Marriage à la mode | Page 3

what the deuce
is he going to do?"
Aloud he said:
"Well, all I know is, I had a deplorable letter last mail from your poor
mother."
The young man turned his head away, his cigarette still poised at his
lips. "Yes, I know--mother's awfully down."
"Well, certainly your mother was never meant for a poor woman," said
the General, with energy. "She takes it uncommonly hard."
Roger, with face still averted, showed no inclination to discuss his
mother's character on these lines.
"However, she'll get along all right, if you do your duty by her," added
the General, not without a certain severity.
"I mean to do it, sir." Barnes rose as he spoke. "I should think we're
getting near Mount Vernon by this time. I'll go and look."
He made his way to the outer deck, the General following. The old
soldier, as he moved through the crowd of chairs in the wake of his
nephew, was well aware of the attention excited by the young man. The
eyes of many damsels were upon him; and, while the girls looked and
said nothing, their mothers laughed and whispered to each other as the
young Apollo passed.
Standing at the side of the steamer, the uncle and nephew perceived
that the river had widened to a still more stately breadth, and that, on
the southern bank, a white building, high placed, had come into view.

The excursionists crowded to look, expressing their admiration for the
natural scene and their sense of its patriotic meaning in a frank,
enthusiastic chatter, which presently enveloped the General, standing in
a silent endurance like a rock among the waves.
"Isn't it fine to think of his coming back here to die, so simply, when
he'd made a nation?" said a young girl--perhaps from Omaha--to her
companion. "Wasn't it just lovely?"
Her voice, restrained, yet warm with feeling, annoyed General Hobson.
He moved away, and as they hung over the taffrail he said, with
suppressed venom to his companion: "Much good it did them to be
'made a nation'! Look at their press--look at their corruption--their
divorce scandals!"
Barnes laughed, and threw his cigarette-end into the swift brown water.
"Upon my word, Uncle Archie, I can't play up to you. As far as I've
gone, I like America and the Americans."
"Which means, I suppose, that your mother gave you some
introductions to rich people in New York, and they entertained you?"
said the General drily.
"Well, is there any crime in that? I met a lot of uncommonly nice
people."
"And didn't particularly bless me when I wired to you to come here?"
The young man laughed again and paused a moment before replying.
"I'm always very glad to come and keep you company, Uncle Archie."
The old General reddened a little. Privately, he knew very well that his
telegram summoning young Barnes from New York had been an act of
tyranny--mild, elderly tyranny. He was not amusing himself in
Washington, where he was paying a second visit after an absence of
twenty years. His English soul was disturbed and affronted by a wholly

new realization of the strength of America, by the giant forces of the
young nation, as they are to be felt pulsing in the Federal City. He was
up in arms for the Old World, wondering sorely and secretly what the
New might do with her in the times to come, and foreseeing an
ever-increasing deluge of unlovely things--ideals, principles,
manners--flowing from this western civilization, under which his own
gods were already half buried, and would soon be hidden beyond
recovery. And in this despondency which possessed him, in spite of the
attentions of Embassies, and luncheons at the White House, he had
heard that Roger was in New York, and could not resist the temptation
to send for him. After all, Roger was his heir. Unless the boy flagrantly
misbehaved himself, he would inherit General Hobson's money and
small estate in Northamptonshire. Before the death of Roger's father
this prospective inheritance, indeed, had not counted for very much in
the family calculations. The General had even felt a shyness in alluding
to a matter so insignificant in comparison with the general scale on
which the Barnes family lived. But since the death of Barnes père, and
the complete pecuniary ruin revealed by that event, Roger's
expectations from his uncle had assumed a new importance. The
General was quite aware of it. A year before this date he would never
have dreamed of summoning Roger to attend him at a moment's notice.
That he had done so, and that Roger had obeyed him, showed how
closely even the family relation may depend on pecuniary
circumstance.
The steamer swung round to the landing-place under the hill of Mount
Vernon. Again, in disembarkation,