The Whirligig of Time Part 10

"Oh, dash, there goes my garter," she exclaimed one day as they were walking through a country lane together. She had got rather to make a point of such matters, to over-emphasize their possible embarra.s.sment, simply in order to see how beautifully he acted.

"Well, tie it up or something," said he, sauntering on a few steps.

Beatrice did what was necessary and ran on and caught up with him.

"I never could see why a garter shouldn't be as freely talked about as any other article of clothing," said she. "All that sort of modesty is such rot; people have legs, and legs have to have stockings to cover them, and stockings have to have garters to keep them up. And women have legs, just as much as men; there's not a doubt of that. Perhaps that's news to you, though?"

"No, I knew that."

"You really, honestly aren't shocked at what I'm saying?" asked the girl, scanning his face intently.

"Not in the least; why should I be? You're not telling me anything shocking."

Beatrice drew a long breath of pure enjoyment.

"It _is_ a comfort to meet a person like you once in a while," she said.

"Tell me, are women such fools about their legs in America as they are here?"

"Yes, quite," said Harry fervently; "if not actually worse. That's one thing that we don't seem to have learned any better about. It always makes me tired."

The two saw each other, infrequently but fairly regularly, throughout Harry's stay in England. They never corresponded, both admitting that they were bad letter writers, but when they met they were always able to pick up their friends.h.i.+p exactly where they had left it.

When Sir Giles came into the Rumbold property there was naturally a corresponding change in the circ.u.mstances of Lady Archibald and her daughters. Every penny of the property, which came to Sir Giles through the death of a maternal uncle, was entailed and inalienable from his possession; but he was able to alleviate her condition by giving her a large yearly allowance out of his income; and it was pointed out that such an arrangement would have the advantage of keeping the money safe from her husband. Lady Archibald took a small house in South Street and spent the winter and spring months there, and in the due course of time Beatrice was brought out into society.

Her undoubted beauty, which was of the dark and haughty type, and her excellent dancing were enough to make her a social success. This was a tremendous comfort to her mother, who was never obliged to worry about her at dances or scheme for invitations at desirable houses, and could confine her maternal anxiety to merely hoping that Beatrice would make a better match than she herself had. But Beatrice hated the whole proceeding, heartily and unaffectedly.

"The dancing men all bore me," she once said to Harry; "and I bore all the others. Almost all men are dull; at any rate, they appear at their dullest and worst in society, and the few interesting ones don't want to be bored by a chit like me, and I can't say that I blame them. As for the women--when they get into London society they cease to be women at all; they become fiends incarnate."

"I hope that success is not embittering your youthful heart," said Harry, smiling.

"Not success, but just being in what they are pleased to call society; that will make me bitter if I have much more of it. I don't know why it is; people are nice naturally--most of them, that is. Of course some people are born brutes, like--well, like my father; but most of them are nice at bottom. But somehow London makes beasts of them all. If I am ever Prime Minister--"

"Which, after all, is improbable."

"Well, if I am, the first thing I shall do will be simply to abolish London. We shall have just the same population, but it will be all rural. We shall all live in Arcadian simplicity, and while we may not be perfect, at least we shan't all be the scheming, selfish, merciless brutes that London makes of us."

"And pending the pa.s.sage of that bill you want to live in Arcadian simplicity alone. I see. I quite like the idea myself. I should love to found Arcadia with you somewhere in rural England, when I have time.

Where shall we have it? I should say Devons.h.i.+re, shouldn't you? Clotted cream, you know, and country lanes. It will be like Marie Antoinette's hamlet at Versailles, only not nearly so silly. We will pay other people to milk the cows and make the b.u.t.ter, and do all the dirty work, and just sit around ourselves and be perfectly charming. No one will be admitted without pa.s.sing a rigid examination in character, and that will be the only necessary qualification. Arcadia, Limited, we'll call it; it sounds like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, doesn't it?"

"Whom shall we have in it? Uncle Giles--he could pa.s.s all right, couldn't he?"

"Oh, Heavens, yes, _Magna c.u.m_. And Aunt Miriam--perhaps. She would need some cramming before she went up. What about your mother?"

"I'm afraid Mama could never get in," answered Beatrice, smiling rather sadly. "I've talked to her before about such things and she never answers, but just looks at me with that sad tolerant smile of hers that seems to say 'Arcadian simplicity is all very well, but you'll find the best way to get it is through a husband with ten thousand a year or so.'

And the dreadful part of it is that she's right, to a certain extent."

Although in matter of years Beatrice was a few weeks Harry's junior, she was at this time twice as old as he, for all practical purposes. She was an honored guest at Lady Fletcher's big dinners--almost the only ones that did not bore her to death--into which Harry would be smuggled at the last minute to fill up a vacant place, or else calmly omitted from altogether. Nevertheless, he was her greatest comfort all through her first season; nothing but his jovial optimism, which saw the worst but found it no more than amusing, kept the iron from entering into her soul. Such an occasional conversation as the above-quoted would put sanity into her world and fortify her for days against the commonplaces of dancing men and the jealous looks of less attractive maidens. And how she would pine for him during the intervals! How she would long for the arrival of the next vacation or mid-term exeat that would bring him up to town! There was a freshness, a wholesomeness about his way of looking at things that was soothing to her as a breath of country air.

It is not surprising, then, that Beatrice began to dread the nearing date of Harry's departure for America and college more than any one else, even Sir Giles himself, to whom Harry had become by this time almost as dear as a son. Poor Uncle Giles, though he wanted Harry to stay in the country more than any other earthly thing, made it a point of honor never to dissuade the boy from his original project of returning to his own country when he was ready to go to college and becoming an American again. Beatrice, however, was bound by no such restriction and complained bitterly of his desertion.

"What is the point of your going back to some silly American college?"

she would ask. "It isn't as if you didn't have the best universities in the world right here, under your very nose. Why aren't Oxford and Cambridge good enough for you, I should like to know? They were good enough for Milton and Thackeray and Isaac Newton and a few other more or less prominent people."

"Very true," replied Harry with perfect good-humor. "The only thing is, those people didn't happen to be Yankees. I am, you know. It's been a habit in our family for two hundred years or more, and it doesn't do to break up old family traditions. Must be a Yankee, whatever happens."

"But that doesn't mean that you have to go to a Yankee college, necessarily," argued Beatrice. "You won't learn nearly as much there as you would at Oxford. You are as far along in your studies now as the second year men at Yale; I heard Uncle Giles say so himself."

"Yes, I know, that's very true. I can't argue about it; you've got all the arguments on your side. I just know that there's only one possible place on earth where I can go to college, and that is Yale. Better not talk about it any more, if it makes you peevish."

"Well, we won't. I'll tell you one thing, though; we have got to start a correspondence. You can spare a few ideas from your Yankees, I hope. I shall simply die on the wooden pavements if I can't at least hear from you occasionally."

"Certainly; I should like nothing better. I'll even go so far as to be the first to write, if you like, and that's a perfectly tremendous concession, as I'm the worst letter writer that ever lived."

So there the matter was left. Harry left Harrow for good at Easter, and spent one last golden month in London, seeing Beatrice almost every day and being an unalloyed joy and comfort to his uncle and aunt. In May he took a short trip through Spain with Sir Giles; it was a country neither of them had visited before, and they had planned a trip there for years. Uncle Giles worked double time for a fortnight in order to be able to leave with a clear conscience, but he found the reward well worth the labor.

They parted at Madrid, the plan being for Harry to sail for New York from Gibraltar, arriving in time to take his final examinations in New Haven in June.

There were tears in Sir Giles' kind blue eyes as he bade Harry good-by, and Harry saw them and knew why they were there. Suddenly he felt his own fill.

"I don't want to go very much, Uncle Giles," he said in a low voice.

"Now that it comes to the point, I don't like it much. You've all been so wonderful to me.... It's not a question of what I want to do, though.

It's just what's got to be done."

"Yes," said his uncle; "I know. You're quite right about it. It's the only thing to do. But perhaps you won't mind my saying I'm glad, in a way, that you find it hard?"

"Thank you; that helps, too. There's more that comes into it, though; more than what we have talked over together so often.... I mean--"

"James?"

"Yes," said Harry, "that's it."

They clasped hands again and went their separate ways; Sir Giles to the train that was to take him north to Paris and home, and Harry to the train that was to take him south to Gibraltar and home.

CHAPTER VII

OMNE IGNOTUM

"Bless us, how the boy has grown!" cried Aunt Cecilia, and kissed him all over again.

"You'll find your aunt very much changed, I expect," said Uncle James, clasping his hand and smiling, quite in his old style.

"Not a particle, thank Heaven," said Harry, understanding perfectly; "nor you either. Nor the U. S. Customs service, either. Can't I just make them a present of all my luggage and run along? Except that I have some Toledo work and stuff for you and Aunt C."

"Hush, don't say that out loud; they'll charge you extra duty for it,"

replied Uncle James.