New York. Nancy selected the next evening from her crocodile jewel-case a triple string of pearls which had cost twenty thousand dollars, and two single black pearl ear-rings worth twelve hundred and fifty. She came downstairs slowly, one white gloved hand gathering her skirt, the other gently waving her grey ostrich-feather fan.
In the hall were two English couples-a major and a solicitor with pallid, scrawny wives who Nancy found indistinguishable-just returned with wild flowers from walking. There was the jolly family from Lyons on whom she practised her French, and the solemn one from Frankfurt who practiced their English to her. They stared like the urchins on the New York sidewalks watching the gorgeous rich gather for a ball. The frock-coated receptionist craned across his counter. The concierge amid a pile of luggage involuntarily whipped off his cap. She wondered if Dr Beckett would be wearing his usual shooting-jacket.
Eliot appeared in a long black cape like a cavalry officer's, its deep collar secured by a chain. He handed it to the concierge with a wide-brimmed velour hat and a small square lantern. He wore a dinner jacket of unmatchable London cut, diamond studs in his shirt front, his tie as symmetrical as a butterfly. She was amused at his startled look. The dress was cut low across her bosom, in the latest American fashion.
'May I congratulate you on your gown, Miss Grange? It must quite overawe this nation of _petits bourgeois,_ as if the snow had miraculously melted and revealed the magnificent peak of the Matterhorn.'
'I imagined you looked at a chest with the emotions of a watchmaker at a watch, Dr Beckett.'
'Even one of that unimaginative profession is moved by a Fabergй clock. Is this the Gibson Girl silhouette we read is all the rage in America?'
'I thought everyone knew that the Outdoor Girl had replaced the Gibson Girl?' she corrected him. 'Because of the automobile, you know. Women have taken to driving them. We apply freshly cut cucumber to soothe the suntan and smooth the dreaded automobile wrinkles. But
'Perhaps only the expense would. Which I suppose is necessary, to keep up with The Four Hundred'?'
'Only vulgar people talk about 'The Four Hundred', Dr Beckett. It was nothing but the capacity of Mrs Astor's ballroom. Are you retaining your carriage?'
'I walked. It's a splendid evening. I always take the path down the cliff to the village. They've marked the stones at every turn with white paint. I've brought an acetylene, so I shan't break my neck in the dark.'
Two white-jacketed
'I hear that in American society, a lady considers a dress allowance of five thousand dollars a year as reducing her to rags?' Eliot resumed. 'All the families in Champette could be kept comfortably on that. And I hear that two hundred million dollars worth of diamonds are suspended from the necks, bosoms and stomachs of the New York females. You could run the whole of Switzerland on that. I assume your father is a millionaire?'
'Oh, there's seven thousand millionaires in America, Dr Beckett. There are millionaires, then there are multimillionaires, and then Pittsburg millionaires.'
They sat at a corner table. Eliot was amused to notice everyone forget their food to stare at them. They seemed a rich and smart young couple, more likely to be encountered at some fashionable hotel on the Quai du Mont-Blanc in Geneva.
'Isn't the definition of a millionaire the ability to live off the income of your income?' Eliot asked.
'In New York, it is only spending the income of a million dollars, whether you have either. Do you know, the Granges don't even possess a two-ton bath-tub carved from solid marble, like the Astors?'
'How much wiser to watch the smart set outdoing each other with displays of wealth. That only ruins the millionaires and makes millionaires of the tradesmen.'
'It doesn't prevent my father being villified in the newspapers as a ruthless man.'
'That can be a compliment. It takes the same resolution to throw a man into a river as to leap in and pull him out of it. Why did you allow me to intrude on you tonight?'
'Surely it's a social distinction to sit at table with a well-born Englishman? In New York, noblemen charge to provide that honour for eager hostesses.'
'Only the Russian aristocracy do. And I'm not well-born. You're looking at my dress-studs? A coming-of-age gift from the Duke of Lincoln. Have you admired my clothes? Cut by the Duke's tailor in Savile Row, half-price. To provide a young man with impressive studs and a good tailor shows the grasp on essentials which brought the Duke's family its fortune. My father is the Duke's agent, his man of business, attending to his houses and estates. I was brought up staring through the plate glass dividing one station of life from another. I've seen balls with ladies wearing dresses far richer than yours, one woman made beautiful by fifty miserable, starving, ugly people. I've seen good food transformed into diverting shapes and pretty colours by slaving cooks. I've seen cosseted pheasants beaten into the air by half-starved farm-labourers to be shot. I've seen the cigars, the champagne, the waste. My father saved every penny that I might escape.'
'And a spy never forgives his enemies?'
'The waiter is becoming impatient,' said Eliot, taking the menu.
'You're very fluent in French,' she said admiringly, as he ordered.
'I try not to be. Good linguists are disreputable in England, where only amateurism is trustworthy. We believe, like Aristotle, that a gentleman should be able to play the flute-but not too well.'
'Don't Englishwomen speak French?'
'To their milliners.' He ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon 1900 without bothering to take the wine list from the somelier.
'Why is it called the Clinique Laлnnec?' It had puzzled her since leaving New York.'
'Dr Rene Theopile Hyacinthe Laлnnec,' he explained. 'He invented the stethoscope. He rolled up a quire of paper and listened to the patient's chest. Which saved embarrassment, applying his ear to the breastbones of plump young gentlewomen, and his hair from lice in hospital. He died a hundred years ago. From phthisis.'
'Why can't my sister have a pneumothorax, like Lady Pledge?'
'Her case is not suitable.'
The waiter served their _consommй а la Cйlestine,_ clear soup with scraps of savoury pancake.
'Is there no operation which might allow her to go home the earlier?'
'There's thoracoplasty, collapsing the chest by snipping away the cage of ribs. It's the invention of George Fowler, an American surgeon. I should have needed several months under his tuition before risking performing it. As he died three years ago, that's impossible. '
'Yet you despise the remedy invented by Dr Crippen?' she accused him.
'If it works, I should buy a vat of it. In London, I intend achieving my two ambitions. First, to start a free clinic,' he revealed. 'Fashionable doctors learn their medicine on the poor in hospitals, and expend the knowledge on the rich. I'm reversing the process. Secondly, I'm standing for Parliament. Candidate for Holloway, in London. Labour, of course. There's bound to be an election soon. Our Mr Asquith's ministry has been creaking far too long.'
'Wouldn't you be a little young as a member of Parliament, Dr Beckett?'
'Mr Pitt was a younger one.'
'My father believes that the only value of politicians is the amount necessary to bribe them.'
Eliot fell silent. He was prouder than of his degrees of his selection by a committee mostly of railwaymen and the slaughtermen from the Metropolitan Cattle Market in north London.
He had applauded since schooldays a line from the forgotten Victorian author, Anthony Trollope-'It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters M P written after his name.' He was disappointed the disclosure left Nancy undazzled. His bristliness was a frightened hedgehog's. He wondered if she despised him, as common.
'I'm going to London, and I'm going to find Dr Crippen,' Nancy resumed. 'I must do all I can for my sister.'
'You've already done much. So irresponsible a patient wouldn't have survived the journey without your watchfulness.'
'I know you take me for a woman who satisfies her conscience by dropping a dime every year into the Salvation Army Christmas Kettle. But you know who I admire? Your Miss Florence Nightingale.'
'You could pay a call when you're seeking Dr Crippen,' Eliot suggested lightly. 'She's ninety, but still has people to tea.'
'Hers is a life I would trade for mine.'
'How singularly unfortunate for you, that the United States is not at the moment engaged in a war.'
