"The Worthingtons and the Hirams and the John William Spayters," said one."They travel all right.They know what they want and they want a good deal, and they're willing to pay for it.""Yes.They're not school teachers going over to improve their minds and contriving to cross in a big ship by economising in everything else.Miss Vanderpoel's sailing with the Worthingtons.She's got the best suite all to herself.She'll bring back a duke or one of those prince fellows.How many millions has Vanderpoel?""How many millions.How many hundred millions!" said his companion, gloating cheerfully over the vastness of unknown possibilities."I've crossed with Miss Vanderpoel often, two or three times when she was in short frocks.She's the kind of girl you read about.And she's got money enough to buy in half a dozen princes.""There are New Yorkers who won't like it if she does,"returned the other."There's been too much money going out of the country.Her suite is crammed full of Jack roses, now, and there are boxes waiting outside."Salter moved away and heard no more.He moved away, in fact, because he was conscious that to a man in his case, this dwelling upon millions, this plethora of wealth, was a little revolting.He had walked down Broadway and seen the price of Jacqueminot roses, and he was not soothed or allured at this particular moment by the picture of a girl whose half-dozen cabins were crowded with them.
"Oh, the devil!" he said."It sounds vulgar." And he walked up and down fast, squaring his shoulders, with his hands in the pockets of his rough, well-worn coat.He had seen in England something of the American young woman with millionaire relatives.He had been scarcely more than a boy when the American flood first began to rise.He had been old enough, however, to hear people talk.As he had grown older, Salter had observed its advance.Englishmen had married American beauties.American fortunes had built up English houses, which otherwise threatened to fall into decay.Then the American faculty of adaptability came into play.Anglo-American wives became sometimes more English than their husbands.They proceeded to Anglicise their relations, their relations' clothes, even, in time, their speech.They carried or sent English conventions to the States, their brothers ordered their clothes from West End tailors, their sisters began to wear walking dresses, to play out-of-door games and take active exercise.Their mothers tentatively took houses in London or Paris, there came a period when their fathers or uncles, serious or anxious business men, the most unsporting of human beings, rented castles or manors with huge moors and covers attached and entertained large parties of shooters or fishers who could be lured to any quarter by the promise of the particular form of slaughter for which they burned.
"Sheer American business perspicacity, that," said Salter, as he marched up and down, thinking of a particular case of this order."There's something admirable in the practical way they make for what they want.They want to amalgamate with English people, not for their own sake, but because their women like it, and so they offer the men thousands of acres full of things to kill.They can get them by paying for them, and they know how to pay." He laughed a little, lifting his square shoulders."Balthamor's six thousand acres of grouse moor and Elsty's salmon fishing are rented by the Chicago man.He doesn't care twopence for them, and does not know a pheasant from a caper-cailzie, but his wife wants to know men who do."It must be confessed that Salter was of the English who were not pleased with the American Invasion.In some of his views of the matter he was a little prehistoric and savage, but the modern side of his character was too intelligent to lack reason.He was by no means entirely modern, however; a large part of his nature belonged to the age in which men had fought fiercely for what they wanted to get or keep, and when the amenities of commerce had not become powerful factors in existence.
"They're not a bad lot," he was thinking at this moment.
"They are rather fine in a way.They are clever and powerful and interesting--more so than they know themselves.But it is all commerce.They don't come and fight with us and get possession of us by force.They come and buy us.They buy our land and our homes, and our landowners, for that matter--when they don't buy them, they send their women to marry them, confound it! "He took half a dozen more strides and lifted his shoulders again.
"Beggarly lot as I am," he said, "unlikely as it seems that I can marry at all, I'm hanged if I don't marry an Englishwoman, if I give my life to a woman at all."But, in fact, he was of the opinion that he should never give his life to any woman, and this was because he was, at this period, also of the opinion that there was small prospect of its ever being worth the giving or taking.It had been one of those lives which begin untowardly and are ruled by unfair circumstances.
He had a particularly well-cut and expressive mouth, and, as he went back to the ship's side and leaned on his folded arms on the rail again, its curves concealed a good deal of strong feeling.
The wharf was busier than before.In less than half an hour the ship was to sail.The bustle and confusion had increased.There were people hurrying about looking for friends, and there were people scribbling off excited farewell messages at the telegraph office.The situation was working up to its climax.An observing looker-on might catch glimpses of emotional scenes.Many of the passengers were already on board, parties of them accompanied by their friends were making their way up the gangplank.