第96章

'What an abominable climate,' Mrs Boncassen had said when they were quite alone at Maidenhead.

'My dear, you didn't think you were going to bring New York along with you when you came here,' replied her husband.

'I wish I was going back tomorrow.'

'That's a foolish thing to say. People here are very kind, and you are seeing a great deal more of the world than you would ever see at home. I am having a very good time. What do you say, Bell?'

'I wish I could have kept my stockings clean.'

'But what about the young men?'

'Young men are pretty much the same everywhere, I guess. They never have their wits about them. They never mean what they say, because they don't understand the use of words. They are generally half impudent and half timid. When in love they do not at all understand what has befallen them. What they want they try to compass as a cow does when it stands stretching out its head towards a stack of hay which it cannot reach. Indeed there is no such thing as a young man, for a man is not really a man till he is middle-aged. But take them at their worst they are a deal too good for us, for the become men some day, whereas we must only be women to the end.'

'My word, Bella!' exclaimed the mother.

'You have managed to be tolerably heavy upon God's creatures, taking them in a lump,' said the father. 'Boys, girls, and cows!

Something has gone wrong with you besides the rain.'

Nothing on earth, sir,--except the boredom.'

'Some young man has been talking to you, Bella.'

'One or two, mother; and I got to thinking if any one of them should ask me to marry him, and if moved by some evil destiny I were to take him, whether I should murder him, or myself, or run away with one of the others.'

'Couldn't you bear with him till, according to your own theory, he would grow out of his folly?' said the father.

'Being a woman,--no. The present moment is always everything to me.

When that horrid old harridan halloed out that somebody was smoking, I thought I should have died. It was very bad just then.'

'Awful!' said Mrs Boncassen, shaking her head.

'I didn't seem to feel it much,' said the father. 'One doesn't look to have everything just what one wants always. If I did I should go nowhere;--but my total of life would be less enjoyable.

If ever you do get married, Bell, you should remember that.'

'I mean to get married some day, so that I shouldn't be made love to any longer.'

'I hope it will have that effect,' said the father.

'Mr Boncassen!' ejaculated the mother.

'What I say is true. I hope it will have that effect. It had with you, my dear.'

'I don't know that people didn't think of me as much as of anybody else, even though I was married.'

'Then, my dear, I never knew it.'

Miss Boncassen, though she had behaved serenely and with good temper during the process of Dolly's proposal, had not liked it.

She had a very high opinion of herself, and was certainly entitled to have it by the undisguised admiration of all that came near her. She was not more indifferent to the admiration of young men than are other young ladies. But she was not proud of the admiration of Dolly Longstaff. She was here among strangers whose ways were unknown to her, and wonderful in their dimness. She knew that she was associating with men very different from those at home where young men were supposed to be under the necessity of earning their bread. At New York she would dance, as she had said, with bank clerks. She was not prepared to admit that a young London lord was better than a New York bank clerk. Judging the men on their own individual merits she might find the bank clerk to be the better of the two. But a certain sweetness of the aroma of rank was beginning to permeate her republican senses. The softness of life in which no occupation was compulsory had its charms for her. Though she had complained of the insufficient intelligence of young men she was alive to the delight of having nothings said to her pleasantly. All this had affected her so strongly that she had almost felt that a life among these English luxuries would be a pleasant life. Like most Americans who do not as yet know the country, she had come with an inward feeling that as an American and a republican she might probably be despised.

There is not uncommonly a savageness of assertion about Americans which arises from a too great anxiety to be admitted to fellowship with Britons. She had felt this, and conscious of reputation already made by herself in the social life of New York, she had half trusted that she would be well received in London, and had half convinced herself that she would be rejected. She had not been rejected. She must have become quite aware of that. She had dropped very quickly the idea that she would be scorned. Ignorant as she had been of English life, she perceived that she had at once become popular. And this had been so in spite of her mother's homeliness and her father's awkwardness. By herself and by her own gifts she had done it. She had found out concerning herself that she had that which would commend her to other society than that of the Fifth Avenue. Those lords of whom she had heard were as plenty with her as blackberries. Young Lord Silverbridge, of whom she was told that of all the young lords of the day he stood first in rank and wealth, was peculiarly her friend. Her brain was firmer than that of most girls, but even her brain was a little turned. She never told herself that it would be well for her to become the wife of such a one. In her more thoughtful moments she told herself that it would not be well. But still the allurement was strong upon her. Park Lane was sweeter than the Fifth Avenue. Lord Silverbridge was nicer than the bank clerk.

But Dolly Longstaff was not. She would certainly prefer the bank clerk to Dolly Longstaff. And yet Dolly Longstaff was the one among her English admirers who had come forward and spoken out.

She did not desire that anyone should come forward and speak out.

But it was an annoyance to her that this special man should have done so.