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Young Robin Gray
by
“No,” said Gray with a slight simulation of carelessness. “In fact I came up with them myself. I had nothing to do; it was Sunday, you know.”
The consul lifted his eyebrows slightly.
“Yes, I saw them home,” continued Gray lightly. “In one of those by-streets not far from here; neat-looking house outside; inside, corkscrew stone staircase like a lighthouse; fourth floor, no lift, but SHE circled up like a swallow! Flat–sitting-room, two bedrooms, and a kitchen–mighty snug and shipshape and pretty as a pink. They OWN it too–fancy OWNING part of a house! Seems to be a way they have here in St. Kentigern.” He paused and then added: “Stayed there to a kind of high tea!”
“Indeed,” said the consul.
“Why not? The old man wanted to return my ‘hospitality’ and square the account! He wasn’t going to lie under any obligation to a stranger, and, by Jove! he made it a special point of honor! A Spanish grandee couldn’t have been more punctilious. And with an accent, Jerusalem! like a northeaster off the Banks! But the feed was in good taste, and he only a mathematical instrument maker, on about twelve hundred dollars a year!”
“You seem to know all about him,” said the consul smilingly.
“Not so much as he does about me,” returned Gray, with a half perplexed face; “for he saw enough to admonish me about my extravagance, and even to intimate that that rascal Saunderson, my steward, was imposing on me. SHE took me to task, too, for not laying the yacht up on Sunday that the men could go ‘to kirk,’ and for swearing at a bargeman who ran across our bows. It’s their perfect simplicity and sincerity in all this that gets me! You’d have thought that the old man was my guardian, and the daughter my aunt.” After a pause he uttered a reminiscent laugh. “She thought we ate and drank too much on the yacht, and wondered what we could find to do all day. All this, you know, in the gentlest, caressing sort of voice, as if she was really concerned, like one’s own sister. Well, not exactly like mine”–he interrupted himself grimly–“but, hang it all, you know what I mean. You know that our girls over there haven’t got THAT trick of voice. Too much self-assertion, I reckon; things made too easy for them by us men. Habit of race, I dare say.” He laughed a little. “Why, I mislaid my glove when I was coming away, and it was as good as a play to hear her commiserating and sympathizing, and hunting for it as if it were a lost baby.”
“But you’ve seen Scotch girls before this,” said the consul. “There were Lady Glairn’s daughters, whom you took on a cruise.”
“Yes, but the swell Scotch all imitate the English, as everybody else does, for the matter of that, our girls included; and they’re all alike. Society makes ’em fit in together like tongued and grooved planks that will take any amount of holy-stoning and polish. It’s like dropping into a dead calm, with every rope and spar that you know already reflected back from the smooth water upon you. It’s mighty pretty, but it isn’t getting on, you know.” After a pause he added: “I asked them to take a little holiday cruise with me.”
“And they declined,” interrupted the consul.
Gray glanced at him quickly.
“Well, yes; that’s all right enough. They don’t know me, you see, but they do know you; and the fact is, I was thinking that as you’re our consul here, don’t you see, and sort of responsible for me, you might say that it was all right, you know. Quite the customary thing with us over there. And you might say, generally, who I am.”
“I see,” said the consul deliberately. “Tell them you’re Bob Gray, with more money and time than you know what to do with; that you have a fine taste for yachting and shooting and racing, and amusing yourself generally; that you find that THEY amuse you, and you would like your luxury and your dollars to stand as an equivalent to their independence and originality; that, being a good republican yourself, and recognizing no distinction of class, you don’t care what this may mean to them, who are brought up differently; that after their cruise with you you don’t care what life, what friends, or what jealousies they return to; that you know no ties, no responsibilities beyond the present, and that you are not a marrying man.”