第13章
"Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country.Under no circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American nobility.Castellated college-buildings--towers and turrets and an imitation moat--and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter Scott's books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses, with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots, and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind them--""And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness.But send for the Lady Gwendolen--do; for I reckon the peerage regulations require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn for those Arkansas blatherskites she's lost.""My darling! Blatherskites? Remember--noblesse oblige.""There, there--talk to me in your own tongue, Ross--you don't know any other, and you only botch it when you try.Oh, don't stare--it was a slip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can't be dropped in a second.
Rossmore--there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend to Gwendolen.Are you going to write, Washington?--or telegraph?""He will telegraph, dear."
"I thought as much," my lady muttered, as she left the room."Wants it so the address will have to appear on the envelop.It will just make a fool of that child.She'll get it, of course, for if there are any other Sellerses there they'll not be able to claim it.And just leave her alone to show it around and make the most of it.Well, maybe she's forgivable for that.She's so poor and they're so rich, of course she's had her share of snubs from the livery-flunkey sort, and I reckon it's only human to want to get even."Uncle Dan'l was sent with the telegram; for although a conspicuous object in a corner of the drawing-room was a telephone hanging on a transmitter, Washington found all attempts to raise the central office vain.The Colonel grumbled something about its being "always out of order when you've got particular and especial use for it," but he didn't explain that one of the reasons for this was that the thing was only a dummy and hadn't any wire attached to it.And yet the Colonel often used it--when visitors were present--and seemed to get messages through it.Mourning paper and a seal were ordered, then the friends took a rest.
Next afternoon, while Hawkins, by request, draped Andrew Jackson's portrait with crape, the rightful earl, wrote off the family bereavement to the usurper in England--a letter which we have already read.He also, by letter to the village authorities at Duffy's Corners, Arkansas, gave order that the remains of the late twins be embalmed by some St.Louis expert and shipped at once to the usurper--with bill.Then he drafted out the Rossmore arms and motto on a great sheet of brown paper, and he and Hawkins took it to Hawkins's Yankee furniture-mender and at the end of an hour came back with a couple of stunning hatchments, which they nailed up on the front of the house--attractions calculated to draw, and they did; for it was mainly an idle and shiftless negro neighborhood, with plenty of ragged children and indolent dogs to spare for a point of interest like that, and keep on sparing them for it, days and days together.
The new earl found-without surprise--this society item in the evening paper, and cut it out and scrapbooked it:
By a recent bereavement our esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, Perpetual Member-at-large of the Diplomatic Body, succeeds, as rightful lord, to the great earldom of Rossmore, third by order of precedence in the earldoms of Great Britain, and will take early measures, by suit in the House of Lords, to wrest the title and estates from the present usurping holder of them.Until the season of mourning is past, the usual Thursday evening receptions at Rossmore Towers will be discontinued.
Lady Rossmore's comment-to herself:
"Receptions! People who don't rightly know him may think he is commonplace, but to my mind he is one of the most unusual men I ever saw.
As for suddenness and capacity in imagining things, his beat don't exist, I reckon.As like as not it wouldn't have occurred to anybody else to name this poor old rat-trap Rossmore Towers, but it just comes natural to him.Well, no doubt it's a blessed thing to have an imagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed.Uncle Dave Hopkins used to always say, 'Turn me into John Calvin, and I want to know which place I'm going to; turn me into Mulberry Sellers and I don't care.'"The rightful earl's comment-to himself:
"It's a beautiful name, beautiful.Pity I didn't think of it before Iwrote the usurper.But I'll be ready for him when he answers."