LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

luncheon; and if our host had not so regarded it, I imagine he would have remedied the deficiency.”

      “Mr. Hemster, with a delicacy which I regret to say seems to be unappreciated, knowing me to be a servant in his employ, did not put upon me the embarrassment of an introduction.”

      “Really, Miss Stretton, I find myself compelled to talk to you rather seriously,” said I, with perhaps a regrettable trace of anger in my voice. “You show yourself to be an extremely ignorant young woman.”

      Again she laughed very quietly.

      “Oh!” she cried, with an exultation that had hitherto been absent from her conversation; “the veneer is coming off, and the native Englishman stands revealed in the moonlight.”

      “You are quite right, the veneer is coming off. And now, if you have the courage of your statements, you will hear the truth about them. On the other hand, if you like to say sharp things and then run away from the consequences, there is the saloon, or there is the other side of the deck. Take your choice.”

      “I shall borrow a piece of English brag and say I am no coward. Go on.”

      “Very well. I came down from the bridge after a most friendly and delightful talk with the captain, having no other thought in my mind than to make myself an agreeable comrade to you when I saw you on deck.”

      “That was a very disingenuous beginning for a truthful lecture, Mr. Tremorne. When you saw me, you thought it was Miss Hemster, and you found out too late that it was I; so you approached me with the most polite and artful covering of your disappointment.”

      We were walking up and down the deck again, and took one or two turns before I spoke once more.

      “Yes, Miss Stretton, you are demoniacally right. I shall amend the beginning of my lecture, then, by alluding to an incident which I did not expect to touch upon. At luncheon Miss Hemster received my greeting with what seemed to me unnecessary insolence. We are to be housed together for some time aboard this yacht; therefore I came down to greet her as if the incident to which I have alluded had not taken place.”

      “How very good of you!” said Miss Stretton sarcastically.

      “Madam, I quite agree with you. Now we will turn to some of your own remarks, if you don’t mind. In the first place, you said I would not address an English lady to whom I had not been properly introduced. In that statement you were entirely wrong. Five years ago, on an Atlantic liner, I, without having been introduced, asked the Countess of Bayswater to walk the deck with me, and she graciously consented. Some time after that, the deck steward being absent, her Grace the Duchess of Pentonville, without a formal introduction to me, asked me to tuck her up in her steamer chair; then she requested me to sit down beside her, which I did, and we entered into the beginning of a very pleasant acquaintance which lasted during the voyage.”

      “Dear me!” said Miss Stretton, evidently unimpressed, “how fond you are of citing members of the nobility!”

      “Many of them are, or have been, friends of my own; so why should I not cite them? However, my object was entirely different. If I had said that Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith were the people in question, you might very well have doubted that they were ladies, and so my illustration would have fallen to the ground. You said English ladies, and I have given you the names of two who are undoubtedly ladies, and undoubtedly English, for neither of them is an American who has married a member of our nobility.”

      If ever fire flashed from a woman’s eyes, it was upon this occasion. Miss Stretton’s face seemed transformed with anger.

      “Sir!” she flashed, “that last remark was an insult to my countrywomen, and was intended as such. I bid you good-night, and I ask you never to speak to me again.”

      “Exactly as I thought,” said I; “the moment shells begin to fly, you beat a retreat.”

      Miss Stretton had taken five indignant steps toward the companion-way when my words brought her to a standstill. After a momentary pause she turned around with a proud motion of her figure which elicited my utmost admiration, walked back to my side, and said very quietly:

      “Pardon me; pray proceed.”

      “I shall not proceed, but shall take the liberty of pausing for a moment to show you the futility of jumping to a conclusion. Now, try to comprehend. You said, English ladies. My illustration would have been useless if the Countess and the Duchess had been Americans. Do you comprehend that, or are you too angry?”

      I waited for a reply but none came.

      “Let me tell you further,” I went on, “that I know several American women who possess titles; and if any man in my presence dared to hint that one or other of them was not a lady I should knock him down if I could, and if no one but men were about. So you see I was throwing no disparagement on your countrywomen, but was merely clenching my argument on the lines you yourself had laid down.”

      “I see; I apologize. Pray go on with the lecture.”

      “Thank you for the permission, and on your part please forgive any unnecessary vehemence which I have imported into what should be a calm philosophical pronouncement. When you accuse an Englishman of violating some rule of etiquette, he is prone to resent such an imputation, partly because he has an uneasy feeling that it may be true. He himself admits that nearly every other nation excels his in the arts of politeness. It is really not at all to his discredit that he fondly hopes he has qualities of heart and innate courtesy which perhaps may partly make up for his deficiency in outward suavity of manner. Now, madam, etiquette is elastic. It is not an exact science, like mathematics. The rules pertaining to decimal fractions are the same the world over, but the etiquette of the Court differs from the etiquette of the drawing-room, and dry-land etiquette differs from the etiquette on board ship.”

      “I don’t see why it should,” interrupted Miss Stretton.

      “Then, madam, it shall be my privilege to explain. Imagine us cast on a desert shore. If, for instance, our captain were less worthy than he is, and ran us on the rocks of Quelpaerd Island, which is some distance ahead of us, you would find that all etiquette would disappear.”

      “Why?”

      “Why? Because we should each have to turn around and mutually help the others. Whether I had been introduced to you or not, I should certainly endeavour to provide you with food and shelter; whereas if I contracted one of the island’s justly celebrated fevers, your good heart would prompt you to do what you could for my restoration. Now a ship is but a stepping-stone between the mainland of civilization and the desert island of barbarism. This fact, unconsciously or consciously, seems to be recognized, and so the rules of etiquette on board ship relax, and I maintain, with the brutal insistance of my race, that I have not infringed upon them.”

      “I think that is a very capital and convincing illustration, Mr. Tremorne,” confessed the lady generously.

      Now, look you, how vain a creature is man. That remark sent a glow of satisfaction through my being such as I had not experienced since a speech of my youth was applauded by my fellow-students at the Union in Oxford. Nevertheless, I proceeded stubbornly with my lecture, which I had not yet finished.

      “Now, madam, I am going to give you the opportunity to charge me with inconsistency. I strenuously object to the application of the term ‘servant’ as applied to yourself or to me. I am not a servant.”

      “But, Mr. Tremorne, you admitted it a while ago, and furthermore said that your distinguished cousin would also have confessed as much if in your place.”

      “I know I said so; but that was before the veneer fell away.”

      “Then what becomes of the candour of which you boasted? Has it gone with the veneer?”

      “They are keeping each other company on the ocean some miles behind us. I have thrown them overboard.”

      Miss Stretton laughed with rather more of heartiness than she had yet exhibited.

      “Well, I declare,” she cried; “this is a transformation scene, all in the moonlight!”

      “No, I

Скачать книгу