A voyage of discovery

"Why are you going to the United States?" asked an American, no longer in his first youth, of a young Englishwoman, on board the Teutonic, the second day after they had left Liverpool.

The sky was blue; the sea was smooth; the hour was noon.The lady was stretched on a deck-chair; the American sat beside her.Both were fine types of their races; both had faces which arrested and held the attention.Mr. Quintin Ferrars was unusually tall for an American; his limbs were not loosely knit, and his walk was erect and firm—attributes more common to the dwellers in the prairie than to those on Fifth Avenue.He had a resolute, thoughtful face, over which gleams of satire were more apt to play than those of sympathy; with keen eyes, the expression, even the color, of which it was difficult to determine.Neither in his accent nor in his colloquialisms was there any touch of the peculiarity which we call "American," but which our cousins affirm to be drawn through conduits of heredity from the undefiled well of English speech of their Puritan fathers.Mr. Ferrars was accused of being an Anglomaniac; it would be more true to say that he was keenly critical of the defects in his own country.But then he was critical of all things, human and divine.

The young Englishwoman, in her tight-fitting Ulster of russet tweed, with a stalking-cap of the same material, beneath which her abundant auburn hair was tightly rolled, was tall, and had a well-balanced figure, with a waist sufficiently large to support her breadth of shoulder and finely developed bust without suggesting a fear that it might snap in two.Her clear gray eyes, under dark, level brows, had a singular directness of outlook; the fine lines of her somewhat large mouth as much variety of expression, when speaking, as of strength and sweetness in repose.But the chief characteristic of her handsome face was the eager interest it displayed in anything, whether grave or gay, that moved her; the absence of self-consciousness in her intercourse with both men and women; and the bright smile, which was in itself an enchantment.She had great animation of manner, a frank and ringing laugh, and a ready tongue; all of which were probably calculated to mislead a stranger as to her real character.

"Why are you going to the United States, Miss Ballinger?"again asked Mr. Ferrars.

"The polite answer would be that I am going to see your country; but that would not be quite true," answered the young lady, with a smile."My brother wished me to come.I am doing so for the sake of being with him."

"You won't like it.Unless you go to the Far West, we have nothing to offer you that you haven't got better in Europe."

"People interest me more than things.One gets wrong ideas of Americans from those one often meets travelling.I shall like studying them on their own soil."

He lit a cigarette before he replied: "The best types you will probably not see.They do not push themselves prominently forward."

Miss Ballinger's eyes sparkled with amusement."One would really think your object was to dissuade me from attempting to see your country."

"My object is to prevent your being disappointed.We are a very young, raw country.Youth, in the educational stage, is apt to offend against good taste.We are made up, at present, of odds and ends.You are sure to get hold of some odds.The ends require to be unravelled."

"I shall try and unravel them."

"Your brother is trying to do so now."He glanced down the row of deck-chairs to where Sir Mordaunt Ballinger sat on a stool beside the recumbent figure of a lady, so thickly veiled that it was impossible to see if she were young or old."Have you made Mrs. Courtly's acquaintance?She is rather a complicated skein to unravel."

"We have exchanged a few words—just enough for me to know that she has a sweet voice and a very gracious manner."

"She is a charming woman, and a clever one.Not that she does anything or knows anything particularly well—at all events, much less than half our highly educated women.But she has that fine receptive capacity which makes her seize the scope and meaning of most things that do not demand preliminary study.Of course she is called 'superficial;' but what does that mean?That she has the artistic instinct unusually developed in a number of subjects, and an insatiable curiosity about everything."

"I had no idea she was that sort of person.I thought—I had been told that she was very fond of admiration—and—"

"I know all you heard.You need not tell me.She is often misunderstood; most of all, by her own sex.She is fond of dress, and dancing, and admiration.She is religious, and philosophical, and pictorial, and poetical—what is she not?—in turn.But she is never ill-natured, never slanderous.A female Proteus."

"You evidently know her well?"

"I do, but we have always met in Europe.I have never visited her in New England, where she has a charming house, and entertains a great deal."

"Has she been long a widow—for I conclude she is one?"

"Her husband died several years since, and she has never yet made up her mind to change her state.She had one desperate love-affair long ago.Whether it is that has prevented her marrying again, or whether her experience of matrimony was not such as to make her desire to repeat the experiment"—his smile was not pleasant as he said that—"I do not know.I only know she is the best friend in the world, and that women are jealous of her because she attracts all sorts and conditions of men.The lion and the lamb lie down together on her hearth-rug.But she loves the lion better than the lamb."

"Mordaunt is not a lion—neither is he quite a lamb," laughed his sister.

"Oh! but he will be made a lion of in the States. The son of so eminent a man as your father—whose name was so prominent in our country during the Alabama dispute, will be interviewed, and banqueted, and have receptions given for him, all the time. Most of this you will have to endure also. I hope you won't hate it as much as I should."

"I can't believe that you are right, Mr. Ferrars; but if greatness is thrust upon me in this unexpected manner, I hope I shall be amused. I have no idea of expecting to be bored with anything. A sense of humor carries one through so much; and I delight in American humor."

"If you expect that every one is going to talk like Mark Twain, you will be mistaken.You will find a good deal of unconscious humor occasionally in the sayings and doings of my countrymen.I hope it will carry you through those dreary hours, the ladies' luncheons, and all those terrible afflictions!"

"Must they be afflictions because you are not admitted to them?"laughed Miss Ballinger.

"Not necessarily.But the tall talk of superior women is bad enough when it has to bend to the level of our comprehension.What it must be when they are alone—"

"Well, they will have to bend to the level of mine.I shall collapse if they ask me, as Miss Lobb did this morning, 'what influence I considered the ancient religions of Egypt had on the manners and customs of the Western world?'I murmured, 'I suppose it has tended to a love of cats,' and fled."

Ferrars laughed, for the first time."The old maid must have taken it as personal.I think, in some prior state of existence, she must have been a cat, though I doubt the Egyptians worshipping her."

"Her voice is very trying. Explain to me why your highly educated people who talk so much of 'culture' take so little trouble about training the voice? For the voice can be trained, you know."

"Certainly it can; and our singers prove that the American voice is a raw material that can be worked to advantage.But then singing pays, and speaking doesn't."

"Yet you are much given to 'orating!'" said Miss Ballinger, with a mischievous twitch of her lips."Is not every American born to hold forth?"

"Well!As the Yankee said when he stood before Niagara for the first time, 'What hinders?'We are in the rapids of life.Why should the cataract of our impetuosity be checked?We have got to do a deal of talking to make leeway and overtake other nations."

"I think you have overtaken them.Are you a member of Congress?"

"Heaven forbid!What should I do there?"

"Serve your country, I suppose.You do not strike me as a good American, Mr. Ferrars."

"I am too good an American, and too irritable a man, to stand by and see all the jobbery and corruption that goes on, and not raise my voice. And what good would that do, even if I were elected, which I doubt? There are men shouting their lungs out all the time; there are papers, every day, denouncing the acts of a man like ——, and yet he will continue to be a member of our administration until he is hurled from power, and the opposition set up their gods in the temple. That is the result of our beautiful universal suffrage—what you are fast coming to."

"Are you a Democrat or a Republican?"

"Who can say what he is, in the present day?One feels disposed to vote with the opposition, whatever it is."

"Perhaps that is your principle through life," said Miss Ballinger, demurely, as she bound a Shetland veil round her face, which the wind was buffeting too roughly.After that he lost the sunlight, and the cloud-like shadows that crossed it.The next moment she continued, "You spoke of the papers just now.If they denounce corruption, they are not as bad as we are always told they are."

"Their denunciations lose all weight, because they vilify every one.The Angel Gabriel wouldn't be safe from their attacks.No man's home or his most private domestic concerns are sacred.No lie is too preposterous for them to invent; no scandal too hideous for them to propagate.As no man who brought an action for libel in the States ever got substantial redress, they carry on their vile trade with impunity—until some editor happens to be shot by an outraged husband, or father, when the community says, complacently, "Ah!served him right!"Can you wonder that the best citizens often shrink from the pillory of election for office, whether it be the municipal town council, or anything else?To have their early difficulties, their family griefs—it may be their family disgrace—their most secret wounds, torn open; to be pelted with the rotten eggs of vilification day after day—what man, unless he be made of adamant, or is sunk so low as to be absolutely indifferent to public opinion, would willingly subject himself to all this?"

"If a man had a very strong sense of public duty, and if his record were a clean one, I should think he would. How are things ever to be improved if all you educated men say this? By the bye, what do you do with your life, Mr. Ferrars? Something more than vibrate between Europe and America, I suppose?"

"Well, what I do can be done as well on one side of the Atlantic as the other.I was brought up to the study of medicine.But I gave that up when I was still young.Now I do nothing but write."

"Caustic criticism of your own country, I suppose?Anonymous?"

"Yes, anonymous."

"Perhaps you wrote 'Plutocracy,' the authorship of which excited so much curiosity, a few years ago?"

"I should not own it if I had," he replied, rather sharply."I hold Sir Walter Scott's line of conduct quite justifiable in such cases.No secret could be kept if it was necessary to stand and deliver to the first highwayman who demanded your treasure."

"So you look on me as a highwayman?"laughed the young Englishwoman, merrily."I assure you I had no desire to rob you of—"

"You misunderstand me," he interrupted, looking a little annoyed."I did not think of applying the image—a stupid one, I admit—to you.As a matter of fact, I never write fiction.What I do write, for personal reasons, I do not put my name to; and, consequently, consider myself quite at liberty to repudiate."

The gong sounded for luncheon at this moment, and Sir Mordaunt rose and came up to his sister.He was a tall man, with rather too small a head for his height, but remarkably well built, and with that indefinable air of high breeding which is a gift of the gods, bestowed now and again upon the low-born, but not to be purchased nor transmitted; depending neither upon the traditions of Eton nor the tailoring of Poole or Johns.He had a frank, intelligent face, with indications of possible but transient explosion, in the quick flash of the eye, and occasional contraction of the brow.But he was more disposed to smile than to scowl through life.His laugh, and his way of speaking, strongly marked by what Americans call "the English accent," resembled his sister's; and there all likeness between them began and ended.Miss Ballinger's personality, to a close observer, conveyed a sense of reserved force under that light manner and readily responsive smile which her brother's entirely lacked.As some one expressed it, "all his goods were in his front shop-window."There was nothing to be explored, nothing to be connived at, in a nature affectionate, if not very profound; pleasure-loving, and, as some thought, conceited; quick-tempered, and, as some thought, occasionally impertinent; a nature every fold of which was exposed to the light that revealed its spots, and the accretions of dust that are apt to gather upon goods that are exposed in front shop-windows.

"Come along to luncheon, Grace!I'm as hungry as a hunter.How do you get on with that Yankee?I hope he was as entertaining as my widow.She is perfectly charming.I want you to talk to her.She knows almost as much as you do about pictures and things—and she is awfully amusing."

"I have been listening to her praises from Mr. Ferrars, who, by the bye, is not a Yankee.He is a Southerner by birth, and a cosmopolitan by choice—an odd man, and clever; but I don't feel quite sure whether I like him.All the same, I wish his seat at meals was next me.Mr. Gunning, with his narrow little mind centred on himself, is such a bore."

"Mrs. Courtly tells me he is 'a dude,' and tremendously rich.They think no end of him in New York."

"I dare say; but, as his riches don't interest me, I wish I hadn't to sit next him three times a day for the next week.I had so much rather have that nice old man, Senator something, who looks like a portrait by Tintoret, with his white beard."

"What a queer girl you are!always cottoning to old men.Gunning is a good-looking chap; talks a little too much about his yacht and his athletics, and his big game; but I don't think he's half a bad sort."

His sister smiled a subtle, enigmatical smile, and gently pinched her brother's arm, on which she leaned, as they walked along.

"How well I know you, Mordy! You wouldn't judge him so leniently if he were a penniless Englishman—'something in the city.' You are at present resolved to see everything American en beau."

"Of course I am.I only wish I had an American girl with some fun in her next me at table instead of that Lady Clydesdale."

"Well! She is American enough, in all conscience, with her republican ideas! She seems to me plus royaliste que le roi, if one can use such a conservative figure of speech about her."

"Only the fun's wanting.She is in such deadly earnest, with her rights and her wrongs, and her emancipation from social slavery, and all the rest of it."

They had reached the saloon by this time; and most of the famished passengers were already seated.Opposite Sir Mordaunt Ballinger and his sister sat a couple concerning whom Grace felt a mild curiosity.It had not been sufficiently strong to prompt her to speak hitherto; and they were so quiet and retiring, it was pretty certain they would never take the initiative.Were they husband and wife?Hardly.The lady looked a little older than her companion.She had a sweet, tranquil face; and yet, for all its tranquillity, one read there the lines of suffering and sorrow.Her abundant brown hair was smoothly parted over a brow that was too large for beauty, without fringe or curl, to mitigate the defect in proportion.Her dress was of Puritanic simplicity.She wore no bracelet, or ornament of any description; but on her delicate small hand was a wedding-ring.

Her companion, without being ill-built, had the sort of figure which looks as if he had never been trained to athletics, and is unused to active exercise.His hands and feet were almost too small for his height.His chest was contracted; and he had a cough which, without being constant, made itself heard now and again.His smile was a very pleasant one, lighting up the entire face, as some smiles seem incapable of doing; and his rare laugh was merry as a boy's.He wore his clothes badly, and the clothes themselves were ill-made: facts which disqualified him in Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's estimation, but hardly affected his sister.What did affect her was the curiously intense, powerful young face which rose, beardless, above the loose-tied neck-cloth.It was too thin and colorless for manly beauty, though the lines were fine, and the eyes of extraordinary depth.His voice, like his companion's, was low, and, except by certain expressions and the pronunciation of certain words, it would not have been apparent that he was American.

On the lady's right sat Mr. Ruggs, from Chicago, who had been to Europe to enlist sympathy for the World's Fair, and who held forth to Lady Clydesdale, opposite him, as to the wonders of the show, "which I tell you, ma'am, will knock the Paris Exhibition into a cocked hat!"His opulence and prodigality of illustration seemed a little oppressive to the gentlewoman beside him.Her companion had Miss Lobb on his left.That highly cultured lady tackled him at once upon the subject of undeveloped cosmic forces.Grace asked herself whether he would not be as glad to escape from the cosmic forces as she would be to forego the rapid vehemence of the young man from New York.And so, resolved that the stream of white cloth should divide her no longer from her opposite neighbors, she startled them with this original observation, addressed indifferently to both:

"How hungry being at sea makes one!"

The lady responded with a fluttering smile, "I have not experienced it as yet.I hope my son will do so soon.He has been sick."

Her son?Grace was astonished.And sick?Why, the twenty-four hours that had passed since leaving Liverpool had been absolutely calm.In her expressive countenance the young man read possibly what was passing in her mind.

"You would say 'ill,'" he observed, with a smile. "We use the word in the old Scriptural sense."

"Yes," said his mother, "'sick unto death.'He really was that.We have been quite a time in Europe, in consequence."

"Where were you?"asked Grace."At some Baths?"

"Homburg is the only Bath worth going to," struck in Mr. Gunning."Lots going on there, all the time."

"Horrid place.I hate it," said Miss Ballinger.Then, looking at her opposite neighbor, she continued, "I hope you were at a nice place.How long were you in Europe?"

"Four months.I was sent right off to Aix-la-Chapelle, after rheumatic fever, and then on to Spa.We had very little time to travel, but we did go around in Belgium and Holland for three weeks."

"One picks up awfully sweet delf and old oak in Holland," said Mr. Gunning.

"What!You saw nothing of England, then?And this is your first visit to Europe?"Miss Ballinger looked almost indignant as she asked this.The mother answered, quickly:

"It is our first visit, and I never should have come but for my son's health.I should dearly love to visit the cathedral towns, and all the old historical castles in England, but I guess I never shall."

"Yes you will," said her son."I mean to go next fall, and to take you with me....My mother has lived more than twenty-five years in a New England village, without going further than the sea-shore.She enjoys travel, but fancies she cannot leave home."

"When one has gotten a house, and help, it's difficult to go right away, even if there were no other reason," said the mother, shaking her head. "But you can go. There's no call for you to spend your vacation at home."

"If one doesn't go to Europe," said Gunning, "the only place is Newport.You must come to Newport, Miss Ballinger—you really must.It's yachting, dancing, or picnics all the time.You should see how our swells live there.Why, Cowes isn't in it—it isn't really.Our prominent cottagers give such entertainments!Why, there was one luncheon party last year that cost—"

"Don't tell me, Mr. Gunning.It makes me feel that I am a pauper."

Miss Lobb here interposed to observe that it was only in effete old countries that pauperism was tolerated.She looked through her double glasses defiantly at Grace as she added, "With us it is exterminated."

Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's face was convulsed with suppressed laughter, as he touched his sister's elbow at this moment."Listen to Mr. Ruggs's account of Chicago.If it doesn't make you wish to go there!Will you tell my sister what you were saying about your city?"

"I tell you, miss," said the fat little man, turning a pair of twinkling eyes on Grace, and with an expression so shrewd and humorous that she felt uncertain how far he was in earnest, how far endeavoring to impose on her credulity—"I tell you, miss, we are going to have the finest city in the whole creation.Don't you make a mistake.There will be nothing to touch it, until the New Jerusalem is built.Why, already it takes more than two hours to drive from one end of it to the other!We've got a street twelve miles long.We've got a tonsorial saloon paved with dollar-pieces, and a hotel of alabaster and gold.I tell you, miss, there is nothing to touch it in Europe!"

"And about the World's Fair, Mr. Ruggs?tell us what you propose doing?"asked Sir Mordaunt.

"Well, sir, we propose bringing over a few of your European princes, and having them on show.We are in treaty for the Duke of Braganza, as direct descendant of Columbus, whose bones we feel like having—if we can—but, odd to say, they make some difficulties.The bones and the descendants will come right over in galleons made on the model of those that brought Columbus.We also propose to bring over the Sphinx—"

"What!From Egypt?"Miss Ballinger laughed outright."Poor Sphinx!It will feel very strange away from its native desert."

"Oh, we'll blow a lot of sand up right around it.We've got plenty on the shore of our lake.That's for the classical advertisement.Then for the Scriptural one.I did think of having Pharaoh in the Red Sea, and dividing the water by hydraulic pressure; but making the waves red might create a sort of a—feeling—the citizens might feel kinder uncomfortable.There's no reason against the Garden of Eden—plenty of apple-trees, and snakes are common—there's only a little difficulty about Adam and Eve.However, I've no doubt we shall hit on something.People do like something Scriptural.There's Ammergau, now!That would do fust-rate, only those peasants wouldn't come."

"But you're going to have a bigger theatre than the world has ever seen, I suppose?"

"We have one, sir.And as to acting, have you seen our Clara Morris?I tell you, sir, there is nothing in creation like it!Why, when she weeps on the stage, it is enough to make an iron dog come down from a door-step and lick her hand!Don't talk to me of your Bernhardts and your Ristor-eyes—not but what we'll have them, too, just to show how superior the reel American article is!"

"And pictures?Are you going in for pictures?"

"I believe you, sir!Why, the pictures at the Paris Exhibition'll be like a pack of playing-cards compared with ours.I calculate we'll have the biggest picture on show that has ever been seen.It's forty-two feet long.I've concluded to bid half-price for it when our show is over, and to present it to the city."

Here Lady Clydesdale, who was on the other side of Sir Mordaunt, struck in her oar, and a powerful one it was.She was what Mr. Ruggs styled "a fine female, but fleshy," and her arrogant assumption of humility was irritating to others besides the young baronet; perhaps to none more than to Americans.

"I am sorry to hear you say," she observed, quickly, and in a voice like a trumpet, "that you are going to imitate the follies of Europe, in attaching any importance or giving any prominence to princes.It is degrading to distinguish one individual above another, except for personal merit."

"Yours and mine are beyond question, Lady Clydesdale," laughed Ballinger, parenthetically.It was impertinent; but he was nettled.She turned and rent him.

"My principles and practice are too well known at home for me to argue with you, Sir Mordaunt.I would resign my coronet to-morrow.I would abolish all class distinctions.I would herd with the humblest, I would dine with my servants, and give them all the luxuries I enjoy myself—the piano, horses, carriages—they should live as I do, did the prejudice of society permit it.I expected to find it more enlightened in America than in England.I thought there was one country, at least, where all men were equal!I am disappointed."

What Mr. Ruggs's rejoinder was, for he did rejoin, and how the battle was fought, Miss Ballinger never heard; for Gunning, who had been listening to her ladyship's onslaught in amazement, here said in an undertone:

"Is she mad?Fancied we were all equal!Why, we are just as exclusive as ever we can be in New York.The Four Hundred shut their doors against every one who hasn't money, I can tell you."

"Ah!Brains count for nothing, I suppose?"

"Nothing out of Wall Street.A man must work, of course, to make his pile—if he doesn't inherit one.I was an only child.Lucky, wasn't I?Never had to work."

"Those who have to work are the lucky ones, in my opinion."

He looked surprised, and shook his head.

"Couldn't have my yacht or my team—couldn't go off to shoot in the Rockies—couldn't do lots of things, if I had to work.Then, getting up early every morning....Oh!it wouldn't suit me."After a minute's pause he went on: "You'll let me drive you in my team, one day?I'll get up a luncheon-party for you somewhere in the country.We'll have a band, and dance afterwards.We'll have a rare, good time."

"I shall do whatever my brother likes in New York.You must ask him.I shall have absolutely no will of my own.Will you give me those biscuits?...Thank you."

"We call them crackers.About your brother, I'll see that we have a lot of bright girls.There's Miss Planter.She is a belle; she will just suit him.She was made a lot of in London last season, I believe.She will have a million of dollars.Not bad, eh?"

"Bad, if she is to be married for the sake of them. It is fortunate she is attractive. I am glad that I have only enough to keep body and soul alive. No one will marry me for my money!"

"Oh, well, it won't signify to you, having nothing—" He stopped short and smiled at her.Then, though the connection of ideas was not very clear, he went on: "I say, Miss Ballinger, this is the second time I have been to Europe, but I've never seen anything of English society.I have fooled around in Paris and London a bit, but I have a mind next year to take a place in England, and hunt.Do you think I should like it?They say English women don't take to American men.Is that so?"

"We know so few.Most of you are too absorbed in business to spend much time with us.But your women are very popular.My brother says they are so much easier to get on with than his own countrywomen."

"That's right enough.But are not we American men easy to get on with, as well?"

"Certainly—perhaps too easy, sometimes.But, having got on, the thing is to remain on.I have heard it complained sometimes that Americans lose ground by assurance.If you come to England, I dare say you will be made a great deal of, because you are a rich young man.But if you want to be popular with any one besides manœuvring mammas, take my advice—never talk about your money, never presume upon it, in any way.The nicest people resent that....I am going on deck; it is so hot here."

She delivered herself of this little homily simply, almost laughingly, and rose, leaving the young man to his half-finished luncheon.The mother opposite, without waiting for her son, upon whom Miss Lobb had once again fastened her fangs, had risen from the table, and Miss Ballinger followed and joined her on deck.