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Page 4
Arthur rose with an expression of tolerant amusement--entirely
forced--and stood by the fireplace. He stood beside it, with his elbow
on the mantelpiece, not in front of it with his legs apart, and I
thought with a pang how much more graceful the American attitude was.
"Have you come back to tell us that we talk through our noses?" he
asked.
"I don't like being called an Anglomaniac," I replied, dropping my ring
from one finger to another. Fortunately I was sitting in a rocking
chair--the only one I had not been able to persuade momma to have taken
out of the drawing-room. The rock was a considerable relief to my
nerves.
"I knew that the cockneys on the other side were fond of inventing
fictions about what they are pleased to call the 'American accent,'"
continued Mr. Page, with a scorn which I felt in the very heels of my
shoes, "but I confess I thought you too patriotic to be taken in by
them."
"Taken in by them" was hard to bear, but I thought if I said nothing at
this point we might still have a peaceful evening. So I kept silence.
"Of course, I speak as a mere product of the American Constitution--a
common unit of the democracy," he went on, his sentences gathering wrath
as he rolled them out, "but if there were such a thing as an American
accent, I think I've lived long enough, and patrolled this little Union
of ours extensively enough, to hear it by this time. But it appears to
be necessary to reside four months in England, mixing freely with earls
and countesses, to detect it."
"Perhaps it is," I said, and I _may_ have smiled.
"I should hate to pay the price."
Mr. Page's tone distinctly expressed that the society of earls and
countesses would be, to him, contaminating.
Again I made no reply. I wanted the American accent to drop out of the
conversation, if possible, but Fate had willed it otherwise.
"I sai, y'know, awfly hard luck, you're havin' to settle down amongst
these barbarians again, bai Jove!"
I am not quite sure that it's a proper term for use in a book, but by
this time I was _mad_. There was criticism in my voice, and a distinct
chill as I said composedly, "You don't do it very well."
I did not look at him, I looked at the lamp, but there was that in the
air which convinced me that we had arrived at a crisis.
"I suppose not. I'm not a marquis, nor the end man at a minstrel show.
I'm only an American, like sixty million other Americans, and the
language of Abraham Lincoln is good enough for me. But I suppose I, like
the other sixty million, emit it through my nose!"
"I should be sorry to contradict you," I said.
Arthur folded his arms and gathered himself up until he appeared to
taper from his stem like a florist's bouquet, and all the upper part of
him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain
corpulence; he is already well rounded.
"I need hardly say," he said majestically, "that when I did myself the
honour of proposing, I was under the impression that I had a suitable
larynx to offer you."
"You see I didn't know," I murmured, and by accident I dropped my
engagement ring, which rolled upon the carpet at his feet. He stooped
and picked it up.
"Shall I take this with me?" he asked, and I said "By all means."
That was all.
I gave ten minutes to reflection and to the possibility of Arthur's
coming back and pleading, on his knees, to be allowed to restore that
defective larynx. Then I went straight upstairs to the telephone and
rang up the Central office. When they replied "_Hello_," I said, in the
moderate and concentrated tone which we all use through telephones, "Can
you give me New York?"
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