Lord Loveland Discovers America. Williamson Charles Norris

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СКАЧАТЬ of good birth and good breeding. Therefore he was not a genuine article (since no snob can be genuine) but had moulded himself into a thing of airs and affectations. Nevertheless he managed to impress most second-rate people, and some who were first-rate. Those who did not live in New York believed him to be of consequence in that city, and the Paris Herald always reported his comings and goings. He was a thin, well-groomed man, of middle age, with a heart-hiding smile, a high nose and a high voice; gold-rimmed eyeglasses giving glitter to pale, cold eyes; a waxed moustache; a carefully cultivated "English accent," and a marvellous fund of scandalous anecdotes concerning everyone about whom it was worth while to be scandalous. He had at least a bowing acquaintance with all the richest Americans on board, and he mixed with his greetings here and there a careless "Do you know we have Lord Loveland on the ship – the Marquis of Loveland? Such a good-looking young man. One of the oldest and most distinguished peerages in England; family of soldiers since the dark ages, though the less said about some of them since the days of the Georges the better. This boy not so bad as some of the old boys before him. Not to be despised by débutantes, eh? Do I know him? – "

      (As a matter of fact, Cadwallader Hunter could count his acquaintances in the British peerage on the fingers of one hand, and have a thumb to spare; for it is the genuine, unaffected, typical Americans, or else the heavily gilded and diamond-incrusted ones whom English people like to know. But this question was bound to come. He had led up to it, and was prepared.)

      "Do I know him? Why, in a way we're connections by marriage. You must remember pretty Lady Betty Bulkeley who took us all by storm a year or two ago – sister of the Duke of Stanforth? Jimmy Harborough, whom she married, is I believe a forty-second cousin of mine: and Lady Betty and Lord Loveland are related. So you see – "

      And for fear that they should see – something that he did not wish them to see – he pottered away to "get at" Loveland before anyone could possibly have the chance to find out that they two were strangers.

      Meanwhile Loveland had not been wasting time.

      He thought that Jim Harborough's hint about "deep sea fish" was a wise one, wiser than he would have expected from Harborough. Still, there was no harm in keeping his eyes open; and having kept them open from the first moment after coming on board, he had discovered several very pretty girls. With a certain amount of eagerness, rather as one looks at one's cards when beginning a new rubber of bridge, he glanced over the passenger-list, hoping that some of the names might be identical with those on his letters of introduction. But there were no such coincidences, and he, unluckily, was too ignorant of American society to know which of his fellow passengers were most important. However, he made up his mind that one of the first things to do, was to find out.

      Sure of his chair, on which the name of "Loveland" already appeared in the steward's handwriting, he paced up and down and all round the deck, pipe in mouth and hands in pockets. It was a November day, of Indian summer warmth. The huge ship felt no impulse from the waves which fawned upon her sides, and Loveland, who had been bored by the necessity to leave his native land, began suddenly to feel happy, quite boyishly happy.

      A great many other people were parading up and down also; pretty girls, walking alone, or with parents, or accompanied by youths with whom they intended to flirt during the voyage. Shrewd-faced men, with eyes good-natured yet keen, and an air of solid importance which might mean millions; handsome, prosperous-looking women whom Loveland guessed to be Newport and New York hostesses pleased to welcome prowling Marquesses; and besides these, numbers of vague persons whom to meet once was to forget twice.

      After half an hour's walk, Val had selected two girls from the "rosebud garden" which, he felt, bloomed for his benefit in this mammoth, floating flower-bed. There were so many attractive ones, that it was difficult to choose, yet Val did not doubt that he had weeded out the best; and he hoped that, of the pair, one might be the principal unmarried millionairess of the Mauretania.

      There could hardly have been a greater contrast between girls than between these two whom Lord Loveland had mentally set apart for himself, as a man picks out the most becoming neckties from a box on a shop counter.

      One, who walked the deck with an elderly man whose likeness of feature proclaimed him her father, was very tall, almost as tall as Loveland, who could be a six-footer when he took the trouble not to slouch. She was slender in all the right places, and rounded in all the right places, her waist being so slim that she seemed held together only by a spine and a lady-like ligament or two; which means faultlessness of figure according to fashion-plate standards. She had burnished auburn hair, and magnificent yellow-grey eyes rimmed with dark lashes. Her nose was aquiline, her mouth red and drooping at the corners, a combination which made her profile closely resemble a famous photograph of the Empress Eugenie in the prime of loveliness.

      A number of the nicest looking people who came and went on deck seemed glad to claim acquaintance with this girl and her handsome father; but though they were warmly greeted again and again, the girl maintained a cool dignity not unworthy of Betty Bulkeley's mother, the Duchess of Stanforth.

      Val said to himself that the Mater would be pleased with a daughter-in-law of this type, and that such a girl would never make her husband ashamed. He could not imagine falling in love with her hard brilliance; but then he wasn't going to America to fall in love. His intentions were strictly businesslike. And this girl was bound to be admired everywhere. She would look an ideal hostess, entertaining house parties at Loveland Castle, when her money had restored it to all and more than its ancient splendour.

      Loveland's second choice might have been his first, for some reasons, and in fact she was his first by impulse; only she did not look as obviously an heiress as the other. Neither was she so obviously a beauty; yet her charm leaped at the beholder with the briefest glance, especially if that beholder were a man; leaped at him through his eyes, and thrillingly through his nerves, in a mysterious, indescribable, curiously interesting way.

      She was not very tall, and she was a slim slip of a creature, not in the least like a fashion plate, but suggestive of soft natural curves, even in her navy-blue tailor-made frock.

      If she had been stage-struck, and had asked for a chance in the chorus, a theatrical manager would have found himself giving it to her, he hardly knew why, more because she said she wanted it than on the strength of her voice, or form, or features. Then, having yielded so far to her magnetism, he would have said to himself, "She isn't striking enough for the front row, or even the second. She must go into the third." And there she would have gone docilely. Yet the critics and all other men with eyes would have picked her out; and presently she would have been more noticed than the beauties in the front row. By and by, when there arose a little part with a few lines to speak, she would have got it; and at last, in some way or other, it would have been she who was making the "hit of the piece."

      Lord Loveland did not say anything of this sort to himself, but he felt a faint electric shock of interest every time they passed and repassed each other; though after the first she did not look at him, with the big brown eyes that surely had the prettiest, most bewitching lashes ever seen.

      Really, they were charming eyes. If nothing else were actually beautiful about the girl, her eyes undoubtedly were exquisite. They were very soft, and no man could look into them even for half a second in passing without realizing deliciously that they were a woman's eyes; yet they were not coquettish, except for that piquant effect of the curled lashes. They were full of sympathy and intelligence, and gazed frankly, sweetly out at the world, as if they could understand, and laugh or cry at things which other, commonplace eyes would never even see.

      For the rest, she had the clear, colourless skin which shows every change of emotion, a sensitive mouth, not too small for generosity; in the firm little chin, a cleft which meant a keen sense of humour; and a slightly impertinent nose which might mean anything or nothing.

      Loveland felt that it would be interesting to know this girl, СКАЧАТЬ