“Yes—left the Duke two years ago—paid him off and came home to her father. She’s quite quiet now, they say—educating her children.”
Frothingham’s three days at the British Embassy were to him days upon an oasis in the desert. It was literally as well as legally part of the British domain—Britain indeed, as soon as the outside door were passed. The servants at most of the houses at which he had been entertained were direct and recent importations from England, yet they had already lost an essential something—even his faithful Hutt was not the docile, humble creature he had been. But here in the Embassy the servants, like the attachés, like the Ambassador’s family, like the Ambassador himself, were as English in look, in manner, in thought, as if they had never been off the island. The very furniture and the arrangement of it, the way the beds were made and the towels were hung in the bathrooms, represented the English people as thoroughly as did the Ambassador.
From this miniature Britain Frothingham on the third day was transferred to the international chaos beneath the turrets and battlements of the Ballantyne castle. When the house was finished, twelve years before Frothingham saw it, the various suites were furnished each on a definite scheme—French or English or Italian of different periods, classical, Oriental, Colonial American. But the Ballantynes had the true American weariness of things that are completed. They were not long interested in their house after it was done. They felt like strangers in it, lived in it only for the sake of show, were positively uncomfortable. More through carelessness and indifference than through ignorance, the movable objects in the suites had become changed about—a gradual process, imperceptible to the inhabitants. There were now specimens of every style and every period in each suite; and Frothingham, who knew about interiors, seeing this interior for the first time, thought it the work of an eccentric verging on lunacy.
“Awful, isn’t it?” said Madame Almansa, as she was called. She had noted Frothingham’s glance roaming the concourse of nations and periods that thronged the walls and floor space of the vast parlour—the Ballantynes used the American term instead of the British “drawing room.”
Frothingham looked at her inquiringly. “What?” he said, pretending not to understand.
“Do you wonder I refuse to live here?” she went on, as if he had not spoken. “There’s some excuse for the great houses on the other side. At least the present tenants didn’t build them and can put the responsibility upon their ignorant semi-barbaric ancestors.”
“That has struck me as a bit queer,” replied Frothingham. “Over on our side we’re cursing our ancestors for having burdened us with huge masses of brick and stone—beastly uncomfortable, aren’t they?”
“Worse—unhealthful,” she answered. “And as dwelling places for human beings, ridiculous.”
“Yes—and it takes an army to keep ’em clean, and then it isn’t half done. And it does cost such a lot to keep ’em up. And there’s no way of heating them. We don’t build ’em any more—except new people that must show off.”
“That’s the trouble here,” said Madame Almansa. “The new people who know nothing of the art of living build palaces as soon as ever they can afford it. It’s supposed to be the badge of superiority. Instead, it’s the badge of ignorance and vulgarity. I refuse to permit my children to live in the midst of such nonsense. You must come to see us, Lord Frothingham, in our little house just through this square.”