t have a chance; but he has millions, and money doesn’t fall in love with money. Your heiress always spoons on a pauper, while your aurati juvenes go in for penniless governesses. Ne c’est pas, mon vieux? Give us a match. I’ll go and take a swim; and you go and call on Wilson Finche. His direction is—stay; I’ll write it down for you. There!” he exclaimed, handing me a card: “‘Wilson Finche, Esquire, Sea View Cottage, The Cliff.’ You’ll find him at home now, Crosse, and in that beatific condition which is the outcome of a Château Lafitte of the ’54 vintage. Adios!”
Obeying the mandate of this very peculiar young man, I strolled down to The Cliff.
The wide sea heaved and plashed beneath me with a dull, dulcet murmur. Away out on its unruffled bosom lay great patches of purple, denoting the passage of some fleecy cloud onwards, ever onwards. White sails dotted the deep green sea like daisies on a dappled field. The shingle caressed by the wooing wavelets was red and brown, while the wave-kissed pebbles flashed in the sunlight. Boats like specks were drawn up on the beach, and sailors were busy with sails and cordage and the impedimenta of their craft.
Finche’s marine residence stood boldly prominent, all corners and gables like an old cocked hat. It was new and pert-looking, and wore the air of a coquette in a brand-new toilette from Worth’s. A ribbon border of glowing scarlet geraniums led from the lich-gate to the Queen Anne porch, whereon sat, or lay, or reclined—it was all three—my old friend, his body in one of those chairs which invalid passengers on ocean steamers much affect, to the envy of all who do not possess the luxury, his feet on a camp-stool, beside him a small marble-topped table, whereon stood a bottle of claret, a crystal glass of wafer-like thinness, and a box of cigars. Price had spoken wisely.
After the usual exclamations of greeting had dried up I complimented Finche on the beauty of the location.
“Yes, sir; it costs money, but what’s money if you don’t get value for it? Thompson—you know Thompson, of Brand & Thompson—that man, sir, has four millions, sir, and what value does he take out of it, sir? A back-room in Thirteenth Street; a breakfast at a foul-smelling restaurant, sir; a five-minute dinner at Cable’s; an unhealthy supper at another restaurant, and half a dozen of newspapers. That’s what he has for his four millions.”
“You are wiser in your generation, Finche.”
“I am wise in this way, sir”—Finche is very sententious, and his shirt-collar is always troubling him—“I must have value for my money. One hundred cents for my dollar is good enough for me. If, sir, I can get one hundred and fifty, so much the better; but, sir, I never take ninety, or ninety-five, sir, or ninety-and-nine, sir. Help yourself to that claret—it’s a Nat Johnson, sir; I paid twenty-five dollars a case for it in the year ’70. It’s value for the money, sir, I tell you.”
“You are here with your Lares and Penates,” I observed, after some further remarks upon the value of the surroundings.
“What do you mean, sir?” Finche is as ignorant as a chimpanzee.
“Your household gods.”
“Yes, sir. I am here with my daughter and my wife. My daughter gets value, sir, in the hops at the Ocean House, and the nice society she meets with—real bang-up swells, sir. My wife gets value out of the salt water, sir—health, sir, which improves her body and her temper, sir. She is a quick-tempered woman is Mrs. Finche, and when she’s ill, sir, she’s ugly.”
At this moment the pony phaeton which I had observed from the piazza of the hotel dashed up to the lich-gate.
“My daughter and her friend, Miss Neville, an English girl, sir, of a very high family, poor as cheap claret, sir, but proud as a coupon, sir. She’s on a visit to us, but we get value out of her. She sings lovely, sir; you shall hear her. It entertains our swell friends, and thus we strike a balance. The tall one is my daughter, sir.”
I saw a slim but well-proportioned figure, clad in a rich black silk dress, the cut of which, even to my masculine eyes, betrayed the hand of an artist; a face, though not beautiful by any means, earnest and interesting, surmounted by a profusion of little fair curls, arranged, as was the fashion, so as to conceal the forehead; a picturesque hat, a pair of diamond solitaire earrings, and upon the whole a person decidedly “fetching.” Her companion was petite, and constructed, as they say of saucy steamers, upon the most perfect lines. She was a clear brunette, and as she swept somewhat haughtily past the glowing ribbon borders I bethought me of Cleopatra, and the passage down the Cydnus of that boat which wrecked the fortunes of the luckless Antony.
Of course I gazed at the possessor of five hundred thousand dollars, as the “penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree” counted for nothing.
“Hattie, this is my old friend, Mr. Crosse, of Noo York, who has come to Newport to take some value out of the summer-time.”
Miss Finche was very gracious, presenting me with a hand encased in a glove of many buttons, and flashing a row of magnificent teeth between each smile.
“Are you a ‘cottager,’ Mr. Crosse?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Are you at the Ocean or the Acquednuk?”
“The Ocean.”
“The other is quieter.”
“There is better value at the Ocean, Hattie,” observed her father.
“One sees everybody worth seeing there. Isn’t the piazza charming, Mr. Crosse?”
“Of its kind, yes; but I would prefer a little of this,” sweeping the horizon with my hand.
“It is very beautiful,” said a sweet, low voice by my side, a voice that “chimed” into my ear—I can use no other word. It was Miss Neville who spoke.
“There is great value to be got out of that view at sunset, sir—yellows and reds, sir, that would set up a painter, if he could only fetch up to the right color and give good value to the buyer.”
Miss Neville imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders, while I winced at this commercial view of marine painting. I wondered what Mr. Hook, R.A., or my rising young friend Mr. Quartly would have said to the man of tallow.
“Hattie, another bottle of this wine, although it’s a pity to drink it on a hot day; one doesn’t get the value out of it. Get into the house, girls; I want to have a talk with my friend Crosse here. What is Bullandust going to do in Lake Shores?” addressing me.
I protested.
“Finche,” I said, “I’ve come down here for sea, and sky, and trees, and dolce far niente.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Well, loafing,” I laughed.
“There an’t no value to be got out of that.”
“Isn’t there, though? And I mean to drop Wall Street, and scrip, and shares, and every sort of business. I won’t even look at a newspaper till I choose to go back.”
“You an’t in earnest?” said my host, gazing at me in solemn astonishment.
“A fact, upon my honor.”
“Well, that—say, there’s some one saluting. It’s not me—I don’t know the man. It must be a friend of yours, sir.”
I adjusted my double glass and gazed towards the lich-gate.
A slight sense of shock vibrated through my system. Leaning upon the gate, and nodding at me like a Chinese mandarin, was Mr. Herbert Price, Temple, London, E. C.
“You seem to be having a good time there, my friend,” he gaily cried.
What could I say? What could I do?
“It’s awfully hot for walking.”
“Won’t you step in, sir?” said Finche.
I could not say, Don’t ask this man. Of course a gossip and a glass of wine, and a mere formal introduction to Finche, meant nothing.
“His name’s Price,” I hurriedly whispered—“stopping at Ocean House—London barrister—don’t know him.” Whether these last three words were lost upon Finche or not it is impossible to determine, inasmuch as he took no notice of them whatever.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Price. Any friend of my friend Mr. Crosse is welcome here, sir. Get a chair. Take that other one, sir, with the back to it; you’ll get more value out of it. That’s my principle—take value out of everything. A glass of wine, sir? It’s a Château Lafitte that cost me twenty-five dollars a case in ’70, sir. Touch that gong, sir!”
A servant appeared in obedience to the tocsin.
“Ask Miss Finche to send me another bottle of this wine, then take the empty bottle. Put it carefully by, Mary, as all the bottles have to go back after I have taken the value out of them, which I guess I do,” with a chuckle.
“Did you walk down, Mr. Crosse?” asked Price.
“Yes.” I was on the borderland of indignation. I felt foolish—checkmated.
“You had no difficulty in finding the place.”
“I can always find my friend’s house, Mr. Price.”
“You were dull enough about it on the piazza when we were speaking about Mr. Finche. What a glorious spot you have here! It reminds me of Devonshire. Ah! you American millionaires know how to live.”
“We try to get value out of the world.”
“And you succeed. Your good health, Mr. Finche. Ah!” smacking his lips, “that is wine. What a superb thing to sit beneath one’s vine or fig-tree, drink such nectar as this, and to be able to—pay for it!” with a light laugh.
“You are from London, sir, my friend Crosse tells me.”
I could have flung the contents of my glass into Finche’s face. Price would perhaps think I had been singing his praises.
“Yes, I hail from that little village on the Thames.”
“A lawyer?”
“One of the briefless. I did not choose the profession, I assure you. Like my first frock, it was chosen for me, and I was thrust into it bon gré mal gré. I’ll tell you who I am and what I am. I have told my friend Crosse already.” And he summed up the case, much in the same words as he had addressed to me.
Finche was impressed by the mention of the title, and deeply interested in a detailed description of the Moat.
“I am happy to meet you, sir, and should be glad to visit Sir Harvey Price at Holten Moat when I go to England next year, sir. Do you purpose taking much value out of this country, sir?”
Price actually winked at me, and that wink spoke the following words:
“I mean to take five hundred thousand dollars if I can.”
A bell sounded.
“Supper, gentlemen!” said Finche. “Let us get in. No ceremony here, Mr. Price. We have no Moats for three hundred years in our family, although we see them every day in our neighbor’s eye—ha! ha!”
It would never do to have this pickpocket, for aught I knew to the contrary, enter beneath my friend’s roof under the very peculiar circumstances of the case. Had he been an ordinary travelling acquaintance it would not have much mattered, but a penniless adventurer bent upon matrimonial designs—never!
“Mr. Price and I are going back to the Ocean House,” I said in my sternest tone, and in a manner so marked as to bear but the one interpretation.
“What do I hear, Mr. Crosse?” exclaimed Miss Finche, emerging from the interior, arrayed in a bewitching toilette of fleecy white and delicate lilac.
“My dear, this is—”
“I beg your pardon, Finche, but could I—” I burst in.
“This is Mr. Price, of London, a friend of—”
“Finche, I may as well”— But the pompous old ass would have his bray, and Price was conversing with Hattie Finche ere I could utter the words of explanation that were ready to spring from my lips.
“Gentlemen, you would like to wash your hands. Just step up to my sanctum. Tompkins” (to a servant), “show these gentlemen to my sanctum.”
When the door had closed upon us, “Mr. Price,” I said, “do you call this fair?”
“Everything is fair in love.”
“Bosh, sir! You find in me a man unwilling to wound the feelings of another. I have gained nothing by acting the part of a gentleman.”
“I deny that!” his coat off, his head deep in the marble basin. “You’ve made me your friend for life.”
“And who might you be?”
“I’ve told you. See, now,” his hands dripping, “here,” plunging one of them into the breast-pocket of his coat, which was lying on a bed—“here’s a ten-pound note; spend every shilling of it in cablegrams. You have my own, you have my father’s address. Wire him, wire anybody you like, you’ll have your reply to-morrow. My story will be corroborated in every particular. That ought to satisfy you.”
I shook my head.
“Time with me is money. This fellow, Grey Seymour, is to meet her to-morrow at a garden-party at Mrs. Dyke Howell’s. His millions will come into play, and such heavy artillery will sweep my rusty flint-locks into ash-barrels. A duel with artillery is all very well, but when the batteries are all on one side one side wins. My chances depend on what running I can make to-night. I can talk to women as few men can. It is my faculty. I know where to reach them, and how. It is nascitur non fit with me. I don’t go on Doctor Johnson’s idea of making an idiot of a girl’s understanding by flattery. That is false in theory, false in practice. Now, you are not half bad. Stand by me,” placing his hand on my shoulder, “and, by George! I’ll do something for you yet.”
He was thoroughly in earnest, and hang me if I could refuse him. I suppose it was my bounden duty to have done so. Common sense and common prudence nudged me ere I took his proffered hand, but, heedless of the whisperings of still, small voices, I permitted myself to go with the tide. It was treating my friend Finche badly; it was placing myself in a false, if not a worse, position; and yet—I could not utter that absurdly small word “no.”
The morrow would tell its own tale, for I had resolved upon telegraphing without the assistance of Mr. Price’s ten-pound note, and a few hours could do no possible harm. If Miss Finche were to lose her heart in the space of an evening, she would prove a very noteworthy exception to the great sisterhood to which she belonged.
The addition to her dinner table did not seem to please Mrs. Finche, an emaciated, waspish, red-nosed lady, whose thin lips had an unpleasant twitch in them, and whose bright, beady black eyes darted angrily hither and thither like a pair of beetles in search of prey.
I sat next to her; opposite to me Miss Neville; Finche was at the foot of the table; on his right my friend Price, on his left the heiress.
“What brings you to this fashionable place, Mr. Crosse?” asked mine hostess, the inference being “plain to the naked eye.”
“Well, I thought I’d like to take a peep at the gay goings-on.”
“Ah!” an icy chill in the monosyllable.
Mrs. Finche being very silent, and, if not silent, snappish, I directed my conversation to Miss Neville, whom I found to be absolutely charming. I had travelled a good deal, and, from the loneliness of my life, read about as much as ordinary men, and I discovered, to my most intense pleasure, that there was at least one young girl in the nineteenth century the possessor of ideas above the level of sweet things in sheathe-like costumes, or the latest methods for beautifying the human face divine.
Miss Neville was thoroughbred, and all unconsciously showed her lustrous lineage in every movement, every gesture, every word. Blood will tell, and it spoke its own emblazoned story in the winsome elegance of this “rare bit o’ womankind.”
Mr. Price laughed and talked, and narrated piquant anecdotes, and kept Miss Finche well in hand, causing the host “all the time” to indulge in a vast, expansive smile. Finche was getting the value of his mutton and his claret out of his friend’s friend. He was satisfied. After dinner the young ladies returned to the Queen Anne porch, while the waspish hostess proceeded to take forty wide-awake winks. We mankind talked generally, and, although pressed to remain at our wine, Price and I were glad to get from beyond the range of our host’s perpetual “values.”
As we were seated upon the wooden steps at the feet of the fair ones, gazing out across the wide, wide ocean, gilded with the expiring rays of the setting sun, and canopied by a sky of pale blue merging into delicate green, and again into white, the lich-gate swung back and Grey Seymour swung in.
“What a glorious evening! Are you for a walk on the cliff?” asked the new-comer, eyeing Price and myself as he spoke. “How do?” he added, addressing me.
“Mr. Seymour, Mr. Price,” said Miss Finche, while the two men nodded stiffly.
“A walk on the cliff, by all means; don’t you think so, Maude?” asked Miss Finche, addressing Miss Neville.
“Comme vous voulez.”
“Let’s go as we are.”
We sallied forth.
“What a nuisance, this fellow’s turning up!” whispered Price angrily. “I shall have to fall back.”
Seymour and Miss Finche led the way. I did the elderly and protecting party.
“I place them in your charge,” were the parting words of mine host. “The youngsters will take value out of one another; you take value out of the whole lot.”
I dropped behind, and proceeded to enjoy the glories of the night in my own way. Soon came that entrancing blue light which steals in between day and dark, and the stars began to throb in the great canopy, and that “hush” which Night sends as her envoy to earth was passing over hill and hollow, and land and sea.
I sat down in a little nook on the cliff—a corner that seemed almost clean out of the world, and as if the earth had suddenly ended there. I thought over many things, and in the bizarre reflections consequent upon the adventures of the day came a dreamy sensation of admiration for the fair young girl whom destiny had thrown beneath the roof-tree of my friend Wilson Finche. I felt strangely interested in her already. Why, I did not ask myself. She was a blaze of intelligence, a mine of intellectual wealth. I do not mean for one second to say that she was a genius, but there was a tone of high culture about her that shed itself like a fragrant perfume.
Miss Finche appeared to me to be a very nice, ladylike, ordinary class of girl—one of those patent-mannered, warranted-to-go-well sort of young ladies who rove at their sweet wild will in the garden of society; but beside Miss Neville she was absolutely colorless.
I sat thinking over the strange freaks of fortune, that give thousands of dollars to some girls, leaving others without a dime, when the sound of approaching voices scattered my reverie to the night breeze that gently fanned my pepper and salt—too much salt—whiskers. I was in a hollow beneath the cliff. The speakers were Grey Seymour and Hattie Finche.
Miss Finche’s tone was cold and resolute.
“I do not love you, Mr. Seymour. I never could. I will not hold out a particle of hope.”
“Don’t say that, Hattie—anything but that. Hope is all I have to live for,” he cried in a quivering, agonized way that made me sad to hear.
“I tell you fairly I can give you no hope.”
“Try and love me. I can make life a dream to you. Your every wish shall be gratified. My whole time shall be spent in anticipating your lightest fancy. O Hattie! do not drive me to despair, desperation.”
She was silent. They had stopped right opposite to where I sat concealed. I frankly confess I was too much interested to think of making my proximity known. It was a mean thing to remain where I was. I reproach myself while I write.
“I do not care for your money,” he raved on. “I have millions, ay, millions at my command, and those millions shall be spent to make your life an idyl.”
“Did I not tell you that I could not care for you last season? Did I not repeat it at Martha’s Vineyard two weeks ago? Now I repeat it again and for the last time. Let us be friends.”
“Friends!” he bitterly cried.
“Yes, friends, and good friends. Why not? In a short time you will wonder you ever were in love with me, and—”
“Never!” he burst in.
“Oh! yes, you will. And, what is more, you will fall in love with somebody else.”
“Do you wish to drive me mad?”
“On the contrary, I wish to bring you to your senses. Listen to me calmly.”
“I cannot.”
“But you must. This passion of yours is a boyish love.”
“It is my life.”
“Nothing of the kind. I don’t want your love. I could not return it.”
“But you won’t try.”
“I will not indeed. I am selfish enough to care for my own happiness, and my happiness—that is, the matrimonial part of it—does not lie with you. You are very fond of me?”
“I—”
“Now, don’t rhapsodize. You would do a good deal to make me happy?”
“Anything.”
“Would you be willing to make a sacrifice for me, if I earnestly asked you?”
“Try me, Hattie!”
“Well, then, I’ll put you to the test.”
“Do,” firmly, resolutely.
“You know Maude Neville. She is young, beautiful, penniless. She hasn’t a friend in the world. Be her friend.”
“What am I to do?”
“Marry her.”
There was a sound as though he had sprung backwards.
“This is insolence, Hattie,” he exclaimed hotly.
“Don’t be silly,” coolly observed Miss Finche, and I heard no more, for they had moved onwards.
This was a strange experience—a woman refusing a man, and then asking him to make love to another. I had read much of the doings of the sex, but this situation beat anything I had ever seen on the stage. Miss Finche’s evident self-possession, not a ripple in her voice, told how truly she spoke when she told the luckless love-sick youth she did not care for him, while the coolness, not to say the audacity, of the proposition almost staggered me. And Miss Neville—was not she to be consulted in the business? I was very much mistaken in my estimate of that young lady if she would haul down her colors at the bidding of any captain afloat, if she had not a mind so to do herself.
When I arrived, all alone, at the cottage, it was to find Miss Finche flirting heavily with Mr. Herbert Price, Miss Neville playing a brilliant fantasia of Chopin’s upon the piano, and, mirabile dictu, Mr. Grey Seymour, his face, his neck, his ears in a rosy glow, leaning over her and turning the leaves of the music. Could he have—pshaw! impossible.
“You know Mrs. Dyke Howell?” was Mr. Price’s observation, as we turned out of Sea View Cottage on our way to the Ocean House.
“Very slightly.”
“But you do know her?”
“Well—yes.”
“You’ll get me a card for her garden party to-morrow?”
“Well, considering that I haven’t got one for myself, I—”
“That’s nothing to the point. A man can ask a favor for a friend he wouldn’t ask for himself, you know.”
“But you are not my friend.”
“I mean to be, though. Friendship must begin somewhere, and ours flourishes like Jack’s bean-stalk.”
“’Pon my word, I—”
“There, now, you’ll write for the card to-night: ‘Mr. John V. Crosse presents his compliments to Mrs. Dyke Howell, and would feel much obliged for an invitation for an English friend’—it looks well to have an English friend—‘for her garden party to-morrow,’ or words to that effect. We’ll send it off to-night, and you see, old man, it will get you an invitation as well.”
“You are the coolest hand I ever even read of.”
“Must be. My godmother’s legacy, like Bob Acre’s courage, is oozing out at my fingers’ ends, and I’ve nothing but my return ticket and my audacity to look to. Come, now, Crosse, don’t do things by halves. You’ve introduced me to a very nice family. Can’t say I admire my mother-in-law. What son-in-law does, though? The old boy is no end of a bore, but Hattie is all there.”
“I did not introduce you, Mr. Price; you introduced yourself.”
“Never could have done it but for you; ergo, logically, you introduced me.”
To my shame be it said, I wrote a note from the Ocean House to Mrs. Dyke Howell, a haughty lady of cadaverous aspect, and a nose resembling that of the late Duke of Wellington, who believed in that small monarchy called Knickerbockerdom, and in everything high, and mighty, and fashionable.
The cards came without note or comment, and my friend Price and I started for Hawthorndale. He wore a frock-coat that, even irritated as I was, evoked admiring comment, and a tall hat so shiny that I felt I could have shaved by it.
Before starting I telegraphed to Sir Harvey Price, Bart., Holten Moat, Sevenoaks, Kent, England, in the following words:
“Is your son Herbert in America? Is he a barrister? Describe him. Of the utmost importance. Telegraph instantly to
“J. V. Crosse, Ocean House,
Newport, R. I., U. S. A.”
I chuckled as I handed over my greenbacks.
“He doesn’t think I’ve taken him at his word. A few hours will unriddle him,” were my thoughts as we emerged from the hotel. I had seen Grey Seymour that morning en route to bathe. There were black shadows beneath his eyes, and the great brightness which I had so much admired the day before had faded out of his face. What was the issue of that most remarkable conversation?
He was the first person I encountered after passing through the icy fingers of Mrs. Dyke Howell, and much of the old look had returned.
“Have you seen the Finches?” he asked.
“No.”
“By the way, who is your friend Mr. Price?”
“He’s no particular friend of mine—merely a travelling acquaintance. He’s a member of the English bar, and very clever.” This latter assertion I believed in my heart.
“Is he rich?”
“Oh! dear, no.”
“Unmarried?”
“Yes. That is, I believe so.”
“I see him here to-day. I suppose Mrs. Howell knows him.”
I was considerably relieved when young Roadwell, of the Coaching Club, cut in with a query as to a pair of roans which Seymour was about to put under the hammer, and left the pair diving “full fathom five” into the mysteries of horse-flesh.
The Finches arrived later on in full force—Mrs. Finche in yellow and green and red like a mayonnaise of lobster; Hattie in floating white; Maude Neville in black and orange. My friend Price clung to Miss Finche’s side like her breloquet, while Grey Seymour seemed to devote himself to the brunette.
“Ma foi,” thought I, “can the convocation of last night have so soon borne fruit? It would not be difficult to fall in love with Miss Neville, but the falling out of it first is the trouble.”
I did not see Price until eleven o’clock that night. He had gone home with the Finches—I was left out in the cold—and returned to the hotel in splendid spirits.
“Anybody there?” I asked with assumed carelessness.
“Nobody but Seymour.”
“Ah! Spooning over Miss Finche?”
“Not a bit of it; it’s over the other one. He was with her all day to-day, and by Jove! sir, to-night they were on the balcony doing moonlight like anything.”
“Where is he? Did you leave him behind you?”
“No; we left together, but he didn’t seem to want me, and—”
“And did you see that?” I sneered.
“Why, of course I did. I wasn’t going to do The Cliffs at this hour. I prefer my cigar on the piazza here.”
I did not see either of my gentlemen the following day, save in a casual way. Seymour appeared to be picking up his good looks, and as the table to which I was relegated was within range of his quartier, I could perceive, from the flotilla of plates and dishes around him at breakfast, that his rejection by Hattie Finche had in nowise impaired his appetite.
I was in love once, twenty-five years ago, and I lived on it. A sweet cake and a glass of champagne twice a day kept me in the flesh. I wouldn’t undertake to try that “little game” again. Judging from my own symptoms at that critical period of my existence, I fairly argued that Grey Seymour had either over-lived his passion for the heiress, that he was off with the old love and on to the new, or that his mistress and he had come to an understanding after they had passed beyond my coigne of vantage. I must own I was “sairly and fairly” puzzled. The reply to my cablegram was anxiously awaited. Properly speaking, it was due upon the evening of the day on which I set the wires in motion. Allowing for the difference in time between Newport and London, say six hours and a half, and having despatched it at 9 A.M., I might fairly have reckoned on a reply that night. The Moat, however, was some little distance from Sevenoaks, so I shouldn’t be utterly disappointed were forty-eight hours to elapse ere tidings would reach me. As it was, however, the appearance of every despatch boy sent a thrill of expectation through me, and a pang of corresponding disappointment when I sought the message on the rack under the letter C.
It was upon the second morning that Price came down to breakfast arrayed in nautical costume, deep, dark, desperate blue flannel, with a superb Maréchal Niel rosebud in his button-hole, and a genuine air of festivity in his whole appearance.
“What mischief are you up to to-day?” I asked.
“A sail with my friends the Finches.”
“My friends, if you please, Mr. Price.”
“To be sure; I quite forgot. Doosid nice people. I say, I am making the running, and I mean to win, as we say in the race-course, ‘hands down.’”
“Ahem! It doesn’t follow that if you win the daughter you’ll get over the father,” I observed with a knowing air.
“Oh! I’m not going to trouble myself about him. You’ll square him for me.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Price?” almost aghast at this cool impudence.
“I mean that old fogies understand one another. You’ll rub it into him that I am a man of considerable genius; of keen perception, calm deliberation; in the habit of hand-balancing conflicting propositions, a brilliant orator, and that I have tact, which is better than talent, and audacity, which is better than either or both.”
“If I were to speak about you at all to my friend Mr. Finche, I should certainly pay a glowing tribute to this last quality,” sneeringly.
“That’s a good fellow. You’re a brick of the most adhesive quality. You go for Finche when I give you the word. I mean to pop for Hattie the first good chance.”
“Well, really, I—”
“I know what you’re going to say: ‘Man is man and master of his fate.’ Shakspere says ‘sometimes.’ I mean to play the waiting race. The man who can afford it gets three to one in his favor. I can only be beaten by a dash-horse now. Here comes the man whom I imagined was the favorite, and he is not entered for the race at all.”
Grey Seymour joined us, also arrayed in dark blue, a red rose in his button-hole.
“These are our favors,” laughed Price: “Miss Finche yellow, Miss Neville red.
“‘Oh! my love is like a red, red rose that sweetly blows in June!’”
And gaily humming that song which Sims Reeves has made all his own, he lounged out of the immense salle à manger, casting criticising glances en passant.
I am fond of the sea. I never was sick in my life, and once upon a time thought of running a saucy schooner. Would I, like Paul Pry, drop into this party with an “I hope I don’t intrude”?
The hour was rapidly approaching when I must take action with reference to my friend Mr. Price. He had entered Finche’s house under my ægis, and I was bound in honor to protect Finche and Finche’s child. Yes, I would join the yachting excursion bon gré mal gré, and in a few straight words tell Wilson Finche exactly how the land lay.
I donned a blue flannel suit—no man goes to Newport without one—and taking an old-fashioned telescope under my arm, went upon the piazza to await the appearance of Grey Seymour, who was still occupied in going through the entire menu for his matitudinal meal.
“A telegram for you, sir,” said the clerk, as I passed the desk.
“At last,” I muttered, as I tore it open.
It was from Lady Price, and dated Holten Moat:
“My son is in America. Barrister. Tall, thin, dark. Black mole under left ear. Scar on right wrist. Telegraph if in trouble.”
At that particular moment Mr. Price appeared on the corridor, engaged in chewing a tooth-pick.
I went to him, and, without a single word, seized his right hand, baring his wrist. The scar was there. I then wheeled him round, and took a rapid and searching look behind his left ear.
“Ah!” he laughed, “looking for the macula materna? So you’ve been telegraphing home, you incredulous old codger,” scanning the open telegram.
“Read it,” I said. I should mention that the black mole was in its place.
“Why, you’ll frighten the old lady into fits. Write her at once, Crosse, and tell her I’m as safe as the milk in a cocoanut. Don’t spare your dollars, old man!”
When I left Newport the Finches were still at Sea View Cottage, and my friend Mr. Price on a visit in the house. About six months later I received cards to attend at the nuptials of Miss Hattie Julia Maria Anne Finche to Herbert Price. An attack of the gout prevented my putting in an appearance, but I sent both bride and groom a little present. To the daughter of my old friend I gave a pearl necklace; to his son-in-law a diamond ring, with the words inscribed in raised letters, “De l’audace. Toujours de l’audace.”
I may mention that Grey Seymour and his charming bride honored me with a visit some time, later on, en route to Europe.