Gilbert Parker

“ The humour was slightly accentuated, and Lady Lawless shrank a little, as if she feared the depths of divertisement to which this speech might lead; but a quick look at the man assured her of his common-sense, and she answered: “It is of the joys of London that no one is so important but finds the space he fills a small one, which may be filled acceptably by some one else at any moment. It is easy for kings and princes even—we have secluded princes here now—to get lost and forgotten in London.” “Well, that leaves little chance for ordinary Americans, who don’t bank on titles.” ”

“ I did not know that men could be so great; that any man could think more of what a woman thought of—of his life’s story—than of”—she paused, and then gave a trembling little laugh—“of two millions or more.”
He got to his feet, and faced her. “You—you are a woman, by heaven!” he said. “You are finer even than I thought you. I am not worthy to ask you what I had in my mind to ask you; but there is no man in God’s universe who would prize you as I do. I may be a poor man before sundown. ”

“ Every scoundrel, too weak to face the consequences of his sin, says he couldn’t help it. So help me, Joseph, I’d like to thrash you. Couldn’t help it! Now, sit up in your chair, take this cigar, drink this glass of whiskey I’m pouring for you, and make up your mind that you’re going to be a man and not a nincompoop—sit still! Don’t fly up. I mean what I say. I’ve got business to talk to you. And make up your mind that, for once, you have got to take life seriously.”
“What right have you to speak to me like this?” demanded the young man with an attempt at dignity. Vandewaters laughed loudly. ”

“ Why should young men lose their heads, and be so absurdly earnest?”
“Another poser, Lady Lawless.”
“In all your life you never misunderstood things so, I am sure.”
“Well, there is no virtue in keeping your head steady. I have spent most of my life wooing Madame Fortune; I find that makes a man canny.”
“She has been very kind to you.”
“Perhaps it would surprise you if I told you that at this moment I am not worth ten thousand dollars.” She looked greatly astonished. “I do not understand,” she said. She was thinking of what this might mean to Gracia Raglan. ”

“ He has stuff in him.”
“The stuff to make a good American?”
“Yes; with something over. He’s the kind of Englishman that can keep cool when things are ticklish, and look as if he was in a parlour all the time. Americans keep cool, but look cheeky. O, I know that. We square our shoulders and turn out our toes, and push our hands into our pockets, and act as if we owned the world. Hello—by Jingo!” Then, apologetically: “I beg your pardon, Lady Lawless; it slipped.”
Lady Lawless followed Mr. Vandewaters’s glance, and saw, passing on her husband’s arm, a tall, fascinating girl. ”

“ Duke, the creature is impossible, believe me. Never, never, if you love me, invite him to Craigruie. I met one of his tribe at Lady Macintyre’s when I was just out of school; and at the dinner-table, when the wine went round, he lifted his voice and asked for a cup of tea, saying he never ‘drank.’ Actually he did, Duke.”
Her husband laughed quietly. He had a man’s enjoyment of a woman’s dislike of bad form. “A common criminal man, Molly. Tell me, which is the greater crime: to rob a bank or use a fish-knife for asparagus?”
Lady Lawless fanned herself. “Duke, you make me hot. ”

“ Vandewaters, like myself, has a taste for roving, though our aims are not identical. He has a fine faculty for uniting business and pleasure. He is not a thorough sportsman—there is always a certain amount of enthusiasm, even in the unrewarded patience of the true hunter; but he sufficeth. Well, Mr. Vandewaters had been hunting in the far north, and looking after a promising mine at the same time. He was on his way south at one angle, I at another angle, bound for the same point. Shon McGann was with me; Pierre with Vandewaters. ”

“ Lady Lawless was an admirable hostess, and she never appeared to better advantage in the character than during the time when Miss Gracia Raglan, Mr. John Vandewaters, and Mr. Stephen Pride were guests at Craigruie. The men accepted Mr. Vandewaters at once as a good fellow and a very sensible man. He was a heavy-weight for riding; but it was not the hunting season, and, when they did ride, a big horse carried him very well. At grouse-shooting he showed to advantage. Mr. Pride never rode. He went shooting only once, and then, as Mr. Vandewaters told him, he got “rattled.” ”

“ The big one picturesque and superior in a raw kind of way. He wishes to be rude to some one, and is disappointed because, just at the moment, Lord Hampstead is too polite to give him his cue. A dangerous person in a drawing-room, I should think; but interesting. You are a bold man to bring them here, Duke. Is it not awkward for our host?”
“Hampstead did it with his eyes open. Besides, there is business behind it—railways, mines, and all that; and Hampstead’s nephew is going to the States fortune-hunting. Do you see?”
Lady Lawless lifted her eyebrows. ”

“ Mind you, I haven’t any idea that the American papers are right. I’ve had a lot to do with newspapers, and they are pretty ignorant, I can tell you—cheap all round. What’s a newspaper, anyway, but an editor, more or less smart and overworked, with an owner behind him who has got some game on hand? I know: I’ve been there.”
“How have you ‘been there’?”
“I’ve owned four big papers all at once, and had fifty others under my thumb.”
Lady Lawless caught her breath; but she believed him. “You must be very rich.”
“Owning newspapers doesn’t mean riches. ”

“ It is a creed of comfort, at any rate. And now, Duke, if I must meet the man of mines and railways and the spare person making faces at Lord Hampstead, let it be soon, that it may be done with; and pray don’t invite them to Craigruie till I have a chance to speak with you again. I will not have impossible people at a house-party. ”

“ Good night, Lady Lawless.” His big hand swallowed hers in a firm, friendly clasp, and he shook it once or twice before he parted from her. He met Sir Duke Lawless in the doorway. They greeted cheerfully, and then Lawless came up to his wife.
“Well, my dear,” he said, with an amused look in his face, “well, what news?”
She lifted her eyebrows at him.
“Something has happened, Molly, I can see it in your face.”
She was very brief. “Gracia Raglan has been conquered; the young man from Boston has been foolish; and Mr. Vandewaters has lost millions.”
“Eh? That’s awkward,” said Sir Duke. ”

“ But I’m not going to say you ought to have the same kind of nerve as ours. We are a different tribe, with different surroundings, and we don’t sit in the same kind of saddle. We ride for all we’re worth all the time. You sit back and take it easy. We are never satisfied unless we are behind a fast trotter; you are content with a good cob that steps high, tosses its head, and has an aristocratic stride. ”

“ John Vandewaters is concerned, for in his own country he travels ‘the parlours of the Four Hundred,’ and is considered ‘a very elegant gentleman.’ We must respect a man according to the place he holds in his own community. Besides, as you suggest, Mr. Vandewaters is interesting. I might go further, and say that he is a very good fellow indeed.”
“You will be asking him down to Craigruie next,” said Lady Lawless, inquisition in her look. ”

“ The telegram had given him a big chance to make a million or two, as he thought. But he backed himself against the temptation, and won. That day I could have put the ball into his wicket; but I didn’t. That’s a funny case of the kind.”
“Did he ever know?”
“He didn’t. We are fighting yet. He is richer than I am now, and at this moment he’s playing a hard game straight at several interests of mine. But I reckon I can stop him.”
“You must get a great deal out of life,” she said. “Have you always enjoyed it so?” ”

“ He ran into Vandewaters’s camp that evening. Vandewaters and Pierre started away at once. They had dogs, and reached me soon.
“It was the first time I had seen Pierre for years. They fixed me up, and we started south. And that’s as it was in the beginning with Mr. John Vandewaters and me.”
Lady Lawless had been watching the two strangers during the talk, though once or twice she turned and looked at her husband admiringly. When he had finished she said: “That is very striking. What a pity it is that men we want to like spoil all by their lack of form!” ”

“ But, you see, he has a fortune which, as yet, he has never been able to handle for himself; and I do it for him. We are partners, and, though you mightn’t think it, he has got more money now than when he put his dollars at my disposal to help me make a few millions at a critical time.”
Lady Lawless let her fan touch Mr. Vandewaters’s arm. “I am going to do you a great favour. You see that young lady coming to us with my husband? Well, I am going to introduce you to her. It is such as she—such women—who will convince you—”
“Yes?” ”

“ He paused, blew his cigar-smoke slowly from him a moment; then turned with a quick look to Miss Raglan, and smiled as at some incongruous thing. He was wondering what would be the effect of his next words.
“When I was about twenty-two, and had ten thousand dollars, I fell in love. She was a bright-faced, smart girl. Her mother kept a boarding-house in New York; not an up-town boarding-house. She waited on table. I suppose a man can be clever in making money, and knowing how to handle men, and not know much about women. ”

“ And he will rave of the Poet’s Corner, ask if one likes Pippa Passes, and expect to be introduced to every woman in the room at a tea-party, to say nothing of proposing impossible things, such as taking one’s girl friends to the opera alone, sending them boxes of confectionery, and writing them dreadfully reverential notes at the same time. ”

“ But, don’t follow this lead any farther, Lady Lawless, or you may come across something that will give you a start. I should like to keep on speaking terms with you.”
“You mean that a man cannot hold fifty newspapers under his thumb, and live in the glare of a search-light also?”
“Exactly. You can’t make millions without pulling wires.”
She saw him watching the girl on her husband’s arm. She had the instinct of her sex. She glanced at the stately girl again; then at Mr. Vandewaters critically, and rejoined, quizzically: “Did you—make millions?” ”

“ It’s all worth doing from the start, no matter what it is: working, fighting, marching and countermarching, plotting and counterplotting, backing your friends and hating your foes, playing big games and giving others a chance to, standing with your hand on the lynch-pin, or pulling your head safe out of the hot-pot. ”

“ I got to Boston, and went for a cabin-boy on a steamer; travelled down to Panama, and from there to Brazil. At Brazil I got on another ship, and came round to San Francisco. I got into trouble in San Francisco with the chief mate of the Flying Polly, because I tried to teach him his business. One of the first things I learned in life was not to interfere with people who had a trade and didn’t understand it. In San Francisco I got out of the situation. ”

“ I’ll startle him. If he knows that an army of his dollars is playing at fox-and-geese, he’ll not make eyes at Lady Lawless this way—little ass.”
Lady Lawless appeared oblivious of the young man’s devotional exercises. She was engaged on a more congenial theme. In spite of Miss Raglan’s excellent acting, she saw that something had occurred. Mr. Vandewaters was much the same as usual, save that his voice had an added ring. She was not sure that all was right; but she was determined to know. Sir Duke was amused generally. ”

“ He took me around to his dressing-room, stuck me in a corner, and prodded me with his forefinger. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I guess I’ll hire you to speculate for me.’ And that’s how I came to get twenty-five dollars a month and my living from a great American actor. When I got back to America—with him—I had two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and good clothes. I started a peanut-stand, and sold papers and books, and became a speculator. I heard two men talking one day at my stall about a railway that was going to run through a certain village, and how they intended to buy up the whole place. ”

“ Vandewaters.”
“Of course not. That’s a commoner thing with us than with you. American girls get more notice and attention from their cradles up, and they want it all along the line. You see, we’ve mostly got the idea that an Englishman expects from his wife what an American woman expects from her husband.” ”

“ But if you will have the truth: the fish-knife business by all means. Nobody need feel uncomfortable about the burglary, except the burglar; but see what a position for the other person’s hostess.”
“My dear, women have no civic virtues. ”