CHAPTER VI
Sir Mordaunt Ballinger was, indeed, as his sister had said, made a great deal of in New York society. It took but a few days to accomplish this. From the square, business-like letters to the blush-colored note, documents poured in on him all day long. There were invitations from men to lunch at the "Lawyers' Club down-town," to meet railway directors, promoters of mines, and others "who can give you information concerning," etc., etc. There were formal cards requesting his presence at great club dinners and private banquets; and there were informal invitations to every species of entertainment, from four o'clock teas upwards. No stranger in London ever found himself so swiftly and surely swept away on a tide of hospitality. Mrs. Frampton had rightly predicted that her brother's name would be an "open sesame" to his son and daughter. For Grace was not left out of all this cordial welcome. Ladies' luncheons, "to meet Miss Ballinger," theatre-parties, receptions, diversions of all kinds, were offered her. Still, it was not to be expected that she should be made quite so much fuss with as her brother. He was in some sense a public man. His name and position as his father's successor and an M.P. carried a certain weight; and then he was good-looking, with invariably charming manners to women, and variably attractive ones to men, with a genuine relish of a joke, which made him popular after dinner among those who told good stories—and where is the sharp American who has not a store of them? For serious, practical purposes, however, these gifts did not, as a certain May Clayton told him, "amount to much."
"You're a lovely man to flirt with, but, unless you find a girl with a pile, you're not eligible as a husband, you see."
May Clayton was a young lady whom he met at that dinner Mr. Sims gave at Delmonico's. She was a "bud," as Mr. Sims informed his English friends—that is, she was only just formally introduced to society. But, owing to her education, she had no shyness or diffidence, and in knowledge of the world and effrontery of speech might have been a woman of forty. She could not remember the time when she had not had flirtations, had not been escorted back from daily school by youthful beaux, had not been to parties every week, and received bouquets and bonbons. It was astonishing she should be as captivating as she was, with all the bloom of youth rubbed off her and her speech interlarded with slang. But she was pretty, quick-witted, and her exuberant spirits were especially attractive to English people, who have so little gas in themselves they are glad to be lit and their stock replenished by others. She and a Mrs. Flynn were the only ladies besides Grace. Both of them could tell who their grandfathers were, both had connections who were among the Four Hundred, and yet neither were in what Mr. Sims called "the swim." They went to the Assembly and Patriarch balls, but the great leaders of society knew them not; they had not learned as yet to ingratiate themselves with the venerable leader of cotillons, Mrs. Flynn not being rich enough to give balls herself. They were cousins. Mr. Flynn had something to do with steel plates, and had failed twice. Perhaps this was why his pretty little wife had also failed. He rarely went into society, nor did Mrs. Clayton when she could avoid it, being apparently shelved as completely as though she were defunct. Her daughter already received visits, gave parties, and went everywhere, either with Mrs. Flynn or alone to houses where there was a matron. She told Sir Mordaunt she expected him to call, "and mind, you're not to ask for mamma, but for me." And to Grace she said, "You're just as nice as ever you can be, and I hope you'll come and see me, but not with your brother." May was bright, and cheery, and shrill as a canary. She chirped and trilled away, drowning every one else's voice, even those of the young American men of the party, though they were jovial, high-spirited fellows, fully able to hold their own. She told one of them who was boasting a little to "come off that roof!" To Ballinger, who said something about the breast and the leg of a chicken, she said, "We always call it the brown meat and white meat."
"Would not that sound rather odd if applied to the human form?" he asked, with apparent innocence.
"Well! To be sure—I never thought of that! Then she seemed about to illustrate this by an example, but only laughed and turned the subject. Being challenged, she sang a stave of some "darky" song, to the delight of her auditors, then suddenly stopped. "No, it isn't nice. I won't sing any more," nor could any supplications induce her to continue. The audacious, wayward little creature had evidently clearly defined limits of her own, beyond which her high spirits never transgressed, no matter what encouragement she met. And her admirers understood this. They drew her out, and roared at her sallies; but there was no suspicion of license in the familiarity, which was nevertheless unlike anything to which the English guests had been accustomed.
"Have they all been brought up together?" Miss Ballinger asked her host.
"Oh, no. She is a Kentucky girl—only came here this winter. They probably danced the German together for the first time a few weeks ago. I asked her and Mrs. Flynn, because I thought it would amuse you more to meet two individual types of Americans of a certain stamp—as they are before the edge is taken off them—than the smart conventional women, such as we met the other night, who are much the same all the world over. You don't object?"
"On the contrary, I much prefer it. I am all for different nations having different codes of manners. I don't see why we are all to be built up on the same pattern."
Mr. Sims laughed. "Don't run away with the impression that this is the general code of manners. No; they belong to a certain type—a type which you English enjoy more than some of our own countrymen do, especially the Anglomaniacs. We shall soon have all the originality rubbed out of us. There is Mrs. Flynn. She was twice as amusing a year or two ago. Now she is afraid to let herself go. She is eating her heart out, poor little woman, because she doesn't get on. I'm afraid she is going in for the 'prunes and prism' business."