A tour and a romance

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Professor’s Lecture i

II. Crossing the Atlantic 13

Chapter I

Professor de Castro was lecturing on the departed glories of Spain. His audience was composed of that small section of women in New York who cultivate culture and play with learning. The darkened hall was heavy with the fumes of acetylene gas, which perhaps explained the curiously somnolent feeling experienced by the majority of the Professor’s hearers.

He was a middle-aged man with a thin, sallow face and a foreign accent. He had been the pet of New York for the entire winter, but with the spring had come a new sensation in the shape of a rollicking Irishman, who preached the curse of over-education and pleaded passionately for the recrudescence of the womanly woman — the tutelary goddess of the spinning-wheel and the spinet. Unsightly gaps in the rows of velvet-cushioned chairs testified to the power of Professor de Castro’s rival. He tried not to feel those gaps, but he was as conscious as the man who has just had several teeth drawn. Like the sufferer who returns from the dentist, he hoped that other people were not noticing the empty places. He

l thought of his widowed mother and two spinster sisters who were entirely dependent on him, and the thought suddenly unnerved him.

On the screen was reflected the majestic outlines of the Alhambra; the various points of interest he indicated with a long stick. The pointing hand wavered, and the Professor found himself aimlessly prodding the Tower of Comares. He tried to speak, but no words came. He made a step forward and gulped dow r n half a tumbler of water, and then again turned towards the screen. All at once the oppressive stillness was broken by a woman’s snore — an unmelodious, unmistakable snore. Professor de Castro’s sallow face flushed. He had not dared to whisper to himself that he was not gripping his audience, and here was some one who brazenly proclaimed the fact. He could trace the sound — it came from the third row. Had he been unable to do so, the action of a girl also sitting in the third row would have enlightened him. He could almost feel her indignant glance as she half turned in her chair and looked full at the offender. He knew the girl well by sight. She never missed a lecture, and she always occupied that same chair in the third row and scribbled notes in a red book with the aid of a toy electric lamp. He had never spoken to her. Sadie Van Putten was not the sort of girl to storm the platform afterwards, as was the recognised custom of many of his hearers. A sudden sympathy was kindled in the Professor’s heart. As men in a hopeless cause instinctively follow the leader who leaps into the breach, so the Professor was goaded to further exertion by the sight of the girl in the third row, who listened to every word he uttered and thought those same words worthy of preservation in a red notebook.

THE ALHAMBRA

Her attitude gave him fresh courage and he conducted his hearers with pride through the halls of the grand old palace. He loved Spain. Her past history was more vivid to him than present-day happenings. He saw with the eye of the lover — he spoke with the voice of the lover anxious to extol and slow to see any blemish. In the Court of the Myrtles he lingered, and his audience, looking at the crystal water flanked by verdant hedges, forgot for the moment the heat and the pungent odour of acetylene gas.

From the Court of Myrtles he marshalled them to the Court of Lions. Several of the ladies, recognising the famous monument from photographs, began to take more interest in the Professor and his lecture. It is a mistake to suppose that familiarity breeds contempt. Familiarity breeds a most blissful contentment. In the Hall of the Ambassadors the Professor called a halt.

“This Hall,” he said, in ringing tones, “is of special interest to every American. On that small square’ (he indicated it with his wand) “Columbus knelt before Ferdinand and Isabella and gratefully accepted the offer of three small sailing vessels for his hazardous expedition. For eight years he had waited for that help so tardily given, and then, it is said, the Queen pledged her jewels to provide the money.

“One of your learned men has remarked that a man is too old for work at forty.” Here a note of scorn could be detected in the Professor’s mobile voice. “Too old at forty,” he repeated, painfully conscious of his fifty odd years. “If a man is too old at forty, you might not be listening to me to-day, for Columbus was fifty-six when he discovered America.”

Sadie Van Putten was writing rapidly; she began to wish she bad learnt shorthand, or that die Professor did

‘4 not speak quite so fast. Columbus melted into Washington Irving and she was not quite sure when the change had come.

“He has made the Alhambra real,” said the Professor, “to thousands who have never visited it. He found it sunk, as it were, in a heavy sleep.” A loud snore punctuated this remark. “A heavy sleep,” he repeated savagely, “and his magic words woke the place to life again. Before you visit the various rooms you will, of course, have prepared yourself by reading the Tales of the Alhambra , and perhaps you will be a little disappointed to find that those rooms do not kindle in you the wonderful emotions they called up in Washington Irving. You say to yourself you must be very commonplace. My friends, when we feel that, we are merely paying a tribute to genius. Genius sees the Real through a rose-coloured glass we call the Ideal. Therefore, try not to feel disappointed if all the rooms are not repeopled for you at a glance. Ghosts are elusive folk. You seek in one corner and you find in another. There is a delightful chapter in the Tales entitled ‘The Mysterious Chambers.’ Washington Irving had been given the apartments which formerly belonged to Elizabeth of Farnese, wife of Philip v. He describes the creepy feeling he experienced when, after being escorted thither, he was left alone. It is a wonderful piece of word painting. We start when he starts at some unaccustomed sound, and we almost hold our breath when he pauses in some dim passage to recall a half- forgotten tragedy. Little did Washington Irving think when he penned those legends that one day his spirit, mightier than they all, would haunt the Courts of the Alhambra.”

“I wish he would not go so fast,” said Sadie, half aloud, as the charming apartment overlooking the garden of Lindaraxa vanished, and a small prison-like chamber wobbled into view.

“There,” said the Professor, “is the room where Joanna the Fool was imprisoned by her son, Charles the Fifth. To women it is undoubtedly the most interesting room in the Alhambra. The woman who spent long hours of wretchedness there was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and she married Philip, surnamed ‘the handsome.’ By many she was called unattractive, although the recumbent figure of her in the Cathedral at Granada does not give one altogether that idea. But, whatever her appearance may have been, she had not the power of holding a man’s heart. Philip neglected her and found amusement elsewhere, and Joanna’s pitiful feminine attempts to bring him back would be comic were it not for the underlying element of tragedy. When Philip le bel d^ed she insisted on bringing his body from Burgos to Granada to be buried. The melancholy procession only travelled at night, and, whenever it stopped, Joanna would look through the glass coffin-lid at the handsome features of her fickle husband. There are not many Joannas left in this twentieth century.”

A little thrill ran through the audience. The Professor was beginning to be personal and it was much more entertaining.

“Do you think,” he went on, “that there are many to be found in New York City to-day? We have another type — the modern matron who gallops through Europe and leaves her husband to grind at his desk. Women of New York, I ask you to pause before it is too late — before you bring about the ruin of your country. Why have you so much dishonesty, political and commercial?

The men are actually responsible, but the women are morally to blame. They accept bribery and corruption. They do not care how the money is made so long as they have it to spend.” The Professor paused. He had the audience in his grip now, and he knew it. Even the lady who had previously slumbered was awake and alert, and Sadie Van Putten was so interested that she forgot to take any more notes. “Are you aware,” he thundered, “of the preponderance of men in the United States? Are you also aware that there are more spinsters than in any other country in the world? Why is this? I will tell you. It is because you American women have been spoilt by the men. You are educated side by side — you are dead sick of one another before you are fiveand-twenty. You have no ideals, but you have millions of theories. Joanna had an ideal. It was shattered, but she stdl clung to it. There is no more touching example of wifely devotion in the world than that long pilgrimage from Burgos to Granada — no more touching monument than that of husband and wife in the Cathedral there. Joanna was nicknamed the Fool, but was she not wiser than the women of the twentieth century, who place culture and money and position before the great primal fact and necessity of life? We want more Joannas in the world more women who recognise that without love life is barren and unsatisfying and impossible.”

1 he Professor finished amidst applause, and fragments of conversation floated about the room.

‘My, wasn’t he just fine!” said one. “What a power of notes you took, Sadie. With your permission, I’ll type them before I sail next week.”

Going to Europe without your husband?” inquired another. “What would the Professor say?”

The first speaker laughed.

“Men talk about women being illogical, but I must say I think the Professor is very illogical in his remarks. Didn’t he tell us it was our duty to visit all these beautiful spots, and, as my husband can’t leave the works for more than a week at a time, I must make the best of it and go by myself.”

“I’ve been waiting ten years to see Europe, but I don’t go without Mr. Dobson,” said a pleasant-looking woman, whose devotion to her husband was a source of amusement to many.

“ I’m crazy to go to Spain,” said another. “Aren’t you, Sadie?”

“I can’t go just at present,” replied Sadie, “because of father. He’s suffering terribly from nerves.”

“Nerves!” echoed an ardent Christian Scientist. “To accept nerves is to accept matter, and we all know that matter has no existence.”

One or two, anticipating a monologue on the science of healing, edged away, leaving Sadie and Mrs. Dobson and the Christian Scientist together.

“Father doesn’t believe in these new fads,” said Sadie briskly. “ He’s gone to see a doctor this very afternoon.”

The Christian Scientist gave her a look of benevolent pity.

“How hard it is to eradicate error in the human soul!” she said sweetly. “He could have been cured so easily. All you have to do is to devitalise yourself.”

“Devitalise yourself? How do you do that?” said Mrs. Dobson.

“ Simply let yourself go — it’s the easiest thing in the world. Study a cat or an infant — there you have perfect examples of devitalisation.”

“And after you have let yourself go,” said Mrs. Dobson doubtfully, “what then?”

“Then you repeat slowly — ‘I have no nerves.’”

“I see; you tell yourself a lie in the hope that you may believe it.”

“You suggest to yourself,” said the Christian Scientist grandly, “and if the suggestion is powerful enough it will come to pass. Have you read the Master Mind?”

“No,” said Sadie.

“Get it; it’s a really wonderful book. It shows how the very weakest person can increase in will power and conquer circumstances. Oh, it’s a beautiful book ! And it gives some very touching illustrations of the power of the human will. I know an old lady who refused to walk anywhere — she always insisted on taking a streetcar. And one day a friend came in with a copy of the Master Mind , and she persuaded the old lady to read it, and very soon the old lady began to feel very much better. The last time I heard of her, she had just walked from Broadway to Brooklyn. I, myself, recently cured a dear friend who was perpetually worrying over little things.”

She paused dramatically for exclamations of surprise, but none came, so she continued her story.

“I made her repeat every morning after her dumb bell exercise one sentence — ‘I will be happy.’”

“And is she happy?” inquired Mrs. Dobson, with interest.

“Happy,” reiterated the other. “Why, happiness is running out of the pores of her skin — she’s bubbling with it.”

“ If I was unhappy,” said Mrs. Dobson, whose beaming face seemed to preclude any such possibility, “I reckon I shouldn’t be cured if I chanted ‘I will be happy’ all day long. I can’t understand how that can cure anybody.”

“No, you can’t understand, and I can’t explain,” said the Christian Scientist crushingly. “You have to be on the higher plane to grasp it. Have you read How I Achieved Success , by Horace G. Parker?”

“No,” said Sadie and Mrs. Dobson both together.

“Get it. That’s my advice; get it. The author is a wonderful man — a really wonderful man. He says that ordinary people make a very great mistake. They think failure when they might just as well think success. It’s as easy to think success as to think failure. Now, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Dobson. “To my mind success is easy enough to think and difficult enough to get.”

“Horace G. Parker says you must hold in your mind the thought of success.”

“At the beginning of life,” said Mrs. Dobson, “most young people hold in their mind the thought of success. They needn’t go to a book to be told to do it — it comes quite natural to them. But time goes along, and they get many disappointments and many hard knocks, and after awhile they leave off thinking success.”

“They shouldn’t leave off,” said the Christian Scientist; “ that’s where they make the mistake. Horace G. Parker says that all you’ve got to do is to stretch out your hand and grasp success.” The Christian Scientist stretched out a grey kid-gloved hand as if wrestling with an invisible enemy. “He says, the more success struggles to get away from you the firmer you must grasp. It’s very simple, really.”

“It’s very simple on paper,” argued Mrs. Dobson, “but it’s very difficult in real life. Why, do you think if success was such an easy matter as some of these writers make out that we should have all these failures walking around? I think this Success for

Everybody style of literature does a great deal of harm. It gives people false ideas. Success can’t be for everybody — it’s only for the few. You should hear what Mr. Dobson says. He admires Ralph Waldo Emerson very much — he thinks he was a very great man. But he says he can’t put up with the crowd of feeble imitators who walk in Emerson’s footsteps, hanging on to his coat tails.”

Mrs. Dobson and Sadie left the lecture hall together and walked down Broadway.

It was a. brilliant sunshiny afternoon and all New York was out of doors. The spirit of unrest was rampant, and the fact had never come home to Sadie with greater force. After the dignified grandeur of the Alhambra she shrank from the vulgarity of the gigantic buildings and the noise and the dust and the general glare.

“Even our buildings are impudent,” she said, raising her voice so as to be heard above the grating clang of the trolley cars. “Look at them. Aren’t they just ready to poke their noses into heaven itself?”

Mrs. Dobson gave her a quick, interrogating glance.

“What’s the matter, Sadie?” she said. “Has Tom Vincent been worrying you again?”

“I’ve been thinking over the Professor’s remarks.”

“About marriage?”

“Yes, and the selfishness of American women and all that. Am I selfish because I don’t want to marry Tom?”

“Why, no. If you set your mind on a silk gown in one particular colour, and you go to the stores and they haven’t got a silk gown, but they have an elegant suit in striped tweed, you would think yourself at liberty to walk out of the stores, wouldn’t you?” ^

Sadie nodded her head.

“But, if you try all the stores and you can’t get the silk gown in that particular colour, after a time you may go back to the first place and decide on the striped suit. Well, fixing up a husband is for all the world like that.”

“Of course, I’m fond of Tom in a way,” continued Sadie, “but we haven’t got the same tastes. I like books and music, and he never reads anything but the newspaper, and thinks the ‘Stars and Stripes’ the finest march that was ever composed.”

“If it comes to that, Mr. Dobson and I haven’t the same tastes. He’ll spend six dollars on a dinner ”

“And you won’t?” put in Sadie.

“Not I. As I often tell him, I don’t like swallowing money. But I’ll spend fifty dollars on a brooch, and he thinks that’s mighty extravagant. After all, these are little things — they don’t really matter. Talking of marriage, I’ve a piece of news for you. Miriam Price is just engaged.”

“No! Who to?”

“The man owns a ranch out West. If any woman has a mind to get married, she can always find a husband out West inside of three months.”

“The reason, of course, is there are so many more men,” said Sadie.

“That’s so, but that’s not the reason. It’s all work in those parts and no distractions. What the Professor said this afternoon is quite true. In the States we have more men than women and more spinsters than in any other country in the world. If the President were to close half the theatres and the women’s clubs and the Browning societies, there would be an epidemic of marriages.”

n A TOUR AND A ROMANCE

“Of course, I like Tom,” said Sadie; “I dare say we should get along very well together.”

“If you feel like that about Tom,” said Mrs. Dobson, with decision, “I guess you haven’t got the right sort of feeling. Falling in love is just like being struck by lightning. When a woman's struck by lightning, Sadie, she knows it .”

Chapter II

When Sadie Van Putten returned home after Professor de Castro’s lecture, she was surprised to find her father in a contemplative attitude, sunk in the depths of an arm-chair. It was only five o’clock and Jonas Van Putten was not in the habit of sitting in arm-chairs at that hour. He was what is known as a busy man, and people usually associated him with the typewriter and the telephone. Sadie guessed that something extraordinary must have happened.

When Van Putten caught sight of his daughter his mouth widened into the humorous smile which was characteristic of him.

“Sadie,” he said, “I’ve had a regular knock-down blow.”

Sadie’s thoughts instinctively flew to Wall Street, but she was wrong in her surmises.

“The markets are queer,” he observed dryly, “but not as queer as I am.”

Unlike the so-called typical American, Jonas Van Putten did not commence every sentence with “ Wal” or “I guess,” although occasionally he dropped into such colloquialisms. But, when he said the markets were queer, you could tell he was American by the way he dodged the letter “r” in the two words. And if further proof was needed you had only to look at his dress, 13 which was as slovenly as that of the average American male, and at his eyes restless and eager, which glowed in a face wrinkled and yellowed like an overripe pear.

“I’ve just come from Dr. Waldo Smith’s,” he continued.

Waldo Smith was the famous nerve specialist. He had once been heard to remark that New York City was a paradise for the brain specialist.

“What did Waldo Smith say?”

“He said he wouldn’t give me a twelvemonth unless I had a thorough change — said I must go abroad at once.”

Van Putten spoke in as dejected a tone as if he had been ordered to a penal settlement. He resented the great doctor’s advice. If his health obliged him to travel, why was he not permitted to travel in his own country? Were not the American rivers bigger and the American mountains higher than any to be found elsewhere? He felt inclined to cry out in bitterness with the captain of the host of old, “Are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?”

“I asked him,” he went on, after a somewhat embarrassing pause, “if he thought there was any chance of my dying abroad. I wouldn’t go under those circumstances. It would be very awkward for you, Sadie, and besides that, they tell me embalming’s a very expensive business.”

“And what did he say?” she asked, in the same matter-of-fact tone.

“Not the ghost of a chance, if I get away at once.”

“At once,” repeated Sadie. “ How soon will that be? ”

“The day after to-morrow, Sadie. As soon as I heard that, I ’phoned for our state rooms.”

“Did Waldo Smith mention any particular spot that would be good for you?”

“He didn’t say, and I was too upset to ask him. He said I must try and find a place where the papers would be a week old before they reached.”

“That will be rather difficult,” said Sadie. “Even on the Swiss mountains I’m afraid we’d get the papers before then.”

“He told me I must go slow — take a sort of rest-cure.”

“Did he mean you must go into an institution and live on milky rice puddings and go to bed of an afternoon?”

“I don’t know, Sadie. I was so bowled over I clean forgot to ask him. I wish I hadn’t paid that fee without getting a few more particulars. But I don’t think, somehow, he meant an institution.”

“A rest-cure!” echoed Sadie thoughtfully — “a place where the papers are a week old. Father, we’ll go to Spain.”

“Well, if you think so,” replied Jonas Van Putten, without enthusiasm; “but why Spain?”

“Because Spain has been taking a rest-cure for centuries. Christopher Columbus discovered America. We will return the compliment and discover Spain.”

A week later the Van Puttens sailed. Sadie enjoyed the voyage with the keen enjoyment of a person who is setting off on a three months’ holiday with the fixed idea that many delightful things are about to happen. This is the true holiday spirit, and without this spirit it is no use setting off on a holiday at all. We must start on the journey as the knights did of old — full of hope, full of curiosity to explore the unknown, and, like the knights of old, we must carry powerful weapons.

It is true that we shall not be called upon to slay dragons and monsters. There are modern hotels in the centre of Africa where the men put on dinner-jackets every evening, and unknown Tibet will soon be as well known as Regent Street. The only dragon to slay is the dragon of Boredom, and this hydraheaded monster takes a good deal of killing.

Sadie, although she did not show it, was well armed against this twentieth-century dragon. Where two or three were gathered together it was impossible for her to feel bored. She loved studying people. And there is nowhere like the promenade deck of a big liner for indulgence in this fascinating pastime.

On the promenade deck of an Atlantic liner you can study the world in miniature. There is the ruling power in the person of the captain, and from the captain on the bridge you go down, and down, and down, until at last you find yourself in the engineroom, where the stokers are busy keeping the great ship afloat.

The usual crowd was to be found on the Lusitania. There were the grumblers. They were a large class. The grumblers grumbled if they had canned peaches for lunch instead of fresh; they grumbled if the vessel steamed twenty knots instead of twenty-four; they grumbled incessantly. Then there were the born managers. They were a numerous class also. The born managers were kept perpetually busy, mentally reorganising the world while they reclined comfortably in long deck-chairs. In the born manager class were the civilians, whose profound knowledge of the Army caused them to draw up elaborate schemes for Army Reform. There were also the Socialists, who spoke of humanity with bated breath and a capital H. They pleaded for State

Nurseries, State Kitchens, State Crematoriums. They would have liked to have arranged for a State Heaven after death, and they felt it was hard that this should be beyond their power.

And besides these prominent characters there were the more ordinary people — the woman who felt it was a pity that she should have thrown herself away on such an uninteresting husband; the man who traced a long succession of failures to the scapegoat commonly known as hard luck. There was also “the most popular man on board.”

His name was Brian Desmond, and his name was supposed to be sufficient excuse for anything he did. “Don’t pay any attention to Desmond; he’s a typical Celt,” some one would say. Or, “Oh, you mustn’t mind Desmond; he has Irish blood in his veins.”

Brian Desmond was the sort of man who holds undisputed sway on the promenade deck of an ocean liner, in the local tennis club of a provincial town, in the ballroom of a Scotch hydro. He was a master hand at organising progressive whists and gymkhanas; his voice was baritone, but he could sing tenor, and did so if necessary. When he left a hotel lamentations were general, and people used to ask themselves how they had managed to exist before his arrival; he was a good amateur actor and an exquisite waltzer. His hatred of any sort of regular employment was his chief characteristic.

Brian Desmond singled Sadie out for special attention.

“Denis, me bhoy,” he said to his friend, “I like that American girl immensely. I honestly believe that the influence of a good woman would be the savin ’ of me.”

“ Particularly a good woman with money, put in Denis.

Desmond looked at his friend with a hurt expression. It was decidedly awkward to have a friend who insisted on doubting one’s noblest sentiments. Still, there were compensations. Unlike most people, Denis liked him for what he really was, and not for what he pretended to be.

“ Go in and win,” said Denis; “ I’ll be your best man.”

“Urn really in earnest this time,” replied Desmond, in his mellow baritone.

“Is the money all right?”

Again the hurt look came into Desmond’s dark eyes.

“Denis, I’m ashamed of ye.”

“I’m only asking for information. People have an idea that every American travelling abroad for his health must be a millionaire. That’s why I say to you — is the money all right?”

Desmond’s sensitive self-respect was so wounded that he made no answer.

“Don’t worry, old man,” said Denis. “The money is all right. You know Kelly?”

“Yes.”

“He told me so; he says he often runs across Van Putten in Wall Street. He’s a financier, and he’s broken down through overwork. As a last chance, the doctor ordered him abroad. Miss Van Putten is the only child. My advice is — go in and win.”

“It’s a great pity, Denis, that you’re so — so cynical. You impute such low motives to everybody. I honestly think the girl charming. And if she likes me ”

“Does she?”

“I don’t know. American girls are brought up so differently to English girls. They’ll walk with a man, and they’ll talk with a man, and they’ll accept unlimited chocolates or ‘candies,’ as they call them, from a man, but when it comes to marrying ”

“Don’t hesitate too long or you’ll find Dr. George supplanting you.” Desmond laughed — his rich attractive laugh. By that laugh his friend could tell how keenly be appreciated the joke.

“Dr. George! Why, he’s older than her father!”

“Girls occasionally marry men older than their fathers.”

“That’s true. I think I’ll go and see if Miss Van Putten is on deck — we might try over our duet for the concert together.”

Desmond got as far as the door and then turned back.

“Denis.”

“Yes.”

“Look at me.”

“All right! I’m looking.”

1 “Do you see any just cause or impediment why Miss Van Putten should not like me?”

Denis examined his friend critically.

He saw a handsome, clean-shaven face just sufficiently worn to make it doubly attractive to nine women out of ten. He saw crisping dark hair which fell in heavy black waves over an expanse of white forehead; he saw a few shining silver threads which only served to throw into bolder relief the beauty of the said black waves. He saw a pair of fine dark eyes — eyes that were capable of expressing anything and everything. And, as he gazed, he felt what he always felt when he looked at Desmond — the subtle, ever-present, overwhelming charm of the man.