Lady Betty Across the Water

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

There are a good many young men on board, and some of them seemed to be quite devoted to Mrs. Ess Kay the first day out; but she was cold to them all, I couldn't think why, as some of them seemed very nice, and she had always appeared rather to like being with men. I asked Sally about it, but she laughed, and said I might perhaps solve the mystery for myself when we were at Newport, if I remembered it then.

I never heard of such breakfasts and luncheons as they have on this ship, and the first menu I saw surprised me so much, that I couldn't believe they really had and could produce all those things if anybody was inconsiderate enough to ask for them. I hardly supposed there were so many things to eat in the world. But the captain heard me exclaiming to Sally, so he smiled, and told me to test the menu by ordering a bit of everything on it; he'd guarantee that nothing would be missed out. This was at breakfast the second day; and when he saw that I ate several dear little round things, shaped like cream-coloured doyleys, which are called pancakes (though they aren't a bit like ours) with some perfectly divine stuff named maple syrup, he said my taking such a fancy to American products was a sign that I should marry an American. What nonsense! As if I would dream of marrying, especially a foreigner. But for all that, pancakes and maple syrup are delicious. I've had them every day since for breakfast, after finishing a great orange four times the natural size, which isn't really an orange, because it's a grape fruit. You have it on your plate cut in two halves, with ice in each, and you scoop the inside out of a lot of tiny pockets, with a teaspoon. You think when you first see it, that you can't eat more than half; but instead, you eat every bit, and sometimes if the morning is hot, you even wish you could have more; though of course you wouldn't be so greedy as to ask.

It was on the second day out, too, that all my troubles began—and in a queer way which nobody could have guessed would lead to anything disagreeable.

In the afternoon I was reading in my deck-chair, drawn close to Mrs. Ess Kay's side, when that Mrs. Van der Windt whom Sally called a silly old thing, toddled up and spoke to us. "Do come and watch them dancing in the steerage," she said. "It's such fun."

Mrs. Ess Kay likes sitting still on shipboard better than anything else, but it seems that Mrs. Van der Windt is so important that if all the Four Hundred Sally told me about were pruned away, except about twenty-five, she would be among the number left; so probably that is the reason why Mrs. Ess Kay takes long walks up and down the deck with her, though it makes her giddy to walk, and Mrs. Van der Windt is not in the least entertaining.

She got up now, like a lamb about to be led to the slaughter, except that she smiled bravely, which the lamb would not be able to bring itself to do. "Come, Betty," she said to me, "it will amuse you."

"Yes, do come, Lady Betty," repeated Mrs. Van der Windt; whereupon I obeyed, little knowing what I was laying up for myself.

Our deck is amidships. Aft, on a level with ours, is the second-class deck; and for'rard, down below, like looking into a pit, is the steerage. We walked to the rail, over which quite a number of men were leaning, to see what was going on, and several moved aside to give us room. I didn't like to take their places away, especially as they were laughing and enjoying themselves, and I could hear the sound of dance music coming up from below (such odd-sounding music!), but Mrs. Ess Kay murmured to me that I mustn't refuse. "American men are never so happy," she said, "as when they're giving up something for a woman. They're used to it."

And evidently she, as an American woman, was used to taking it. She and Mrs. Van der Windt slipped into the vacant spaces with a bare "thank you," and I had to follow their example. We peered down over the rail; and there was a sight which would have been comical, if it hadn't been pathetic.

On rather a rough-looking deck, about twelve feet or more below us, a dense crowd was collected round two small squares, which they purposely left open. Besides those little squares, every inch was occupied. There wouldn't have been any more room for even a baby to sit down than there was in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In the crowd were old men, young men and boys, all poorly dressed; and old women, young women and girls, big and little. They wore crude, vivid colours, and more than half of them had bright handkerchiefs tied over their heads. They scarcely took any notice of the first-class passengers staring down superciliously or pityingly at their poor amusements; they were far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily—I can't say gaily—in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who looked almost half-witted, was monotonously scraping a battered fiddle, for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same axis. But the other "dancing salon" was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a uniform with big red flannel epaulettes and pasteboard buttons covered with gold paper, was pretending to conduct the band. And what a band it was!