He bit the end of a cigar. “And you can’t stand up against it,” he went on ruefully. “It saps you. It’s like some damned drug. I fought against it as long as I could, but it was no use. I’m as big a snob as any of them now. I’m afraid to do what I want to do. Always thinking of the family dignity. I haven’t taken a free step for twenty-five years.”
George and Billie exchanged glances. Each had the uncomfortable feeling that they were eavesdropping and hearing things not meant to be heard. George rose.
“I must be getting along now,” he said. “I’ve one or two things to do. Glad to have seen you again, Billie. Is the show going all right?”
“Fine. Making money for you right along.”
“Good-bye, Lord Marshmoreton.”
The earl nodded without speaking. It was not often now that he rebelled even in thoughts against the lot which fate had thrust upon him, and never in his life before had he done so in words. He was still in the grip of the strange discontent which had come upon him so abruptly.
There was a silence after George had gone.
“I’m glad we met George,” said Billie. “He’s a good boy.” She spoke soberly. She was conscious of a curious feeling of affection for the sturdy, weather-tanned little man opposite her. The glimpse she had been given of his inner self had somehow made him come alive for her.
“He wants to marry my daughter,” said Lord Marshmoreton. A few moments before, Billie would undoubtedly have replied to such a statement with some jocular remark expressing disbelief that the earl could have a daughter old enough to be married. But now she felt oddly serious and unlike her usual flippant self.
“Oh?” was all she could find to say.
“She wants to marry him.”
Not for years had Billie Dore felt embarrassed, but she felt so now. She judged herself unworthy to be the recipient of these very private confidences.
“Oh?” she said again.
“He’s a good fellow. I like him. I liked him the moment we met. He knew it, too. And I knew he liked me.”
A group of men and girls from a neighbouring table passed on their way to the door. One of the girls nodded to Billie. She returned the nod absently. The party moved on. Billie frowned down at the tablecloth and drew a pattern on it with a fork.
“Why don’t you let George marry your daughter, Lord Marshmoreton?”
The earl drew at his cigar in silence.
“I know it’s not my business,” said Billie apologetically, interpreting the silence as a rebuff.
“Because I’m the Earl of Marshmoreton.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t,” snapped the earl. “You think I mean by that that I think your friend isn’t good enough to marry my daughter. You think that I’m an incurable snob. And I’ve no doubt he thinks so, too, though I took the trouble to explain my attitude to him when we last met. You’re wrong. It isn’t that at all. When I say ‘I’m the Earl of Marshmoreton’, I mean that I’m a poor spineless fool who’s afraid to do the right thing because he daren’t go in the teeth of the family.”
“I don’t understand. What have your family got to do with it?”
“They’d worry the life out of me. I wish you could meet my sister Caroline! That’s what they’ve got to do with it. Girls in my daughter’s unfortunate position have got to marry position or money.”
“Well, I don’t know about position, but when it comes to money–why, George is the fellow that made the dollar-bill famous. He and Rockefeller have got all there is, except the little bit they have let Andy Carnegie have for car-fare.”
“What do you mean? He told me he worked for a living.” Billie was becoming herself again. Embarrassment had fled.
“If you call it work. He’s a composer.”
“I know. Writes tunes and things.”
Billie regarded him compassionately.
“And I suppose, living out in the woods the way that you do that you haven’t a notion that they pay him for it.”
“Pay him? Yes, but how much? Composers were not rich men in my day.”