“A kind of squirrel,” said he, “only littler, and even easier to scare.”
We went to the rail, and there was George, with his crowd pushing and jostling him. As soon as the gangway was let down he rushed aboard, the crowd with the cameras on his heels. At the top he turned like Marius, or whoever it was, at the bridge. And he shouted to the officers, in a funny, shrill voice, “Drive those ruffians back!” But the officers were smiling at him, and only pretended to restrain the reporters and photographers. On they came, reaching us about as soon as George did. They poured round and between us, and began to ask me questions. I must admit they were polite, in the Yankee way, and friendly, and good-natured.
I said to one of ’em: “I say, my good fellow, can’t you give me time to get my breath?”
“No, I can’t, Lord Frothingham,” he said, laughing. “What would you do if you were I, and your paper were going to press in ten minutes and you were five minutes from a telephone?”
I got on famously with them. I didn’t in the least mind. They must have liked me, as you’ll read. But Georgie! How they have been dishing him!
It wasn’t until we got into the carriage that I and he had chance at each other. “Did you ever see or hear of anything like it?” he said. His hands were shaking, and the sweat was rolling down his cheeks. “They act like a lot of South Sea savages when a whale comes ashore. They are savages. I had heard it was a beastly country, but——” And he actually ground his teeth.
You know George is very touchy on his dignity, and has old-fashioned ideas of what’s due a Duke from his inferiors. It seems he got into a huff when he first came because they treated him in offhand fashion, as they treat everybody. And he tried to snub them. And when they snubbed back, only they had illustrated newspapers to do it in, he went wild, and has been making matters worse and worse for himself. Some of the papers have had leaders pitying Miss Dowie, and predicting that she’ll have him in the divorce court for brutality shortly—think of it—Georgie, quiet Georgie! Everyone is hating him, for he assumed that even Miss Dowie’s friends were like the newspapers that had slated him, and he snubbed right and left.
He took me to his hotel. He had an apartment that costs him fifteen pounds a day—ain’t that cruel? But he said he didn’t propose that these savages should sneer at his poverty—they’re doing it, anyhow, and they hint that the Dowies are paying his hotel bill, or will have to pay it. However, I think he did well to spread himself. There’s something about this country that makes you ashamed to seem poor. You spend money and pretend you’ve got plenty of it. They call it “throwing a bluff,” or “making a front.”
George had taken an apartment for me at a tall price, but I wouldn’t have it, as I wouldn’t saddle him with the expense—he hadn’t her money in hand then. Besides, I knew that as soon as he was gone I’d have to come down, and that would have looked bad. After I was installed in a very comfortable little apartment thirteen floors up—think of that!—at three pounds a day, we drove to Dowie’s. A crowd saw us off at the hotel, people pointed and stared at us all the way up the street, and there was a crowd waiting for us at Dowie’s. They live in a huge greystone castle,—there is no end of smart houses here, but a queer jumble—samples of everything. I hadn’t known old Dowie an hour before he told me the house and ground and all cost him six hundred thousand, our money.
The girl—but you’ll judge her for yourself. I rather fancied her. Affected, of course, and trying to act a duchess out of one of Ouida’s novels. Rather fat, too, and her hair is thin, and a mussy shade of yellow. I think she’ll waddle in about five years. Still, she’s sensible and quick, and dresses well. All the women here do that. But the money! It’s heart-rending to see it parade by. And they seem to be throwing it away, but they don’t. Everything is horribly dear here. I must look sharp or I sha’n’t last long.