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An American Girl in London

by Sara Jeannette Duncan · English · Gutenberg #45925 · 465,240 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: An American Girl in London

Author: Sara Jeannette Duncan

Illustrator: F. H. Townsend


        
Release date: June 10, 2014 [eBook #45925]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON ***

AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON

 By Sara Jeannette Duncan

 Illustrated by F. H. Townsend

 New York D. Appleton And Company

1891




CONTENTS

PREFACE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV.

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX





PREFACE

FOR THE OTHER AMERICANS.

I have written this account only secondarily and at the instigation of
publishers, for Americans. Primarily, I wrote it for the English people.
I composed it in their country; it was suggested by their institutions,
and it is addressed to them. You will see, if you read it, that I had
reasons for doing this. The reasons are in the first chapter, at the
very beginning. As you have not far to look for them, therefore, and as
it is quite unnecessary to print a thing twice in the same book, I will
not go over them again. The object of this preface is chiefly to
draw your attention to the fact that I am not talking to you, dear
compatriot, so that you will understand that there is no personal ground
for any annoyance you may feel at what I say.

Notwithstanding this, one of the Miss Wastgoggles, of Boston, has
already taken the trouble to send me a rather severely reproachful
letter about my impressions and experiences, in which she says that she
would have written hers, if it had ever occurred to her to do so, very
differently. I have no doubt that this is true. She also begs me
to remember that there are a great many different kinds of girls in
America, numbers of whom are brought up "quite as they are in England."
It is this remark of hers that makes me quote Miss Wastgoggles. I wish
to say in connection with it that, while it is unreasonable to apologize
for being only one kind of American girl, I do not pretend to represent
the ideas of any more.

Mamie Wick.

No. 4000 Prairie Avenue, Chicago, Illinois,

November 20, 1890.




AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON



I



Original AM an American Girl. Therefore, perhaps, you will not be surprised at anything further I may have to say for myself. I have observed, since I came to England, that this statement, made by a third person in connection with any question of my own conduct, is always broadly explanatory. And as my own conduct will naturally enter more or less into this volume, I may as well make it in the beginning, to save complications.

It may be necessary at this point to explain further. I know that in
England an unmarried person, of my age, is not expected to talk
much, especially about herself. This was a little difficult for me to
understand at first, as I have always talked a great deal, and, one
might say, been encouraged to do it; but I have at length been brought
to understand it, and lately I have spoken with becoming infrequency,
and chiefly about the Zoo. I find the Zoo to be a subject which is
almost certain to be received with approval; and in animal nature there
is, fortunately, a good deal of variety. I do not intend, however, in
this book, to talk about the Zoo, or anything connected with it, but
about the general impressions and experiences I have received in your
country; and one of my reasons for departing from approved models
of discussion for young ladies and striking out, as it were, into
subject-matter on my own account, is that I think you may find it more
or less interesting. I have noticed that you are pleased, over here, to
bestow rather more attention upon the American Girl than upon any other
kind of American that we produce. You have taken the trouble to form
opinions about her--I have heard quantities of them. Her behaviour
and her bringing-up, her idioms and her 'accent'--above all her
'accent'--have made themes for you, and you have been good enough to
discuss them--Mr. James, in your midst, correcting and modifying your
impressions--with a good deal of animation, for you. I observe that
she is almost the only frivolous subject that ever gets into your
newspapers. I have become accustomed to meeting her there, usually at
the breakfast-table, dressed in green satin and diamonds. The encounter
had quite a shock of novelty for me at first, but that wore off in time;
the green satin and diamonds were so invariable.

Being an American girl myself, I do not, naturally, quite see the reason
of this, and it is a matter I feel a delicacy about inquiring into, on
personal grounds. Privately, I should think that the number of us that
come over here every summer to see the Tower of London and the National
Gallery, and visit Stratford-upon-Avon, to say nothing of those who
marry and stay in England, would have made you familiar with the kind
of young women we are long ago; and to me it is very curious that you
should go on talking about us. I can't say that we object very much,
because, while you criticise us considerably as a class, you are very
polite to us individually, and nobody minds being criticised as a noun
of multitude. But it has occurred to me that, since so much is to be
said about the American Girl, it might be permissible for her to say
some of it herself.

Original I have learned that in England you like to know a great deal about people who are introduced to you--who their fathers and mothers are, their grandfathers and grandmothers, and even further back than that.

So I will gratify you at once on this point, so far as I am able. My
father is Mr. Joshua P. Wick, of Chicago, Ill.--you may have seen his
name in connection with the baking-powder interest in that city. That is
how he made his fortune--in baking-powder; as he has often said, it is
to baking-powder that we owe everything. He began by putting it up
in small quantities, but it is an article that is so much used in the
United States, and ours was such a very good kind, that the demand for
it increased like anything; and though we have not become so rich as a
great many people in America, it is years since poppa gave his personal
superintendence to the business. You will excuse my spelling it 'poppa';
I have called him that all my life, and 'papa' doesn't seem to mean
anything to me.

Lately he has devoted himself to politics; he is in Congress now, and
at the next election momma particularly wishes him to run for senator.
There is a great deal of compliance about poppa, and I think he will
run.

Momma was a Miss Wastgaggle, of Boston, and she was teaching school in
Chicago when poppa met her. Her grandfather, who educated her, was a
manufacturer of glass eyes. There are Wastgaggles in Boston now, but
they spell the name with one 'g,' and lately they have been wanting
momma to write hers 'Mrs. Wastgagle-Wick; but momma says that since she
never liked the name well enough to give it to any of her children, she
is certainly not going to take it again herself. These Wastgagles speak
of our great-grandfather as a well-known oculist, and I suppose, in a
sense, he was one.

My father's father lived in England, and was also a manufacturer, poppa
says, always adding, 'in a plain way;' so I suppose whatever he made
he made himself. It may have been boots, or umbrellas, or pastry--poppa
never states; though I should be disposed to think, from his taking up
the baking-powder idea, that it was pastry.

I am sorry that I am not able to give you fuller satisfaction about my
antecedents. I know that I must have had more than I have mentioned, but
my efforts to discover them--and I have made efforts since I decided
to introduce myself to you--have been entirely futile. I am inclined to
think that they were not people who achieved any great distinction in
life; but I have never held anything against them on that account, for I
have no reason to believe that they would not have been distinguished
if they could. I cannot think that it has ever been in the nature of the
Wicks, or the Wastgaggles either, to let the opportunity for distinction
pass through any criminal negligence on their part. I am perfectly
willing to excuse them on this ground, therefore; and if I, who am most
intimately concerned in the matter, can afford to do this, perhaps it is
not unreasonable to expect it of you.

In connections we do better. A grand-aunt of some early Wastgaggles was
burned as a witch in Salem, Mass.--a thing very few families can point
back to, even in England, I should think; and a second cousin of
momma's was the first wife of one of our Presidents. He was a Democratic
President, though, and as poppa always votes the Republican ticket,
we don't think much of that. Besides, as we are careful to point out
whenever we mention the subject, she was in the cemetery years before
he was in the White House. And there is Mrs. Portheris, of Half-Moon
Street, Hyde Park, who is poppa's aunt by her first marriage.

We were all coming at first, poppa, and momma, and I--the others are
still in school--and it had appeared among the 'City Personals' of the
'Chicago Tribune' that 'Colonel and Mrs. Joshua P. Wick, accompanied
by Miss Mamie Wick'--I forgot to say that poppa was in the Civil
War--'would have a look at monarchical institutions this summer.' Our
newspapers do get hold of things so. But just a week before we were
to sail something arose--I think it was a political complication--to
prevent poppa's going, and momma is far too much of an invalid to
undertake such a journey without him. I must say that both my parents
are devoted to me, and when I said I thought I'd prefer going alone to
giving up the trip, neither of them opposed it. Momma said she thought
I ought to have the experience, because, though I'd been a good deal in
society in Chicago, she didn't consider that that in itself was enough.
Poppa said that the journey was really nothing nowadays, and he could
easily get me a letter of introduction to the captain. Besides, in a
shipful of two or three hundred there would be sure to be some pleasant
people I could get acquainted with on the voyage. Mrs. Von Stuvdidyl,
who lives next door to us, and has been to Europe several times,
suggested that I should take a maid, and momma rather liked the idea,
but I persuaded her out of it. I couldn't possibly have undertaken the
care of a maid.

And then we all thought of Mrs. Portheris.

None of us had ever seen her, and there had been very little
correspondence; in fact, we had not had a letter from her since several
years ago, when she wrote a long one to poppa, something about some
depressed California mining stock, I believe, which she thought poppa,
as her nephew and an American, ought to take off her hands before it
fell any lower. And I remember that poppa obliged her: whether as an
American or as her nephew I don't know. After that she sent us every
year a Christmas card, with an angel or a bunch of forget-me-nots on it,
inscribed, 'To my nephew and niece, Joshua Peter and Mary Wick, and all
their dear ones.' Her latest offering was lying in the card-basket on
the table then, and I am afraid we looked at it with more interest than
we had ever done before.

The 'dear ones' read so sympathetically that momma said she knew we
could depend upon Mrs. Portheris to take me round and make me enjoy
myself, and she wanted to cable that I was coming. But poppa said No,
his aunt must be getting up in years now, and an elderly English lady
might easily be frightened into apoplexy by a cablegram. It was a pity
there was no time to write, but I must just go and see her immediately,
and say that I was the daughter of Joshua P. Wick, of Chicago, and she
would be certain to make me feel at home at once. But, as I said, none
of us knew Mrs. Portheris.





II

I AM not much acquainted in New York, so I had only poppa and Mr.
Winterhazel to see me off. Mr. Winterhazel lives there, and does
business in Wall Street, where he operates very successfully, I've been
told, for such a young man. We had been the greatest friends and regular
correspondents for three or four years--our tastes in literature and art
were almost exactly the same, and it was a mutual pleasure to keep it
up--but poppa had never met him before. They were very happy to make
each other's acquaintance, though, and became quite intimate at once;
they had heard so much about each other, they said. We had allowed two
days before the steamer sailed, so that I could make some purchases--New
York styles are so different from Chicago ones; and, as poppa said
afterwards, it was very fortunate that Mr. Winterhazel was there.
Otherwise, I should have been obliged to go round to the stores alone;
for poppa himself was so busy seeing people about political matters that
he hadn't the thirtieth part of a second for me, except at meal-times,
and then there was almost always somebody there. London is nothing to
New York for confusion and hurry, and until you get accustomed to it the
Elevated is apt to be very trying to your nerves. But Mr. Winterhazel
was extremely kind, and gave up his whole time to me; and as he knew all
the best stores, this put me under the greatest obligation to him.
After dinner the first evening he took me to hear a gentleman who
was lecturing on the London of Charles Dickens, with a stereopticon,
thinking that, as I was going to London, it would probably be of
interest to me--and it was. I anticipated your city more than ever
afterwards. Poppa was as disappointed as could be that he wasn't able to
go with us to the lecture; but he said that politics were politics, and
I suppose they are.

Next day I sailed from North River Docks, Pier No. 2, a fresh wind
blowing all the harbour into short blue waves, with the sun on them,
and poppa and Mr. Winterhazel taking off their hats and waving their
handkerchiefs as long as I could see them. I suppose I started for Great
Britain with about as many comforts as most people have--poppa and Mr.
Winterhazel had almost filled my state-room with flowers, and I found
four pounds of caramels under the lower berth--but I confess, as we
steamed out past Staten Island, and I saw the statue of Liberty getting
smaller and smaller, and the waves of the Atlantic Ocean getting bigger
and bigger, I felt very much by myself indeed, and began to depend a
good deal upon Mrs. Portheris.

As to the caramels, in the next three hours I gave the whole of them to
the first stewardess, who was kind enough to oblige me with a lemon.

Before leaving home I had promised everybody that I would keep a diary,
and most of the time I did; but I find nothing at all of interest in it
about the first three days of the voyage to London. The reason was that
I had no opportunity whatever of making observations. But on the morning
of the fourth day I was obliged to go on deck. The stewardess said
she couldn't put up with it any longer, and I would never recover if I
didn't; and I was very glad afterwards that I gave in. She was a real
kind-hearted stewardess, I may say, though her manner was a little
peremptory.

I didn't find as much sociability on deck as I expected. I should have
thought everybody would have been more or less acquainted by that time,
but, with the exception of a few gentlemen, people were standing or
sitting round in the same little knots they came on board in. And yet
it was very smooth. I was so perfectly delighted to be well again that
I felt I must talk to somebody, so I spoke to one of a party of ladies
from Boston who I thought might know the Wastgagles there. I was very
polite, and she did not seem at all sea-sick, but I found it difficult
to open up a conversation with her. I knew that the Bostonians thought
a good deal of themselves--all the Wastgagles do--and her manner somehow
made me think of a story I once heard of a Massachusetts milestone,
marked '1 m. from Boston,' which somebody thought was a wayside tablet
with the simple pathetic epitaph, 'I'm from Boston,' on it; and just to
enliven her I told her the story. 'Indeed!' she said. 'Well, we are from
Boston.'

I didn't quite know what to do after that, for the only other lady near
me was English, I knew by her boots. Beside the boots she had grey hair
and pink cheeks, and rather sharp grey eyes, and a large old-fashioned
muff, and a red cloud. Only an Englishwoman would be wearing a muff and
a cloud like that in public--nobody else would dare to do it. She was
rather portly, and she sat very firmly and comfortably in her chair
with her feet crossed, done up in a big Scotch rug, and being an English
woman I knew that she would not expect anybody to speak to her who had
not been introduced. She would probably, I thought, give me a haughty
stare, as they do in novels, and say, with cold repression, 'You have
the advantage of me, miss!'--and then what would my feelings be? So I
made no more advances to anybody, but walked off my high spirits on the
hurricane-deck, thinking about the exclusiveness of those Bostonians,
and wondering whether, as a nation, we could be catching it from
England.

You may imagine my feelings--or rather, as you are probably English,
you can't--when the head steward gave me my place at the dinner-table
immediately opposite the Bostonians, and between this lady and an
unknown gentleman. 'I shall not make a single travelling acquaintance!'
I said to myself as I sat down--and I must say I was disappointed. I
began to realise how greatly we had all unconsciously depended upon my
forming nice travelling acquaintances, as people always do in books, to
make the trip pleasant, and I thought that in considering another voyage
I should divorce myself from that idea beforehand. However, I said
nothing, of course, and found a certain amount of comfort in my soup.

I remember the courses of that dinner very well, and if they were
calculated to make interesting literary matter I could write them out.
The Bostonians ostentatiously occupied themselves with one another. One
of them took up a position several miles behind her spectacles, looked
at me through them, and then said something to her neighbour about
'Daisy Miller,' which the neighbour agreed to. I know what they meant
now. The gentleman, when he was not attending to his dinner, stared at
the salt-cellar most of the time, in a blank, abstracted way; and the
English lady, who looked much nicer unshelled than she did on deck, kept
her head carefully turned in the other direction, and made occasional
remarks to an elderly person next her who was very deaf. If I had not
been hungry, I don't know how I should have felt. But I maintained an
absolute silence and ate my dinner.

Gradually--perhaps because the elderly person was so extremely deaf, and
my own behaviour comparatively unaggressive--the lady of England began
to assume a less uncomfortable position. A certain repellent air went
out of her right shoulder. Presently she sat quite parallel with the
table. By the advent of the pudding--it was cabinet pudding--I had
become conscious that she had looked at me casually three times. When
the Gorgonzola appeared I refused it. In America ladies eat very little
Gorgonzola.

'Don't you like cheese?' she said, suddenly, a little as if I had
offended her. I was so startled that I equivocated somewhat.

'No'm, not to day, I think--thank you!' I said. The fact is, I never
touch it.

'Oh!' she responded. 'But then, this is your first appearance, I
suppose? In that case, you wouldn't like it.' And I felt forgiven.

She said nothing more until dessert, and then she startled me again.
'Have you been bad?' she inquired.

I didn't know quite what to say, it seemed such an extraordinary
question, but it flashed upon me that perhaps the lady was some kind
of missionary, in which case it was my duty to be respectful. So I said
that I hoped not--that at least I hadn't been told so since I was a
very little girl. 'But then,' I said, 'The Episcopalian Prayer-book
says we're all miserable sinners, doesn't it?' The lady looked at me in
astonishment.

'What has the Prayer-book to do with your being ill?' she exclaimed.
'Oh, I see!' and she laughed very heartily. 'You thought I meant
naughty! Cross-questions and crooked answers! Mr. Mafferton, you will
appreciate this!' Mr. Mafferton was the gentleman whom I have mentioned
in connection with the salt-cellars; and my other neighbour seemed to
know him, which, as they both came from England, did not surprise me
then, although now I should be inclined to consider that the most likely
reason of all why they shouldn't be acquainted. I didn't see anything so
very humorous in it, but the lady explained our misunderstanding to Mr.
Mafferton as if it were the greatest joke imaginable, and she had made
it herself. 'Really,' she said, 'it's good enough for "Punch!'" I was
unfamiliar with that paper then, and couldn't say; but now I think it
was myself.

Mr. Mafferton coloured dreadfully--I omitted to say that he was a
youngish gentleman--and listened with a sort of strained smile, which
debouched into a hesitating and uncomfortable remark about 'curious
differences in idioms.' I thought he intended it to be polite, and he
said it in the most agreeable man's voice I had ever heard; but I could
not imagine what there was to flurry him so, and I felt quite sorry for
him. And he had hardly time to get safely back to the salt-cellar before
we all got up.

Next morning at breakfast I got on beautifully with the English lady,
who hardly talked to the elderly deaf person at all, but was kind enough
to be very much interested in what I expected to see in London. 'Your
friends will have their hands full,' she remarked, with a sort of kind
acerbity, 'if they undertake to show you all that!' I thought of
poor old Mrs. Portheris, who was probably a martyr to rheumatism and
neuralgia, with some compunction. 'Oh!' I said, 'I shouldn't think of
asking them to; I'll read it all up, and then I can go round beautifully
by myself!'

'By yourself!' she exclaimed. 'You! This is an independent American
young lady--the very person I went especially to the United States to
see, and spent a whole season in New York, going everywhere, without
coming across a single specimen! You must excuse my staring at you. But
you'll have to get over that idea. Your friends will never in the world
allow it--I suppose you have friends?'

'No,' I said; 'only a relation.'

The lady laughed. 'Do you intend that for a joke?' she asked. 'Well,
they do mean different things sometimes. But we'll see what the relation
will have to say to it.'

Mr. Mafferton occasionally removed his eyes from the salt-cellar during
this meal, and even ventured a remark or two. The remarks were not
striking in any way--there was no food for thought in them whatever; yet
they were very agreeable. Whether it was Mr. Mafferton's voice, or his
manner, or his almost apologetic way of speaking, as if he knew that he
was not properly acquainted, and ought not to do it, I don't know, but
I liked hearing him make them. It was not, however, until later in the
day, when I was sitting on deck talking with the lady from England about
New York, where she didn't seem to like anything but the air and the
melons, that I felt the least bit acquainted with Mr. Mafferton. I had
found out her name, by the way. She asked me mine, and when I told her
she said: 'But you're old enough now to have a Christian name--weren't
you christened Mary?' She went on to say that she believed in the
good old-fashioned names, like Nancy and Betsy, that couldn't be
babified--and I am not sure whether she told me, or it was by intuition,
that I learned that hers was Hephzibah. It seems to me now that it never
could have been anything else. But I am quite certain she added that her
husband was Hector Torquilin, and that he had been dead fifteen years.
'A distinguished man in his time, my dear, as you would know if you had
been brought up in an English schoolroom.' And just then, while I was
wondering what would be the most appropriate thing to say to a lady
who told you that her husband had been dead fifteen years, and was a
distinguished man in his time, and wishing that I had been brought up
in an English schoolroom, so that I could be polite about him, Mr.
Mafferton came up. He had one of Mr. W. D. Howells' novels in his
hand, and at once we glided into the subject of American literature. I
remember I was surprised to find an Englishman so good-natured in his
admiration of some of our authors, and so willing to concede an American
standard which might be a high one, and yet have nothing to do with
Dickens, and so appreciative generally of the conditions which have
brought about our ways of thinking and writing. We had a most delightful
conversation--I had no idea there was so much in Mr. Mafferton--and Mrs.
Torquilin only interrupted once. That was to ask us if either of us had
ever read the works of Fennimore Cooper, who was about the only author
America had ever produced. Neither of us had, and I said I thought there
were some others. 'Well,' she said, 'he is the only one we ever hear of
in England.' But I don't think Mrs. Torquilin was quite correct in this
statement, because since I have been in England I have met three or
four people, beside Mr. Mafferton, who knew, or at least had heard of,
several American writers. Then Mrs. Torquilin went to sleep, and when
she woke up it was five o'clock, and her maid was just arriving with
her tea. Mr. Mafferton asked me if he might get me some, but I said. No,
thanks; I thought I would take a brisk walk instead, if Mrs. Torquilin
would excuse me.

'Certainly,' she said; 'go and take some exercise, both of you. It's
much better for young people than tea-drinking. And see here, my dear! I
thought you were very sensible not to dress for dinner last night, like
those silly young fools opposite. Silly young fools I call them. Now,
take my advice, and don't let them persuade you to do it. An Atlantic
steamer is no place for bare arms. Now run away, and have your walk, and
Mr. Mafferton will see that you're not blown overboard.'

Mr. Mafferton hesitated a moment. 'Are you quite sure, he said, 'that
you wouldn't prefer the tea?'

'Oh yes, sir!' I said; 'we always have tea at half-past six at home, and
I don't care about it so early as this. I'd much rather walk. But don't
trouble to come with me if you would like some tea.'

'I'll come,' he said, 'if you won't call me "sir."' Here he frowned a
little and coloured. 'It makes one feel seventy, you know. May I ask why
you do it?'

I explained that in Chicago it was considered polite to say 'ma'am' or
'sir' to a lady or gentleman of any age with whom you did not happen to
be very well acquainted, and I had heard it all my life; still, if he
objected to it, I would not use it in his case.

He said he thought he did object to it--from a lady; it had other
associations in his ears.

So I stopped calling Mr. Mafferton 'sir'; and since then, except to
very old gentlemen, I have got out of the way of using the expression.
I asked him if there was anything else that struck him as odd in my
conversation kindly to tell me, as of course I did not wish to be an
unnecessary shock to my relation in Half-Moon Street. He did not say he
would, but we seemed to get on together even more agreeably after that.

Mr. Mafferton appeared to know nobody on board but Mrs. Torquilin; and
I made acquaintance with hardly anybody else, so that we naturally saw a
good deal of each other, usually in the afternoons, walking up and down
the deck. He lent me all his books, and I lent him all mine, and we
exchanged opinions on a great variety of subjects. When we argued, he
was always very polite and considerate; but I noticed one curious thing
about him--I never could bring him round to my point of view. He did not
seem to see the necessity of coming, although I often went round to
his. This was a new experience to me in arguing with a gentleman. And
he always talked very impersonally. At first this struck me as a little
cold and uninterested, but afterwards I liked it. It was like drinking
a very nice kind of pure cold water--after the different flavours of
personality I had always been accustomed to. Mr. Mafferton only made
one exception to this rule that I remember, and that was the afternoon
before we landed. Then he told me particularly about his father and
mother, and their tastes and occupation, also the names and ages of his
brothers and sisters, and their tastes and occupations, and where he
lived. But I cannot say I found him as interesting that afternoon as
usual.

I need not describe the bustle and confusion of landing at Liverpool
Docks in the middle of a wet April afternoon. Mrs. Torquilin had told me
at breakfast not on any account to let my relations take me away before
she had given me her address; but when the time came I guess--if you
will allow me--she must have forgotten, because the last time I saw her
she was standing under a very big umbrella, which the maid held over
her, a good deal excited, and giving a great many orders about her
luggage to a nervous-looking man in livery.

I easily identified mine, and got off by train for London without any
trouble to speak of. We arrived rather late, though, and it was still
pouring.

'What has become of your people?' asked somebody at my elbow. I turned
and saw Mr. Mafferton, who must have come down by the same train.

'I didn't expect my relation to meet me,' said; 'she doesn't expect me!'

 'Oh!' said Mr. Mafferton; 'you did not write to her before you sailed?'

'No,' I said. 'There wasn't time.'

'Upon my word!' said Mr. Mafferton. Then, as I suppose I looked rather
surprised, he added, hastily: ''I only mean that it seems so--so
uncommonly extraordinary, you know! But I would advise you, in that
case, to give the bulk of your luggage into the hands of the forwarding
agents, with instructions to send it early to-morrow to your friend's
address. It is all you can do tonight,' said Mr. Mafferton, 'really. Of
course, you will go there immediately yourself.'

'No,' I responded, firmly; 'I think not, Mr. Mafferton. My relation is
very elderly, and probably in bad health. For all I know, she may have
gone to bed. I must not disturb her so late. All the people I have ever
known have stayed at the Métropole in London. I will go to the Métropole
for to-night, and have my things sent there. To-morrow I will go and see
my relation, and if she asks me to visit her I can easily telephone up
for them. Thank you very much.'

Mr. Mafferton looked as sober as possible, if not a little annoyed.
Then he went and got the agent's young man, and asked me to point out my
things to him, which I did, and got receipts. Then he told a porter to
call a cab, and put my smaller valises into it. 'I will put you in,' he
said, and he gave me his arm and his umbrella, through the wettest
rain I have ever experienced, to the hansom. I thanked him again very
cordially, and before he said good-bye he very kindly gave me his card
and address, and begged me to let him know if there was anything he
could do for me.

Then I rattled away through the blurred lights of your interminable
twisted streets to the Métropole, fancying I saw Westminster Abbey or
St. Paul's through the rain at every turn.

When we stopped at last before the hotel, another hansom behind us
stopped too, and though I am sure he didn't intend me to, I saw quite
plainly through the glass--Mr. Mafferton. It was extremely kind of him
to wish to be of assistance to a lady alone, especially in such weather,
and I could easily understand his desire to see me to my hotel; but what
puzzled me was, why he should have taken another cab!

And all night long I dreamed of Mrs. Portheris.





III

I ONCE visited the Wastgagles in Boston with momma. It was a visit of
condolence, just after the demise of a grandmother of theirs. I was
going to say, that never since that occasion had I experienced anything
like the solemnity of my breakfast at the Métropole the morning after I
arrived. As a sad-faced waiter with mutton-chop whiskers marshalled me
across the room to an empty little white-and-silvery table beside one of
the big windows, I felt, for the first time in my life, that I was being
made imposing, and I objected to the feeling. The place itself did not
impress me particularly--in America we are accustomed to gorgeousness in
our hotels, and the mirrors and the gilding of the Métropole rather made
me feel at home than otherwise; but it was the demeanour of everything
that weighed upon me. My very chair lived up to its own standard of
decorum; and the table seemed laid upon a pattern of propriety that it
would never willingly depart from. There was an all-pervading sense of
order in the air I couldn't make out exactly where it came from, but it
was there, and it was fearful. The waiters spoke to each other in low
tones, as if something of deep and serious importance were going on;
and when I told one of them what I should like from the bill-of-fare, he
bent down his ear and received my order as if it had been confidential
State business I was asking him to undertake. When he came back,
carrying the tray in front of him, it was almost processional. And in
the interval, when I turned round to look out of the window, and saw
another of those respectfully-subdued waiters standing behind my chair,
quite motionless, I jumped. A great many people were getting their
breakfasts, not with the cheerful alacrity which we use at home, but
rather with a portentous deliberation and concentration which did not
admit of much talking. The silence was broken only in one corner, where
a group of Americans seemed to have got accustomed to the atmosphere.
When the English breakfasters raised their eyes from their papers and
eggs-and-toast, they regarded my talkative compatriots with a look which
must have fairly chilled their tea. I hope nobody has ever looked at me
like that in England. The Americans were from Virginia, as I could tell
by their accent, and their 'c'y'arn't' and 'sis'r' and 'honey' and 'heap
better.' But I have no doubt the English people, in their usual loftily
comprehensive fashion, set the strangers down as 'Yankees,' and no
amount of explanation could have taught them that the 'Yankees are
the New Englanders, and that the name would once have been taken as an
insult by a Southerner. But the Virginians were blissfully indifferent
to the British estimate of themselves, and they talked as freely of
their shopping and sight-seeing as they would in Delmonico's or the
Brunswick. To be perfectly honest, a conviction came to me then that
sometimes we don't care enough. But, for my part, I liked listening to
that Virginian corner.

I'm afraid it was rather a late breakfast, and the lobby was full of
people strolling in and out when I went through on my way to my room. I
stood for a moment at the dining-room door looking at the lobby--I had
heard so many Chicago people describe it--and I noticed in the seats
that run around it, against the wall, two young women. They were leaning
back nonchalantly, watching the comers and the goers. Both of them had
their knees crossed, and one had her hands in her jacket pockets. A man
in the seat next them, who might or might not have belonged to them, was
smoking a large cigar. Two English ladies came out from breakfast behind
me, stood waiting for somebody, and said one to the other: 'Look at
those disgusting American girls!'

But I had seen the young women's boots. Just to be satisfied, I walked
up to one of them, and asked her if she could kindly tell me when I
ought to post letters for New York.

'The American maiyel goes out Wednesdays an' Satuhdays, I fancy,' the
young woman replied, 'but I'm not suah; it would be saifah to ask the
clahk!'

She spoke quite distinctly, so that the English ladies must have heard
her, and I am afraid they saw in my glance as I went upstairs that I had
intended to correct their mistake.

I started to see Mrs. Portheris at eleven o'clock on the morning of the
9th of April--a lovely day, a day which augured brightly and hopefully.
I waited carefully till eleven, thinking by that time my relation would
have had her breakfast in bed and been dressed, and perhaps have been
helped downstairs to her own particular sunny window, where I thought I
might see her faded, placid, sweet old face looking up from her knitting
and out into the busy street. Words have such an inspiring effect upon
the imagination. All this had emanated from the 'dear ones,' and I felt
confident and pleased and happy beforehand to be a dear one. I wore one
of my plainest walking-dresses--I love simplicity in dress--so as to
mitigate the shock to my relation as far as I could; but it was a
New York one, and it gave me a great deal of moral support. It may be
weak-minded in me, but I simply couldn't have gone to see my relation in
a hat and gloves that didn't match. Clothes and courage have so much to
do with each other.

The porter said that I had better take 'a'ansom,' or if I walked to
Charing Cross I could get 'a 'Ammersmith 'bus' which would take me to
Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly. I asked him if there were any street-cars
running that way. 'D'ye mean growlers, miss?' he said. 'I can get ye a
growler in 'arf a minute.' But I didn't know what he meant, and I didn't
like the sound of it. A 'growler' was probably not at all a proper thing
for a young lady to ride in; and I was determined to be considerate of
the feelings of my relation. I saw ladies in hansoms, but I had never
been in one at home, and they looked very tiltuppy. Also, they went
altogether too fast, and as it was a slippery day the horses attached
to them sat down and rested a great deal oftener than I thought I should
like. And when the animals were not poor old creatures that were obliged
to sit down in this precipitate way, they danced and pranced in a manner
which did not inspire me with confidence. In America our cab-horses know
themselves to be cab-horses, and behave accordingly--they have none of
the national theories about equality whatever; but the London quadrupeds
might be the greatest Democrats going from the airs they put on. And I
saw no street-cars anywhere. So I decided upon the 'Ammersmith 'bus, and
the porter pointed out the direction of Charing Cross.

It seems to me now that I was what you would call 'uncommonly' stupid
about it, but I hadn't gone very far before I realised that I did not
quite know what Charing Cross was. I had come, you see, from a city
where the streets are mostly numbered, and run pretty much in rows. The
more I thought about it, the less it seemed to mean anything. So I
asked a large policeman--the largest and straightest policeman, with
the reddest face I had ever seen: 'Mr. Officer,' I said, knowing your
fondness for titles in this country, what is Charing Cross?'

He smiled very kindly. 'Wy, miss,' he said, 'there's Charing Cross
Station, and there's Charing Cross 'Otel, and there's Charing Cross. Wot
were you wanting pertickeler?'

'Charing Cross!' said I.

'There it lies, in front of you!' the policeman said, waving his arm so
as to take in the whole of Trafalgar Square. 'It ain't possible for
you to miss it, Miss. And as three other people were waiting to ask
him something else, I thought I ought not to occupy his attention any
further. I kept straight on, in and out among the crowd, comparing it
in my mind with a New York or Chicago crowd. I found a great many more
kinds of people in it than there would be at home.

You are remarkably different in this country. We are a good deal the
same. I was not at all prepared then to make a comparison of averages,
but I noticed that life seemed to mean something more serious for most
of the people I met than it does with us. Hardly anybody was laughing,
and very few people were making unseemly haste about their business.
There was no eagerness and no enthusiasm. Neither was there any
hustling. In a crowd like that in Chicago everybody would have hustled,
and nobody would have minded it.

'Where is Charing Cross?' I asked one of the flower-women sitting by
the big iron entrances to the station. 'Right'ere, miss, ware you be
a-standin'! Buy a flower, miss? Only a penny! an' lovely they are! Do
buy one, laidy!' It was dreadfully pathetic, the way she said it, and
she had frightful holes in her shawl, and no hat or bonnet on. I had
never seen a woman selling things out of doors with nothing on her head
before, and it hurt me somehow. But I couldn't possibly have bought
her flowers--they were too much like her. So I gave her a sixpence,
and asked her where I could find an 'Ammersmith' bus. She thanked me so
volubly that I couldn't possibly understand her, but I made out that
if I stayed where I was an 'Ammersmith' bus would presently arrive. She
went on asking me to buy flowers though, so I walked a little farther
off. I waited a long time, and not a single 'bus appeared with
'Ammersmith on it. Finally, I asked another policeman. 'There!' he said,
as one of the great lumbering concerns rolled up--'that's one of 'em
now! You'll get it!' I didn't like to dispute with an officer of the
law, but I had seen plenty of that particular red variety of 'bus go
past, and to be quite certain I said: 'But isn't that a Hammersmith
one?' The policeman looked quite cross. 'Well, isn't that what you're
a-askin' for? 'Ammersmith an' 'Ammersmith--it's all the saime, dependin'
on 'ow you pernounces it. Some people calls it 'Ammersmith, an' some
people calls it 'Ammersmith!' and he turned a broad and indignant back
upon me. I flew for the 'bus, and the conductor, in a friendly way,
helped me on by my elbow.

I did not think, before, that anything could wobble like an Atlantic
steamer, but I experienced nothing more trying coming over than that
Hammersmith 'bus. And there were no straps from the roof to hold on
by--nothing but a very high and inconvenient handrail; and the vehicle
seemed quite full of stout old gentlemen with white whiskers, who looked
deeply annoyed when I upset their umbrellas and unintentionally plunged
upon their feet. 'More room houtside, miss!' the conductor said--which
I considered impertinent, thinking that he meant in the road. 'Is there
any room on top?' I asked him, because I had walked on so many of the
old gentlemen's feet that I felt uncomfortable about it. 'Yes, miss;
that's wot I'm a-sayin'--lots o' room houtside!' So I took advantage of
a lame man's getting off to mount the spiral staircase at the back of
the'bus and take a seat on top. It is a pity, isn't it, that Noah didn't
think of an outside spiral staircase like that to his ark. He might have
accommodated so many more of the animals, providing them, of course,
with oilskin covers to keep off the wet, as you do. But even coming from
a bran new and irreverent country, where nobody thinks of consulting the
Old Testament for models of public conveyances, anybody can see that in
many respects you have improved immensely upon Noah.

It was lovely up there--exactly like coming on deck after being in a
stuffy little cabin in the steamer--a good deal of motion, but lots of
fresh air. I was a little nervous at first, but as nobody fell off the
tops of any of the other 'buses, I concluded that it was not a thing you
were expected to do, and presently forgot all about it looking at
the people swarming below me. My position made me feel immeasurably
superior--at such a swinging height above them all--and I found myself
speculating about them and criticising them, as I never should have done
walking. I had never ridden on the top of anything before; it gave me
an entirely new revelation of my fellow-creatures--if your monarchical
feelings will allow that expression from a Republican. I must say I
liked it--looking down upon people who were travelling in the same
direction as I was, only on a level below. I began to understand
the agreeableness of class distinctions, and I wondered whether the
arrangement of seats on the tops of the 'buses was not, probably, a
material result of aristocratic prejudices.

Oh, I liked it through and through, that first ride on a London 'bus! To
know just how I liked it, and why, and how and why we all like it from
the other side of the Atlantic, you must be born and brought up, as most
of us have been, in a city twenty-five or fifty years old, where the
houses are all made of clean white or red brick, with clean green
lawns and geranium beds and painted iron fences; where rows of nice new
maple-trees are planted in the clean-shaved boulevards, and fresh-planed
wooden sidewalks run straight for a mile or two at a time, and all the
city blocks stand in their proper right angles--which are among our
advantages, I have no doubt; but our advantages have a way of making
your disadvantages more interesting.

Having been monarchists all your lives, however, you can't possibly
understand what it is to have been brought up in fresh paint. I ought
not to expect it of you. If you could, though, I should find it easier
to tell you, according to my experience, why we are all so devoted to
London.

There was the smell, to begin with. I write 'there was,' because I
regret to say that during the past few months I have become accustomed
to it, and for me that smell is done up in a past tense for ever;
so that I can quite understand a Londoner not believing in it. The
Hammersmith 'bus was in the Strand when I first became conscious of it,
and I noticed afterwards that it was always more pronounced down there,
in the heart of the City, than in Kensington, for instance. It was no
special odour or collection of odours that could be distinguished--it
was rather an abstract smell--and yet it gave a kind of solidity and
nutriment to the air, and made you feel as if your lungs digested it.
There was comfort and support and satisfaction in that smell, and I
often vainly try to smell it again.

We find the irregularity of London so gratifying, too. The way the
streets turn and twist and jostle each other, and lead up into nothing,
and turn around and come back again, and assume aliases, and break out
into circuses and stray into queer, dark courts, where small boys go
round on one roller skate, or little green churchyards only a few yards
from the cabs and the crowd, where there is nobody but the dead people,
who have grown tired of it all.

Original From the top of the Hammersmith 'bus, as it went through the Strand that morning, I saw funny little openings that made me long to get down and look into them; but I had my relation to think of, so I didn't.

Then there is the well-settled, well-founded look of everything, as if
it had all come ages ago, and meant to stay for ever, and just go on the
way it had before. We like that--the security and the permanence of it,
which seems to be in some way connected with the big policemen, and the
orderly crowd, and 'Keep to the Left' on the signboards, and the British
coat of arms over so many of the shops. I thought that morning that
those shops were probably the property of the Crown, but I was very soon
corrected about that. At home I am afraid we fluctuate considerably,
especially in connection with cyclones and railway interests--we are
here to-day, and there is no telling where we shall be to-morrow. So the
abiding kind of city gives us a comfortable feeling of confidence. It
was not very long before even I, on the top of the Hammersmith 'bus,
felt that I was riding an Institution, and no matter to what extent it
wobbled it might be relied upon not to come down.

I don't know whether you will like our admiring you on account of
your griminess, but we do. At home we are so monotonously clean,
architecturally, that we can't make any aesthetic pretensions whatever.
There is nothing artistic about white brick. It is clean and neat and
sanitary, but you get tired of looking at it, especially when it is made
up in patterns with red brick mixed in. And since you must be dirty,
it may gratify you to know that you are very soothing to Transatlantic
nerves suffering from patterns like that. But you are also misleading.
'I suppose,' I said to a workman in front of me as we entered Fleet
Street, 'that is some old palace? Do you know the date of it?'

'No, miss,' he answered, 'that ain't no palace. Them's the new Law
Courts, only built the last ten year!'

'The new Law Courts!' 'The Strand!' 'Fleet Street!' 'Ludgate Hill!'
'Cheapside!' and I was actually in those famous places, riding through
them on a 'bus, part of their multitude. The very names on the street
corners held fascination enough, and each of them gave me the separate
little thrill of the altogether unexpected. I had unconsciously believed
that all these names were part of the vanished past I had connected them
with, forgetting that in London names endure. But I began to feel that I
ought to be arriving. 'Conductor,' I said, as he passed, 'stop the 'bus,
and let me get down at Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly.'

'We're goin' strait awai from it, miss; you get that red 'bus standin'
over there--that'll taike you!'

So I went all the way back again, and on to my relation's, on the top
of the red 'bus, not at all regretting my mistake. But it made it almost
twelve o'clock when I rang the bell--Mrs. Portheris's bell--at the door
of her house in Half-Moon Street, Piccadilly.





IV



FROM the outside I didn't think much of Mrs. Portheris's house. It was
very tall, and very plain, and very narrow, and quite expressionless,
except that it wore a sort of dirty brown frown. Like its neighbours, it
had a well in front of it, and steps leading down into the well, and
an iron fence round the steps, and a brass bell-handle lettered
'Tradesmen.' Like its neighbours, too, it wore boxes of spotty black
greenery on the window-sills--in fact, it was very like its neighbours,
except that it had one or two solemn little black balconies that looked
as if nobody ever sat in them running across the face of it, and a tall,
shallow porch, with two or three extremely white stone steps before the
front door. Half-Moon Street, to me, looked like a family of houses--a
family differing in heights and complexions and the colour of its hair,
but sharing all the characteristics of a family--of an old family. A
person draws a great many conclusions from the outside of a house,
and my conclusion from the outside of my relation's house was that she
couldn't be very well off to be obliged to live in such a plain and
gloomy locality, with 'Tradesmen' on the ground-floor; and I hoped they
were not any noisy kind of tradesmen, such as shoemakers or carpenters,
who would disturb her early in the morning. The clean-scrubbed stone
steps reflected very favourably, I thought, upon Mrs. Portheris,
and gave the house, in spite of its grimy, old-fashioned, cramped
appearance, a look of respectability which redeemed it. But I did not
see at any window, behind the spotty evergreens, the sweet, sad face of
my relation, though there were a hand-organ and a monkey and a German
band all operating within twenty yards of the house.

I rang the bell. The door opened a great deal more quickly than you
might imagine from the time I am taking to tell about it, and I was
confronted by my first surprise in London. It was a man--a neat, smooth,
pale, round-faced man in livery, rather fat and very sad. It was also
Mrs. Portheris's interior. This was very dark and very quiet, but what
light there was fell richly, through a square, stained-glass window at
the end of the hall, upon the red and blue of some old china above
a door, and a collection of Indian spears, and a twisting old oak
staircase that glowed with colour. Mrs. Portheris's exterior had
prepared me for something different. I did not know then that in London
everything is a matter of the inside--I had not seen a Duchess living
crowded up to her ears with other people's windows. With us the outside
counts so tremendously. An American duchess, if you can imagine such
a person, would consider it only due to the fitness of things that she
should have an imposing front yard, and at least room enough at the back
for the clothes-lines. But this has nothing to do with Half-Moon Street.

'Does Mrs. Portheris live here?' I asked, thinking it was just possible
she might have moved.

'Yes, miss,' said the footman, with a subdued note of interrogation.

I felt relieved. 'Is she--is she well?' I inquired.

'Quite well, miss,' he replied, with the note of interrogation a little
more obvious.

'I should like to see her. Is she in?'

'I'll h'inquire, miss, 'n 'Oo shall I sai, miss?'

I thought I would prepare my relation gradually. 'A lady from Chicago,'
said I.

'Very well, miss. Will you walk upstairs, miss?'

In America drawing-rooms are on the ground-floor. I thought he wanted to
usher me into Mrs. Portheris's bedroom.

'No, sir,' I said; 'I'll wait here.' Then I thought of Mr. Mafferton,
and of what he had said about saying 'sir' to people, and my sensations
were awful. I have never done it once since.

The footman reappeared in a few minutes with a troubled and apologetic
countenance. 'Mrs. Portheris says as she doesn't want anythink, miss! I
told her as I didn't understand you were disposin' of anythink; but that
was 'er message, miss.'

I couldn't help laughing--it was so very funny to think of my being
taken for a lady-pedlar in the house of my relation. 'I'm very glad
she's in,' I said. 'That is quite a mistake! Tell her it's Miss Mamie
Wick, daughter of Colonel Joshua R. Wick, of Chicago; but if she's lying
down, or anything, I can drop in again.'

He was away so long that I began to wonder if my relation suspected
me of dynamite in any form, and he came back looking more anxious than
ever. 'Mrs. Portheris says she's very sorry, miss, and will you please
to walk up?' 'Certainly,' I said, 'but I hope I won't be disturbing
her!'

And I walked up.

It was a big square room, with a big square piano in it, and long
lace curtains, and two or three gilt-framed mirrors, and a great
many old-fashioned ornaments under glass cases, and a tinkling glass
chandelier in the middle. There were several oil-paintings on the
walls--low-necked portraits and landscapes, principally dark-green
and black and yellow, with cows, and quantities of lovely china. The
furniture was red brocade, with spindly legs, and there was a tall palm
in a pot, which had nothing to do with the rest of the room, by itself
in a corner. I remembered these things afterwards.

At the time I noticed chiefly two young persons with the pinkest cheeks
I ever saw, out of a picture-book, sitting near a window. They were
dressed exactly alike, and their hair hung down their backs to their
waists, although they must have been seventeen; and they sat up very
nicely indeed on two of the red chairs, one occupied with worsted work,
and the other apparently reading aloud to her, though she stopped when I
came in. I have seen something since at Madame Tussaud's--but I daresay
you have often noticed it yourself. And standing in the middle of the
room, with her hand on a centre-table, was Mrs. Portheris.

My first impression was that she had been standing there for the last
hour in that immovable way, with exactly that remarkable expression; and
it struck me that she could go on standing for the next without altering
it, quite comfortably--she seemed to be so solidly placed there, with
her hand upon the table. Though I wouldn't call Mrs. Portheris stout,
she was massive--rather, of an impressive build. Her skirt fell in a
commanding way from her waist, though it hitched up a little in front,
which spoiled the effect. She had broad square shoulders, and a lace
collar, and a cap with pink ribbons in it, and grey hair smooth on each
side of her face, and large well-cut features, and the expression I
spoke of. I've seen the expression since among the Egyptian antiquities
in the British Museum, but I am unable to describe it. 'Armed
neutrality' is the only phrase that occurs to me in connection with it,
and that by no means does it justice. For there was curiosity in it,
as well as hostility and reserve--but I won't try. And she kept her
hand--it was her right hand--upon the table.

'Miss Wick' she said, bowing, and dwelling upon the name with strong
doubt. 'I believe I have a connection of that name in America. Is your
father's name Joshua Peter?'

'Yes, Mrs. Portheris,' I replied; 'and he says he is your nephew. I've
just come. How do you do?' I said this because it was the only thing the
situation seemed to warrant me saying.

'Oh, I am quite in my usual health, thank you! My nephew by marriage--a
former marriage--a very distant connection.'

'Three thousand five hundred miles,' said I; 'he lives in Chicago. You
have never been over to see us, Mrs. Portheris. At this point I walked
across to one of the spindly red chairs and sat down. I thought then
that she had forgotten to ask me; but even now, when I know she hadn't,
I am not at all sorry I sat down. I find it is possible to stand up too
much in this country.

The old lady gathered herself up and looked at me. 'Where are your
father and mother?' she said.

'In Chicago, Mrs. Portheris. All very well, thank you! I had a cable
from them this morning, before I left the hotel. Kind regards to you.'

Mrs. Portheris looked at me in absolute silence. Then she deliberately
arranged her back draperies and sat down too--not in any amiable way,
but as if the situation must be faced.

'Margaret and Isabel,' she said to the two young pink persons, 'go to
your rooms, dears!' And she waited till the damsels, each with a little
shy smile and blush, gathered up their effects and went, before she
continued the conversation. As they left the room I observed that
they wore short dresses, buttoned down the back. It began to grow
very interesting to me, after the first shock of finding this kind of
relation was over. I found myself waiting for what was to come next
with the deepest interest. In America we are very fond of types--perhaps
because we have so few among ourselves--and it seemed to me, as I
sat there on Mrs. Portheris's spindly red chair, that I had come
into violent contact with a type of the most valuable and pronounced
description. Privately I resolved to stay as long as I could, and lose
no opportunity of observing it. And my first observation was that Mrs.
Portheris's expression was changing--losing its neutrality and beginning
to radiate active opposition and stern criticism, with an uncompromising
sense of duty twisted in at the corners of the mouth. There was no
agitation whatever, and I thought with an inward smile of my relation's
nerves.

'Then I suppose,' said Mrs. Portheris--the supposition being of the
vaguest possible importance--'that you are with a party of Americans.
It seems to be an American idea to go about in hordes. I never could
understand it--to me it would be most obnoxious. How many are there of
you?'

'One, Mrs. Portheris--and I'm the one. Poppa and momma had set their
hearts on coming. Poppa thought of getting up an Anglo-American Soda
Trust, and momma wanted particularly to make your acquaintance--your
various Christmas cards have given us all such a charming idea of
you--but at the last minute something interfered with their plans and
they had to give it up. They told me to tell you how sorry they were.'

'Something interfered with their plans! But nothing interfered with your
plans!'

'Oh, no; it was some political business of poppa's--nothing to keep me!'

'Then do I actually understand that your parents, of their own free
will, permitted you to cross the Atlantic alone?'

'I hope you do, Mrs. Portheris; but if it's not quite clear to you, I
don't mind explaining it again.'

'Upon my word! And you are at an hotel--which hotel?' When I told Mrs.
Portheris the Métropole, her indignation mounted to her cap, and one of
the pink ribbons shook violently.

'It is very American!' she said; and I felt that Mrs. Portheris could
rise to no more forcible a climax of disapproval.

But I did not mind Mrs. Portheris's disapproval; in fact, according to
my classification of her, I should have been disappointed if she had not
disapproved--it would have been out of character. So I only smiled as
sweetly as I could, and said, 'So am I.'

'Is it not very expensive?' There was a note of angry wonder as well as
horror in this.

'I don't know, Mrs. Portheris. It's very comfortable.' 'I never heard of
such a thing in my life!' said Mrs. Portheris. 'It's--it's outrageous!
It's--it's not customary!

I call it criminal lenience on the part of my nephew to allow it, he
must have taken leave of his senses!'

'Don't say anything nasty about poppa, Mrs. Portheris,' I remarked; and
she paused.

'As to your mother----'

'Momma is a lady of great intelligence and advanced views,' I
interrupted, 'though she isn't very strong. And she is very well
acquainted with me.'

'Advanced views are your ruin in America! May I ask how you found your
way here?'

'On a 'bus, Mrs. Portheris--the red Hammersmith kind. On two 'buses,
rather, because I took the wrong one first, and went miles straight away
from here; but I didn't mind it--I liked it.'

'In an omnibus I suppose you mean. You couldn't very well be on
it, unless you went on the top!' And Mrs. Portheris smiled rather
derisively.

'I did; I went on the top,' I returned calmly. 'And it was lovely.'

Mrs. Portheris very nearly lost her self-control in her effort to grasp
this enormity. Her cap bristled again, and the muscles round her mouth
twitched quite perceptibly.

'Careering all over London on the top of an omnibus!' she ejaculated.
'Looking for my house! And in that frock!' I felt about ten when she
talked about my 'frock.' 'Couldn't you feel that you were altogether too
smart for such a position?'

'No, indeed, Mrs. Portheris!' I replied, unacquainted with the idiom.
'When I got down off the first omnibus in Cheapside I felt as if I
hadn't been half smart enough!'

She did not notice my misunderstanding. By the time I had finished my
sentence she was rapping the table with suppressed excitement.

'Miss Wick!' she said--and I had expected her to call me Mamie, and say
I was the image of poppa!--'you are the daughter of my nephew--which can
hardly be called a connection at all--but on that account I will give
you a piece of advice. The top of an omnibus is not a proper place for
you--I might say, for any connection of mine, however distant! I would
not feel that I was doing my duty toward my nephew's daughter if I did
not tell you that you must not go there! Don't on any account do it
again! It is a thing people never do!'

'Do they upset?' I asked.

'They might. But apart from that, I must ask you, on personal--on family
grounds--always to go inside. In Chicago you may go outside as much as
you like, but in London----'

'Oh, no!' I interrupted, 'I wouldn't for the world--in Chicago!' which
Mrs. Portheris didn't seem to understand.

I had stayed dauntlessly for half an hour--I was so much interested in
Mrs. Portheris--and I began to feel my ability to prolong the interview
growing weaker. I was sorry--I would have given anything to have heard
her views upon higher education and female suffrage, and the Future
State and the Irish Question; but it seemed impossible to get her
thoughts away from the appalling Impropriety which I, on her spindly
red chair, represented I couldn't blame her for that--I suppose no
impropriety bigger than a spider had ever got into her drawing-room
before. So I got up to go. Mrs. Portheris also rose, with majesty. I
think she wanted to show me what, if I had been properly brought up, I
might have expected reasonably to develop into. She stood in the midst
of her red brocaded furniture, with her hands folded, a model of what
bringing up can do if it is unflinchingly persevered in, and all the
mirrors reflected the ideal she presented. I felt, beside her, as if I
had never been brought up at all.

'Have you any friends in London?' she asked, with a very weak solution
of curiosity in her tone, giving me her hand to facilitate my going, and
immediately ringing the bell.

'I think not,' I said with, decision.

'But you will not continue to stay at the Métropole! I beg that you
will not remain another day at the Métropole! It is not usual for young
ladies to stay at hotels. You must go to some place where only ladies
are received, and as soon as you are settled in one communicate at
once with the rector of the parish--alone as you are, that is quite a
necessary step, lights and fires will probably be extra.'

'I thought,' said I, 'of going to the Lady Guides' Association--we have
heard of it in Chicago through some friends, who went round every day
for three weeks with lady-guides, and found it simply fascinating--and
asking them to get me a private family to board with. I particularly
wished to see what a private family is like in England.'

Mrs. Portheris frowned. 'I could never bring myself to approve of
lady-guides,' she said. 'There is something in the idea that is
altogether too--American.' I saw that the conversation was likely to
grow personal again, so I said: 'Well, good-bye, Mrs. Portheris!' and
was just going, when 'Stop!' said my relation, 'there is Miss Purkiss.'

'Is there?' said I.

'Certainly--the very thing! Miss Purkiss is a very old friend of mine,
in reduced circumstances. I've known her thirty-five years. She is an
excellent woman, with the most trustworthy views upon all matters. In
so far as our widely different social positions have permitted, Miss
Purkiss and I have been on terms, I may say, of sisterly intimacy
since before you were born. She has no occupation now, having lost her
position as secretary to the Home for Incurable Household Pets through
ill-health, and a very limited income. She lives in an excessively
modest way in Upper Baker Street--very convenient to both the omnibuses
and Underground--and if you cast in your lot with hers while you are in
England, Miss Wick'--here Mrs. Portheris grew almost demonstrative--'you
need never go out alone. I need not say that she is a lady, but her
circumstances will probably necessitate her asking you rather more
than the usual rate for board and lodging, in compensation for her
chaperonage and companionship. All I can say is, that both will be very
thorough. I will give you Miss Purkiss's address at once, and if you
drive there immediately you will be sure to find her in. John, call
a hansom!' And Mrs. Portheris went to her writing-table and wrote the
address.

'There!' she said, folding it up and giving it to me. 'By all means try
to arrange with Miss Purkiss, and she, being a friend of my own, some
afternoon, perhaps--I must think about it--I may ask her to bring you to
tea! Good-bye!'

As the door closed behind me I heard Mrs. Portheris's voice on the
landing. 'Margaret and Isabel,' it said, 'you may come down now!'

'Ware to, miss?' said the driver.

'Hôtel Métropole,' said I. And as we turned into Piccadilly a little
flutter of torn white paper went back on the wind to Mrs. Portheris. It
was Miss Purkiss's address.

After lunch I made careful notes of Mrs. Portheris, and then spent half
an hour in the midst of my trunks, looking in the Board and Lodging'
column of the 'Morning Post' for accommodation which promised to differ
as radically as possible from Miss Purkiss's.





V

MY principal idea was to get away as soon as possible from the
Métropole. So long as I was located there I was within the grasp of my
relation; and as soon as she found out my insubordination in the matter
of her advice, I had no doubt whatever that my relation would appear,
with Miss Purkiss, all in rusty black, behind her--a contingency I
wished to avoid. Miss Purkiss, I reflected, would probably be another
type, and types were interesting, but not to live with--my relation
had convinced me of that. And as to Mrs. Portheris herself, while I had
certainly enjoyed what I had been privileged to see of her, her society
was a luxury regarding which I felt that I could exercise considerable
self-denial. I did not really contemplate being forced into Miss Purkiss
and Upper Baker Street by Mrs. Portheris against my will, not for
a moment; but I was afraid the situation would be presented on
philanthropic grounds, which would be disagreeable. Miss Purkiss as a
terror I felt equal to, but Miss Purkiss as an object of charity might
cow me. And Miss Purkiss in any staying capacity was not, I felt, what
I came to Great Britain to experience. So I studied the columns of the
'Morning Post' diligently for a haven of refuge from Miss Purkiss.

I found it difficult to make a selection, the havens were so very
different, and all so superior. I believe you talk about the originality
of American advertising. I never in my life saw a newspaper page to
compare in either imagination or vocabulary with the one I scanned that
day at the Métropole. It seemed that I could be taken all over London,
at prices varying from one 'g.' to three 'gs.' per week, although the
surprising cheapness of this did not strike me until I had laboriously
calculated in dollars and cents the exact value of a 'g.' I know now
that it is a term of English currency exclusively employed in Bond
Street, Piccadilly, Regent and Oxford Streets--they never give you a
price there in any other. And the phrases descriptive of the various
homes which were awaiting me were so beautiful. 'Excellent meat
breakfast,' 'a liberal and charmingly-refined home,' 'a mother's devoted
supervision,' 'fresh young society,' 'fashionably situated and
elegantly furnished,' 'just vacated by a clergyman,' 'foreign languages
understood'--which would doubtless include American--'a lofty standard
of culture in this establishment.' I wondered if they kept it under
glass. I was struck with the number of people who appeared in print
with 'offerings' of a domiciliary nature. 'A widow lady of cheerful
temperament and artistic tastes offers----' 'The daughter of a late
Civil Servant with a larger house than she requires offers----' This
must have been a reference put in to excite sympathy, otherwise, what
was the use of advertising the gentleman after he was dead? Even from
the sympathetic point of view, I think it was a mistake, for who would
care to go and settle in a house the minute the crape was off the door?
Nobody.

Not only original advertisements of the kind I was looking for, but
original advertisements of kinds I wasn't looking for, appealed to my
interest and took up my time that afternoon.

'Would any one feel disposed to lend an actress five pounds?

'Temporary home wanted, with a family of quiet habits, in a healthful
neighbourhood, who can give best references, for a Persian cat.' 'An
elderly country rector and his wife, in town for a month's holiday,
would be glad of a little pleasant society.'

'A young subaltern, of excellent family, in unfortunate circumstances,
implores the loan of a hundred pounds to save him from ruin. Address,
care of his solicitors.' 'A young gentleman, handsome, an orphan, of
good education and agreeable address, wishes to meet with elderly couple
with means (inherited) who would adopt him. Would make himself pleasant
in the house. Church of England preferred, but no serious objection to
Nonconformists.'

We have nothing like this in America. It was a revelation to me--a most
private and intimate revelation of a social body that I had always been
told no outsider could look into without the very best introductions. Of
course, there was the veil of 'A. B.' and 'Lurline,' and the solicitors'
address, but that seemed as thin and easily torn as the 'Morning Post,'
and much more transparent, showing all the struggling mass, with its
hands outstretched, on the other side. And yet I have heard English
people say how 'personal' our newspapers are!

My choice was narrowed considerably by so many of the addresses being
other places than London, which I thought very peculiar in a London
newspaper. Having come to see London, I did not want to live in Putney,
or Brixton, or Chelsea, or Maida Vale. I supposed vaguely that there
must be cathedrals or Roman remains, or attractions of some sort, in
these places, or they would not be advertised in London; but for the
time being, at any rate, I intended to content myself with the capital.
So I picked out two or three places near the British Museum--I should be
sure, I thought, to want to spend a great deal of time there--and went
to see about them.

They were as much the same as the advertisements were different,
especially from the outside. From the outside they were exactly
alike--so much so that I felt, after I had seen them all, that if
another boarder in the same row chose to approach me on any occasion,
and say that she was me, I should be entirely unable to contradict her.
This in itself was prejudicial. In America, if there is one thing we are
particular about, it is our identity. Without our identities we are in
a manner nowhere. I did not feel disposed to run the risk of losing mine
the minute I arrived in England, especially as I knew that it is a thing
Americans who stay here for any length of time are extremely apt to do.
Nevertheless, I rang the three door-bells I left the Métropole with
the intention of ringing; and there were some minor differences inside,
although my pen insists upon recording the similarities instead. I spent
the same length of time upon the doorstep, for instance, before the same
tumbled and apologetic-looking servant girl appeared, wiping her hands
upon her apron, and let me into the same little dark hall, with the same
interminable stairs twisting over themselves out of it, and the smell of
the same dinner accompanying us all the way up. To be entirely just, it
was a wholesome dinner, but there was so much of it in the air that I
very soon felt as if I was dining unwarrantably, and ought to pay for
it. In every case the stair-carpet went up two flights, and after that
there was oilcloth, rather forgetful as to its original pattern, and
much frayed as to its edges--and after that, nothing. Always pails and
brushes on the landings--what there is about pails and brushes that
should make them such a distinctive feature of boarding-house landings
I don't know, but they are. Not a single elevator in all three. I
asked the servant-girl in the first place, about half-way up the fourth
flight, if there was no elevator? 'No, indeed, miss,' she said: 'I
wishes there was! But them's things you won't find but very seldom 'ere.
We've 'ad American ladies 'ere before, and they allus asks for 'em, but
they soon finds out they ain't to be 'ad, miss.'

Now, how did she know I was an 'American lady'? I didn't really mind
about the elevator, but this I found annoying, in spite of my desire
to preserve my identity. In the course of conversation with this young
woman, I discovered that it was not my own possibly prospective dinner
that I smelt on the stairs. I asked about the hour for meals. 'Aou, we
never gives meals, miss!' she said. 'It's only them boardin' 'aouses as
gives meals in! Mrs. Jones, she only lets apartments. But there's a
very nice restirong in Tottinim Court Road, quite convenient, an' your
breakfast, miss, you could 'ave cooked 'ere, but, of course, it would be
hextra, miss.'

Then I remembered all I had read about people in London living in
'lodgings,' and having their tea and sugar and butter and eggs consumed
unrighteously by the landlady, who was always represented as a buxom
person in calico, with a smut on her face, and her arms akimbo, and an
awful hypocrite. For a minute I thought of trying it, for the novelty
of the experience, but the loneliness of it made me abandon the idea. I
could not possibly content myself with the society of a coal-scuttle
and two candlesticks, and the alternative of going round sightseeing by
myself. Nor could I in the least tell whether Mrs. Jones was agreeable,
or whether I could expect her to come up and visit with me sometimes in
the evenings; besides, if she always wore smuts and had her arms akimbo,
I shouldn't care about asking her. In America a landlady might as likely
as not be a member of a Browning Society, and give 'evenings,' but that
kind of landlady seems indigenous to the United States. And after Mrs.
Portheris, I felt that I required the companionship of something human.

In the other two places I saw the landladies themselves in their
respective drawing-rooms on the second floor. One of the drawing-rooms
was 'draped' in a way that was quite painfully aesthetic, considering
the paucity of the draperies. The flower-pots were draped, and the
lamps; there were draperies round the piano-legs, and round the clock;
and where there were not draperies there were bows, all of the same
scanty description. The only thing that had not made an effort to clothe
itself in the room was the poker, and by contrast it looked very nude.
There were some Japanese ideas around the room, principally a paper
umbrella; and a big painted palm-leaf fan from India made an incident in
one corner. I thought, even before I saw the landlady, that it would be
necessary to live up to a high standard of starvation in that house, and
she confirmed the impression. She was a Miss Hippy, a short, stoutish
person, with very smooth hair, thin lips, and a nose like an angle of
the Pyramids, preternaturally neat in her appearance, with a long
gold watch-chain round her neck. She came into the room in a way that
expressed reduced circumstances and a protest against being obliged to
do it. I feel that the particular variety of smile she gave me with her
'Good morning!'--although it was after 4 P.M.--was one she kept for the
use of boarders only, and her whole manner was an interrogation. When
she said, 'Is it for yourself?' in answer to my question about rooms, I
felt that I was undergoing a cross-examination, the result of which Miss
Hippy was mentally tabulating.

'We have a few rooms,' said Miss Hippy, 'certainly.' Then she cast her
eyes upon the floor, and twisted her fingers up in her watch-chain, as
if in doubt. 'Shall you be long in London?'

I said I couldn't tell exactly.

'Have you--are you a professional of any kind?' inquired Miss Hippy.
'Not that I object to professional ladies--they are often very
pleasant. Madame Solfreno resided here for several weeks while she
was retrenching; but Madame Solfreno was, of course, more or less
an exceptional woman. She did not care--at least, while she was
retrenching--for the society of other professionals, and she said that
was the great advantage of my house--none of them ever would come here.
Still, as I say, I have no personal objection to professionals. In
fact, we have had head-ladies here; and real ladies, I must say, I have
generally found them. Although hands, of course, I would not take!'

I said I was not a professional.

'Oh!' said Miss Hippy, pitiably baffled. 'Then, perhaps, you are not
a--a young lady. That is, of course, one can see you are that; but you
are--you are married, perhaps?'

'I am not married, madame,' I said. 'Have you any rooms to let?'

Miss Hippy rose, ponderingly. 'I might as well show you what we have,'
she said.

'I think,' I replied, 'that you might as well. Otherwise I will not
detain you any longer.' At which, curiously enough, all hesitation
vanished from Miss Hippy's manner, and she showed me all her rooms, and
expatiated upon all their advantages with a single eye to persuading me
to occupy one of them. So comprehensively voluble was she, indeed, and
so impenetrably did she fill up the door with her broad person when we
came down again, that I found no loophole of escape anywhere, and was
obliged to descend to equivocal measures. 'Have you any rooms, Miss
Hippy,' I inquired, 'on the ground floor?'

'That,' returned Miss Hippy, as if I had put her the only possible
question that she was not prepared for, 'I have not. A gentleman from
the West Indies'--Miss Hippy went on impressively--'hardly ever
without inflammatory rheumatism, which you will admit makes stairs an
impossibility for him, occupies my only ground-floor bedroom--just off
the dining-room!'

'That is unfortunate,' I said, 'since I think in this house I would
prefer a room on the ground-floor. But if I decide to take one of the
others I will let you know, Miss Hippy.'

Miss Hippy's countenance fell, changed, and again became expressive of
doubt--this time offensively.

'I've not asked for any references,' though, of course, it is my
custom----'

'You will receive references,' I interrupted, 'as soon as you require
them. Good afternoon!' We were standing in the hall, and Miss Hippy,
from force of circumstances, was obliged to unfasten the door; but I did
not hear from her, as I passed out into the street, any responsive 'Good
afternoon!'

My third experience was quite antipodal to Miss Hippy. Her parlour was
Japanesy, too, in places, but it was mostly chipped; and it had a great
many rather soiled fat cushions in it, quite a perceptible odour of beer
and tobacco, and a pair of gentleman's worked slippers under the sofa.
The atmosphere was relaxing after Miss Hippy, and suggested liberality
of all sorts; but the slippers, to say nothing of the odours, which
might have floated in from other regions, made it impossible. I waited
for the lady of the house a conscious hypocrite.

She came in at last voluminously, rather out of breath, but with great
warmth of manner. 'Do sit down!' she said.

'Now, it does seem strange! Only las' night, at the table, we were
sayin' how much we wanted one more lady boarder! You see, I've got four
young gentlemen in the City here, and of us ladies there's just four, so
we sometimes get up a little dance amongst ourselves in the evenin's.
It amuses the young people, and much better wear out carpets than pay
doctors' bills, say I. Now, I generally play, an' that leaves only
three ladies for the four gentlemen, you see! Now, isn't it a curious
coincidence,' she said, leaning forward with a broad and confident
smile, 'that you should have come in to-day, just after we were savin'
how nice it would be if there were enough to get up the Lancers!'

I bowed my acknowledgments.

'You want a room for yourself, I suppose,' my hostess went on,
cheerfully. 'My top flat, I'm sorry to say, is every bit taken.
There isn't an inch of room up there; but I've got a beautiful little
apartment on the ground-floor you could use as a bed-sittin' room,
lookin' out on what green grass we have. I'll show it to you!'--and she
led me across the hall to a dismantled cupboard, the door of which she
threw open. 'That,' she said, 'you could have for twenty-five shillin's
a week. Of course, it is small, but then--so is the price!' and she
smiled the cheerful, accustomed smile that went with the joke. 'I've
another up here,' she said, leading the way to the first landing,
'rather bigger--thirty shillin's. You see, they're both bein' turned out
at present, so it's rather unfavourable!'--and the lady drew in the deep
breath she had lost going up the stairs.

I could think of only one thing to say: 'I believe you said your top
flat was all taken,' I remarked amiably. She was such a good-natured
soul, I couldn't bear to say anything that would hurt her feelings.
'That is unfortunate. I particularly wanted a room in a top flat. But if
I decide on one of these others I'll let you know!' There were two fibs,
and diametrically opposed fibs, within half an hour, and I know it's
excessively wrong to fib; but, under the circumstances, what could you
say?

'Do, miss. And, though I wouldn't for the world persuade you, I
certainly hope you will, for I'm sure you'd make a very pleasant
addition to our party. I'll just let you out myself.' And she did.





VI

I DROVE straight back to the Métropole, very thankful indeed that that
was evidently the thing to do next. If there had been no evident thing
to do next, I was so depressed in my mind that I think I would have
taken a ticket to Liverpool that night, and my passage to New York on
the first steamer that was leaving. I won't say what I did in the cab,
but I spoilt a perfectly new veil doing it. London seemed dingy and
noisy, and puzzling and unattractive, and always going to rain. I
thought of our bright clear air in Chicago, and our nice clean houses,
and our street-cars, and our soda-water fountains, and poppa and momma,
and always knowing everybody and what to do under every circumstance;
and all the way to the Métropole I loved Chicago and I hated London.
But there was the Métropole, big and solid and luxurious, and a fact
I understood; and there was the nice respectful housemaid on my
corridor--it would be impossible to convince you how different servants
are with us--and a delightful little fire in my room, and a tin pitcher
of hot water smoking in the basin, and a sort of air of being personally
looked after that was very comforting to my nerves. While I was
getting ready for dinner I analysed my state of mind, and blamed myself
severely, for I found that I could not justify one of the disagreeable
things I had been thinking in any philosophical way. I had simply
allowed the day's experiences, capped by my relation in the morning, to
overcome my entire nerve-system, which was childish and unreasonable. I
wished then, and often since, that Providence had given us a more useful
kind of nerve-system on our side of the Atlantic--something constructed
solidly, on the British plan; and just as I was wishing that there came
a rap. A rap has comparatively no significance until it comes at your
bedroom door when you are alone in a big hotel two thousand five hundred
miles from home. Then it means something. This one meant two cards on a
salver and a message. One of the cards read: 'Mrs. Cummers Portheris,'
with 'Miss Purkiss' written under it in pencil; the other, 'Mr. Charles
Mafferton,' with '49, Hertford Street. Mayfair,' in one corner, and 'The
Isthmian Club' in the other.

'Is she there now?' I asked the servant in acute suspense.

'No, miss. The ladies, they called about 'alf-past three, and we was to
say that one lady was to be 'ere again to-morrow mornin' at ten, miss.
The gentleman, he didn't leave no message.'

Then my heart beat again, and joyfully, for I knew that I had missed my
relation and Miss Purkiss, and that the way of escape was still open to
me, although ten o'clock in the morning was rather early to be obliged
to go out. I must say I thought it extremely foolish of Miss Purkiss to
have mentioned the hour--it was like a fox making an appointment with
a rabbit, a highly improbable thing for the rabbit to keep. And I went
downstairs feeling quite amused and happy, and determined to stay
amused and happy. My unexpected reward for this came at dinner, when
I discovered my neighbours to be two delightful ladies from St.
Paul, Minn., with whom I conversed sociably there, and later in the
drawing-room. They had known Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; but what to my
eyes gave them an added charm was their amiable readiness to know me.
I was made to promise that I would send them my address when I was
settled, and to this day I suffer from unquieted pangs of conscience
because I failed to keep my word.

By ten o'clock next morning I was in Cockspur Street, Pall Mall, looking
for the 'Lady Guides' Association.' The name in white letters on the
window struck me oddly when I found it. The idea, the institution it
expressed, seemed so grotesquely of to-day there in the heart of old
London, where almost everything you see talks of orthodoxy and the
approval of the centuries. It had the impertinence that a new building
has going up among your smoky old piles of brick and mortar. You will
understand my natural sympathy with it. The minute I went in I felt at
home.

There were several little desks in several little adjoining
compartments, with little muslin curtains in front of them, and ladies
and ink-bottles inside, like a row of shrouded canary-cages. Two or
three more ladies, without their things on, were running round outside,
and several others, with their things on, were being attended to. I saw
only one little man, who was always getting out of the ladies' way, and
didn't seem properly to belong there. There was no label attached, so
I couldn't tell what use they made of him, but I should like to have
known.

The desks were all lettered plainly--one 'Lady Guides,' the next
'Tickets for the Theatre,' and so on; but, of course, I went to the
first one to inquire, without taking any notice of that--people always
do. I think, perhaps, the lady was more polite in referring me to
the proper one than the man would have been. She smiled, and bowed
encouragingly as she did it, and explained particularly, 'the lady with
the eyeglasses and her hair done up high--do you see?' I saw, and went
to the right lady. She smiled too, in a real winning way, looking up
from her entrybook, and leaning forward to hear what I had to say. Then
she came into my confidence, as it were, at once. 'What you want,'
she said, 'is a boarding-house or private hotel. We have all the best
private hotels on our books, but in your case, being alone, what I
should advise would be a thoroughly well-recommended, first-class
boarding-house.'

I said something about a private family--'Or a private family,' added
the lady, acquiescently. 'Now, we can give you whichever you
prefer. Suppose,' she said, with the kindly interested counsel of
good-fellowship, dropping her voice a little, 'I write you out several
addresses of both kinds, then you can just see for yourself'--and the
lady looked at me over her eyeglasses most agreeably.

'Why, yes!' I said. 'I think that's a very good idea!'

'Well now, just wait a minute!' the lady said, turning over the pages
of another big book. 'There's a great deal, as you probably know,
in locality in London. We must try and get you something in a nice
locality. Piccadilly, for instance, is a very favourite locality--I
think we have something in Half-Moon Street---'

'Gracious!' I said. 'No! not Half-Moon Street, please. I--I've been
there. I don't like that locality!'

'Really!' said the lady, with surprise. 'Well, you wouldn't believe what
the rents are in Half-Moon Street! But we can easily give you something
else--the other side of the Park, perhaps!'

'Yes.' I said, earnestly. 'Quite the other side, if you please!'

'Well,' returned the lady, abstractedly running her finger down the
page, 'there's Mrs. Pragge, in Holland Park Gardens--have you any
objection to children?--and Miss Camblewell, in Lancaster Gate, very
clean and nice. I think we'll put them down. And then two or three
private ones--excuse me one minute. There! I think among those,' with
sudden gravity, 'you ought to find something suitable at from two to
three-and-a-half guineas per week; but if you do not, be sure to come in
again. We always like to give our clients satisfaction.' The lady smiled
again in that pardonable, endearing way; and I was so pleased with her,
and with myself, and with the situation, and felt such warm comfort as
the result of the interview, that I wanted badly to shake hands with her
when I said Good-morning. But she was so engaged that I couldn't, and
had to content myself with only saying it very cordially. As I turned to
go I saw a slightly blank expression come over her face, and she coughed
with some embarrassment, leaning forward as if to speak to me again.
But I was too near the door, so one of the ladies who were running about
detained me apologetically.

'There is a--a charge,' she said, 'of two-and-sixpence. You did not
know.' So I went back uncomfortably and paid. 'Thanks, yes!' said the
lady in the cage. 'Two-and-six! No, that is two shillings, a florin,
you see--and that is four--it's half-a-crown we want, isn't it?' very
amiably, considering all the trouble I was giving her. 'Perhaps you
are not very well accustomed to our English currency yet,' as I
finally counted out one shilling, two sixpences, a threepence, and six
halfpennies. If there is a thing in this country that needs reforming
more than the House of Lords--but there, it isn't to be supposed that
you would like my telling you about it. At all events, I managed in the
end to pay my very proper fee to the Lady Guides' Association, and
I sincerely hope that any of its members who may happen to read this
chapter will believe that I never endeavoured to evade it. The slight
awkwardness of the mistake turned out rather pleasantly for me, because
it led me into further conversation with the lady behind the eyeglasses,
in which she asked me whether I wouldn't like to look over their
establishment. I said Yes, indeed; and one of the outside ladies, a very
capable-looking little person, with a round face and short, curly hair,
was told off to take me upstairs. I hadn't been so interested for a long
time. There was the club-room, where ladies belonging to the Association
could meet or make appointments with other people, or write letters or
read the papers, and the restaurant, where they could get anything they
wanted to eat. I am telling you all this because I've met numbers of
people in London who only know enough about the Lady Guides' Association
to smile when it is mentioned, and to say, 'Did you go there?' in a
tone of great amusement, which, considering it is one of your own
institutions, strikes me as curious. And it is such an original,
personal, homelike institution, like a little chirping busy nest between
the eaves of the great unconcerned City offices and warehouses, that it
is interesting to know more about than that, I think. The capable little
lady seemed quite proud of it as she ushered me from one room into
the next, and especially of the bedrooms, which were divided from one
another by pretty chintz hangings, and where at least four ladies,
'arriving strange from the country, and elsewhere,' could be tucked away
for the night. That idea struck me as perfectly sweet, and I wished
very sincerely I had known of it before. It seemed to offer so many
more advantages than the Métropole. Of course. I asked any number of
questions about the scope and working of the Association, and the little
lady answered them all with great fluency. It was nice to hear of
such extended usefulness--how the Lady Guides engage governesses,
or servants, or seats at the theatre, and provide dinners and
entertainments, and clothes to wear at them, and suitable manners; and
take care of children by the day--I do not remember whether the
little lady said they undertook to bring them up--and furnish eyes
and understanding, certified, to all visitors in London, at 'a fixed
tariff'--all except gentlemen unaccompanied by their families. 'Such
clients,' the little lady said, with a shade of sadness, I fancied, that
there should be any limitation to the benevolence of the Association,
'the Lady Guide is compelled to decline. It is a great pity--we have so
many gentleman-applicants, and there would be, of course, no necessity
for sending young lady-guides out with them--we have plenty of
elderly ones, widows and so on; but'--and here the little lady grew
confidentially deprecating--'it is thought best not to. You see, it
would get into the papers, and the papers might chaff, and, of course,
in our position we can't afford to be made ridiculous. But it is a great
pity!'--and the little lady sighed again. I said I thought it was, and
asked if any special case had been made of any special entreaty. 'One,'
she admitted, in a justifying tone. 'A gentleman from Japan. He told
us he never would have come to England if he had not heard of our
Association, being a perfect stranger, without a friend in the place.'

'And unacquainted with English prejudices,' I put in.

'Quite so. And what could we do?'

'What did you do?' I inquired.

'We sent two!' responded the little lady, triumphing once more over the
situation. 'Nobody could say a thing to that. And he was such a pleasant
little man, and thanked us so cordially.'

 'Did you find him intelligent?' I asked.

'Very.' But the little lady's manner was growing rather fidgety, and
it occurred to me that perhaps I was taking more information than I was
entitled to for two-and-six. So I went reluctantly downstairs, wishing
there was something else that the lady-guides could do for me. A little
black-eyed woman down there was giving some very businesslike orders.
'Half a day's shopping? I should say send Miss Stuart Saville. And tell
her to be very particular about her accounts. Has Mrs. Mason got that
private ward yet?'

'That,' said my little cicerone, in a subdued tone, 'is our manageress.
She planned the whole thing. Wonderful head!' 'Is that so? 'I remarked.
'I should like to congratulate her.'

'I'm afraid there isn't time,' she returned, looking flurried; 'and the
manageress doesn't approve of anybody wasting it. Will you write your
name in our visitors' book?'

'With pleasure,' I said; 'and I'll come again whenever I feel that I
want anything.' And I wrote my name--badly, of course, as people always
do in visitors' books, but with the lively satisfaction people always
experience in writing their names--why, I've never been able to
discover. I passed the manageress on my way out. She was confronting a
pair of ladies, an old and a young one, in black, who leaned on their
parasols with an air of amiable indecision, and falteringly addressed
her: 'I had a day and a half last week,' one of them said, rather
weakly; 'is there?--do you want me for anything this----?'

The manageress looked at her with some impatience. 'If I want you I'll
send for you, Miss Gypsum,' she said. The door closed upon me at that
moment, so I don't know how Miss Gypsum got away.

As for me, I walked through Cockspur Street and through Waterloo
Place, and so into Piccadilly, reflecting upon Mrs. Pragge, and Miss
Camblewell, and all their uncertainties. Standing in the lee of a large
policeman on one of your valuable iron refuges in the middle of the
street, a flounced black-and-white parasol suddenly shut down almost
in my face. The lady belonging to it leaned over her carriage and said:
'How d'ye do, Miss------? Dear me, how stupid I am about names! Miss
Chicago-young-lady-who-ran-away-without-getting-my-address? Now I've
found you, just pop in----'

'I must ask you to drive on, madam,' the policeman said.

'As soon as this young lady has popped in. There! Now, my dear, what did
the relation say? I've been longing to know.'

And before I realised another thing I was rolling up Regent Street
statefully in the carriage of Mrs. Torquilin.





VII



ARE you going there now?' Mrs. Torquilin went on. 'Because I'm only
out for an airing, I can drop you anywhere you like.' 'Oh, by no means,
thank you, Mrs. Torquilin,' I said; 'I've been there already.'

Mrs. Torquilin looked at me with an extraordinary expression. On top it
was conscientiously shocked, underneath it was extremely curious, amused
by anticipation, and, through it all, kindly.

'You don't get on,' she said. 'What did I tell you? "Mark my words," I
said to Charlie Mafferton, "that child knows nothing of what is ahead of
her!" But pray go on. What happened?'

I went on, and told Mrs. Torquilin what happened a good deal as I have
told you, but I am afraid not so properly, because she was very much
amused; and I suppose if the story of my interview with Mrs. Portheris
excited any feeling in your mind, it was one of sympathy for me. At
least, that was what I intended. But I was so happy in Mrs. Torquilin's
carriage, and so delighted to be talking to somebody I knew, that I made
as funny an account of the tender greetings of my relation as I could,
and it lasted all the way to the Métropole, where I was to be dropped.
I referred to her always as 'my relation,' because Mrs. Torquilin seemed
to enjoy the expression. Incidentally, too, I told her about my plans,
and showed her the addresses I had from the lady-guide, and she was kind
enough to say that if I did not find them satisfactory I must let her
know, and she could send me to a person of her acquaintance, where I
should be 'very comfy, dear'; and I believed her. 'You see,' she said,
'I should like to take a little interest in your plans, because you seem
to be the only really American girl I've come upon in the whole course
of my travels. The New York ones were all English imitations--I had no
patience with them.

'Oh!' I responded, cheerfully, 'that's only on the outside, Mrs.
Torquilin. If you ran down the Stars and Stripes I guess you would find
them pretty American.'

'Well, yes,' Mrs. Torquilin admitted, 'I remember that was the case';
but just then we stopped in front of the Métropole, and I begged her
to come in and lunch with me. 'Dear me, child, no; I must be off!'
she said; but I used all the persuasion I could, and represented how
dreadfully lonely it was for me, and Mrs. Torquilin hesitated. At the
moment of her hesitation there floated out from the dining-room a most
appetising suggestion of fried soles. What small matters contribute to
important results! I don't know anything that I have more cause to
be grateful to than that little wandering odour. For Mrs. Torquilin,
encountering it, said, with some feeling, 'Poor child. I've no doubt it
is lonely for you. Perhaps I really ought to cheer you up a bit--I'll
come!'

And Mrs. Torquilin and I pursued the wandering odour into the
dining-room.

We had a particularly good lunch, and we both enjoyed it immensely,
though Mrs. Torquilin made a fuss about my ordering champagne, and said
it was simply ruinous, and I really ought to have somebody to look after
me. 'By the way,' she said, 'have you seen anything of the Maffertons?'
I told her that Mr. Mafferton had left his card the afternoon before,
but I was out. 'You were out?' said Mrs. Torquilin. 'What a pity!' I
said no; I wasn't very sorry, because I felt so unsettled in my mind
that I was sure I couldn't work myself up to an intelligent discussion
of any of Mr. Mafferton's favourite subjects, and he would hardly have
found much pleasure in his visit. 'Oh! I think he would,' said Mrs.
Torquilin. 'What on earth has "intelligent discussion" to do with it?
I know the Maffertons very well,' she went on, looking at me quite
sharply. 'Excellent family--cousins of Lord Mafferton of Mafferton.
Charlie has enough, but not too much, I should say. However, that's
neither here nor there, for he has no expensive habits, to my
knowledge.'

'Just imagine,' I said, 'his being cousin to a lord! And yet he's not a
bit haughty! Have you ever seen the lord, Mrs. Torquilin?'

'Bless the child, yes! Gone down to dinner with him more than once!
Between ourselves,' said Mrs. Torquilin, confidentially, 'he's an old
brute--neither more nor less! But one can't be rude to the man. What
he'll have to say to it heaven only knows! But Charlie is quite capable
of snapping his fingers at him. Do have one of these ices.'

I was immensely interested. 'What has Mr. Mafferton been doing?' I
asked.

'I've no reason to believe he's done it yet,' said Mrs. Torquilin, a
little crossly I thought. 'Perhaps he won't.'

'I'm sure I hope not,' I returned. 'Mr. Mafferton is so nice that it
would be a pity if he got into trouble with his relations, especially if
one of them is a lord.'

'Then don't let him!' said Mrs. Torquilin, more crossly than before.

'Do you think I would have any influence with him?' I asked her. 'I
should doubt it very much. Mr. Mafferton doesn't strike me as a
person at all susceptible to ladies' influence. But, if I knew the
circumstances, I might try.'

'Oh, come along, child!' Mrs. Torquilin returned, folding up the napkin.
'You're too stupid. I'll see the Maffertons in a day or two, and I'll
tell them what I think of you. Is there nothing else you'll have? Then
let us depart, and make room for somebody else.' And I followed Mrs.
Torquilin out of the room with a vague consciousness that she had an
important voice in the management of the hotel, and had been kind enough
to give me my lunch.

My friend did not take leave of me in the hall. 'I'd like to see the
place,' she said. 'Take me up into the drawing-room.'

Mrs. Torquilin admired the drawing-room very much. 'Sumptuous!' she
said, 'Sumptuous!' And as I walked round it with her I felt a particular
kind of pleasure in being the more familiar with it of the two, and
a little pride, too, in its luxury, which I had always been told was
specially designed to suit Americans. I was so occupied with these
feelings and with Mrs. Torquilin's remarks, that I did not observe two
ladies on a sofa at the end of the room until we were almost in front
of them. Then I noticed that one of the ladies was sitting bolt upright,
with a stern, majestic eye fixed full upon me, apparently frozen with
indignation; I also noticed that it was Mrs. Portheris. The other lady,
in rusty black, as I knew she would be, occupied the farther end of the
sofa, very much wilted indeed.

'Miss Wick.' said Mrs. Portheris, portentously, standing up, 'I have
been shopping in the interval, but my friend Miss Purkiss--this is Miss
Purkiss; Miss Purkiss, this is Miss Wick, the connection from Chicago
whom you so kindly consented to try to befriend--Miss Purkiss has been
here since ten o'clock. You will excuse her rising--she is almost, I
might say, in a state of collapse!'

I turned round to Mrs. Torquilin.

'Mrs. Torquilin,' I said, 'this is my relation, Mrs. Portheris. Mrs.
Portheris--Mrs. Torquilin.' In America we always introduce.

But I was astonished at the change in Mrs. Torquilin. She seemed to
have grown quite two inches taller, and she was regarding Mrs. Portheris
through a pair of eyeglasses on a stick in the most inexplicable manner,
with her mouth set very firmly indeed in a sort of contemptuous smile.

'Mrs. Cummers Portheris!' she said. 'Yes, I think Mrs. Cummers Portheris
knows me. You did not tell me, dear, that Mrs. Portheris was your
relation--but you need not fear that I shall think any the less of you
for that.'

'Heppy,' said Mrs. Portheris, throwing up her chin, but looking
distinctly nervous, 'your temper is much the same, I am sorry to see, as
it always was.'

Mrs. Torquilin opened her mouth to reply, but closed it again
resolutely, with an expression of infinite disdain. Then, to my
surprise, she took a chair, in a way that told me distinctly of her
intention not to desert me. I felt at the moment that I would have given
anything to be deserted--the situation was so very embarrassing. The
only thing I could think of to do was to ask Miss Purkiss if she and
Mrs. Portheris wouldn't have some lunch. Miss Purkiss looked quite
cheerful for a moment, and began to unbutton her glove; but her
countenance fell when my unfeeling relation forbade her with a look, and
said: 'Thank you, no, Miss Wick! Having waited so long, we can easily
manage without food a little longer. Let us get to our arrangements.
Perhaps Miss Purkiss will tell Miss Wick what she has to offer her.'
Mrs. Portheris was evidently trying to ignore Mrs. Torquilin, and
sat offensively, and sideways to her; but she could not keep the
apprehension out of her eye.

'Certainly!' I said; 'but Miss Purkiss must have something.' I was
determined to decline, but I wished to do it as mercifully as possible.
'Tell somebody,' I said to a servant who had come up to poke the fire,
'to bring up some claret and crackers.'

'Biscuits, child,' put in Mrs. Torquilin, 'is what you mean. Biscuits
the young lady means'--to the servant--'and be sharp about it, for we
want to go out immediately.' Then--'May I ask what arrangements you were
thinking of offering Miss Wick?'--to Miss Purkiss.

Miss Purkiss began, quaveringly, that she had never done such a thing in
her life before, but as Mrs. Portheris particularly wished it----

'For your own good, Jane,' interrupted Mrs. Portheris; 'entirely for
your own good. I don't call that gratitude.'

Miss Purkiss hastily admitted that it was for her own good, of course,
and that Mrs. Portheris knew her far too well to believe for a moment
that she was not grateful; but I could have a nice back bedroom on the
second floor, and the use of her sitting-room all day, and I, being
recommended by Mrs. Portheris, she wouldn't think of many extras. Well,
if there were fires, lights, the use of the bath and piano, boots, and
friends to meals, that would be all.

'It is quite impossible!' said Mrs. Torquilin. 'I'm sorry you had the
trouble of coming. In the first place, I fear my young friend,' with
emphasis and a cursory glance at Mrs. Portheris's chair, 'would find it
dull in Upper Baker Street. In the second'--Mrs. Torquilin hesitated for
a moment, and then made the plunge--'I have taken a flat for the season,
and Miss Wick is coming to me. I believe that is our little plan, my
dear'--with a meaning smile to me. Then Mrs. Torquilin looked at
Mrs. Portheris as if she were wondering whether there could be any
discoverable reason why my relation should stay any longer. Mrs.
Portheris rose, routed, but with a calm eye and a steady front. 'In that
case I hope you will be forbearing with her, Heppy,' she said. 'Remember
that she is a stranger to our ways of thinking and doing, and has
probably never had the advantages of up-bringing that you and I have. I
have no doubt, however, that my nephew, Colonel Wick, has done his best
for her. As you are probably aware, he is worth his million.'

Mrs. Torquilin missed the sarcasm. 'Not I!' she returned, coolly;
'but I'm sure I'm very glad to hear it, for Miss Wick's sake. As to my
temper, I've noticed that those know most about it who best deserve it.
I don't think you need worry yourself about your young connection, Mrs.
Cummers Portheris.'

'No,' said I, meekly; 'I should hate to be a weight on your mind.'

Mrs. Portheris took my hand in quite an affecting manner.

'Then I leave you, Miss Wick,' she said, 'to this lady--and to
Providence.'

 'Between them,' I said, 'I ought to have a very good time.' Mrs. Portheris dropped my hand. 'I feel,' she said, 'that I have done my part toward you; but remember, if ever you want a home, Miss Purkiss will take you in. When in doubt----'

'Play trumps!' said Mrs. Torquilin from the window, where she stood
with her back to all of us. 'I always do. Is that your carriage waiting
outside, Mrs. Cummers Portheris?'

'It is,' said my relation, betrayed into asperity. 'I hope you have no
objection to it!'

'Oh, none--not the least. But the horses seem very restive.'

'Come, Miss Purkiss!' said my relation.

'The wine and biscuits, dear love,' said Miss Purkiss, 'are just
arriving.'

But Mrs. Portheris was bowing, with stately indefiniteness, to Mrs.
Torquilin's back.

'Come, Miss Purkiss!' she commanded again. 'You can get a sandwich at
the "A. B. C."'

And Miss Purkiss arose and followed my relation, which was the saddest
thing of all.

As soon as they were well out of the room, Mrs. Torquilin turned
round. 'I suppose you'll wonder about the why and wherefore of all this
turn-up,' she said to me, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling.
'It's a long story, and I'll tell you another time. But it comes to this
in the end--that creature and I married into the same family. My husband
and the late John Portheris, poor fellow, were step-brothers; and that
old cat had the impudence--but there's no use going into it now. All I
have to say is, she generally meets her match when she meets me.
I'll put up with no hanky-panky work from Mrs. Cummers Portheris, my
dear--and well she knows it!'

'It was certainly nice of you to help me out of the difficulty, Mrs.
Torquilin,' I said, 'for I'd rather go anywhere than to Miss Purkiss's;
but I'm sorry you had to----'

'Tell a tarradiddle? Not a bit of it, my dear--I meant it. Two are
better than one, any day--I've plenty of room in my little flat, and if
you like to share the expenses, I'll not object. At all events, we
can but try it, and it will be showing very good feeling towards the
Maffertons. I'm not a great hand for junketing, mind you, but we'll
manage to amuse ourselves a little--a little giddy-goating does nobody
any harm.'

Then I kissed Mrs. Torquilin, and she kissed me, and I told her
how extremely obliged I was to her, and asked her if she had really
considered it; and Mrs. Torquilin said, wasn't it enough that I should
be left to 'that woman,' meaning my relation, and that I should come
next day to see how we could best arrange matters. 'And while I think
of it, child, here is my address,' my friend continued, taking out her
card-case, and watching me very carefully, with a little smile about her
mouth. I looked at it. I think my embarrassment gratified her a little,
for the card read, 'Lady Torquilin, 102 Cadogan Mansions, S.W.' I didn't
know what to say. And I had been calling a lady of title 'Mrs.' all this
time! Still, I reflected, she would hardly have been so nice to me if
I had offended her very much, and if she had been particular about her
title she could have mentioned it.

'It seems,' I said, 'that I have been making a mistake. I expected to
make mistakes in this country; but I'm sorry I began with you.'

'Nonsense, child!' she returned. 'It was just my little joke--and I
made Charlie Mafferton keep it. There's precious little in the handle
I assure you--except an extra half-crown in one's bills!' And Lady
Torquilin gave me her hand to say good-bye.

'Good-bye,' I said; 'I think handles are nice all the same.' And
then--it is an uncomfortable thing to write, but it happened--I thought
of something. I was determined to make no more mistakes if asking would
prevent it.

'Please tell me,' I said, 'for you see I can't possibly know--am I to
call you "your ladyship," or "my lady"?'

'Now don't talk rubbish!' said Lady Torquilin. 'You're to call me by my
name. You are too quaint. Be a good child--and don't be late to-morrow.'





VIII

IF I only had my own house in Portman Street,' Lady Torquilin remarked
next day when we were having our tea in her flat, 'I could make you a
great deal more comfy. Here we are just a bit cramped--"crowded," as you
say in America. But you can't eat your cake and have it too.'

'Which have you done, Lady Torquilin,' I inquired, 'with your cake?'

'Let it,' said my friend--'twenty-five guineas a week, my dear, which is
something to a poor woman. Last season it only brought twenty, and cost
me a fortune to get it clean again after the pigs who lived in it. For
the extra five I have to be thankful to the Duchess.'

'Did you really let it to a Duchess?' I asked, with deep interest. 'How
lovely!'

'Indeed I did not! But the Duchess came to live round the corner,
and rents went up in consequence. You don't know what it means to
property-owners in London to have a duchess living round the corner,
my child. It means everything. Not that I'm freehold in Portman
Street--I've only a lease,' and Lady Torquilin sighed. This led
us naturally into matters of finance, and we had a nice, sensible,
practical discussion about our joint expenses. It doesn't matter to
anybody what our arrangement was, but I must say that I found great
occasion for protest against its liberality towards me. 'Nonsense!' said
Lady Torquilin, invariably; 'don't be a foolish kitten! It's probably
less than you would pay at a good private hotel--that's the advantage to
you. Every time we take a hansom it will be only sixpence each instead
of a shilling--that's the advantage to me; and no small advantage it is,
for cabs are my ruin. And you'll save me plenty of steps, I'm sure, my
dear! So there, say no more about it, but go and get your boxes.'

So I drove back to the Métropole finally, and as I locked my last trunk
I noticed a fresh card on the mantelpiece. It was another of Mr. Charles
Mafferton's; and on the back was written in pencil: 'I hope you are
meeting with no difficulties. Should be glad to be of use in any way.
Please let me know your permanent address as soon as possible, as the
mother and sisters would like to call upon you.--G. M.' This was nice
and kind and friendly, and I tried in vain to reconcile it with what I
had heard of English stiffness and exclusiveness and reserve. I would
write to Mr. Mafferton, I thought, that very night. I supposed that by
the mother he meant his own, but it struck me as a curious expression.
In America we specify our parents, and a reference to 'the mother' there
would probably be held to refer back to Eve. But in England you like all
kinds of distinguishing articles, don't you?

Lady Torquilin's flat was a new one, of the regular American kind--not a
second or third floor in an old-fashioned London house--and had a share,
I am thankful to say, in a primitive elevator. The elevator was very
small, but the man in the lower hall seemed to stand greatly in awe of
it. 'To get them there boxes up in this 'ere lift, miss,' he said, when
I and my trunks presented ourselves, 'she'll 'ave to make three trips at
least'--and he looked at me rather reproachfully. 'Ware do you want
'em put out?' I said, 'Lady Torquilin's flat.' 'That's Number Four,'
he commented, 'a good ways up. If you wouldn't mind a h'extra sixpence,
miss, I could get a man off the street to 'elp me with 'em--they do be a
size!' I said by all means, and presently my impedimenta were ascending
with much deliberate circumstance, one piece at a time. The acoustic
properties of Cadogan Mansions are remarkable. Standing at the foot of
that elevator, encouraging its labours as it were, I could not possibly
help overhearing Lady Torquilin's reception of my trunks, mingled with
the more subdued voices of her housemaids. It was such a warm reception,
expressed in such graphic terms, that I thought I ought to be present
myself to acknowledge it; and the man put on two ordinary-sized valises
next, to allow me to go up at the same time. 'We've got our orders,
miss, to be pertickeler about wot she carries, miss,' he said, when I
thought a trunk or two might accompany me. 'You see, if anything went
wrong with 'er works, miss, there's no sayin' ware we'd be!'--and we
solemnly began to rise. 'Ladies in the Mansions don't generally use the
lift such a very great deal,' he remarked further, 'especially goin'
down. They complain of the sinkin'.'

'I shall always go up and down in it,' I said. 'I don't mind the
sinking. I'm used to it.'

'Very well, miss. You 'ave only to press the button and she'll come up;
an' a great convenience you'll find 'er, miss,' he returned, resignedly,
unlocking the grated door on Lady Torquilin's flat, where my hostess
stood with her hands folded, and two maids respectfully behind her,
regarding the first instalment of my baggage. After she had welcomed me:
'It's curiosity in its way,' said Lady Torquilin; 'but what's to be done
with it, the dear only knows--unless we sublet it.' It required some
strength of mind to tell her that there were two more coming up.
The next one she called an abnormity, and the third she called a
barn--simply. And I must say my trunks did look imposing in Lady
Torquilin's flat. Finally, however, by the exercise of ingenuity on our
parts and muscle on the maids', we got the whole of my baggage 'settled
up,' as Lady Torquilin expressed it, and I was ready for my first
approved and endorsed experience in your metropolis.

It came that afternoon. 'I am going to take you,' said Lady Torquilin at
lunch, 'to Mrs. Fry Hamilton's "at home." She likes Americans, and her
parties--"functions," as society idiots call it--disgusting word--are
generally rather "swagger," as they say. I daresay you'll enjoy it. Make
yourself as tidy as possible, mind. Put on your pretty grey; tuck in
that "fringe" of yours a bit too, my dear; and be ready by five sharp.'

'Don't you like my bangs, Lady Torquilin?'

'Say your fringe, child; people don't "bang" in England--except doors
and the piano. No, I can't say I'm fond of it. What were you given a
forehead for, if you were not intended to show it? I fancy I see Sir
Hector, when he was alive, allowing me to wear a fringe!' And Lady
Torquilin pushed my hair up in that fond, cheerful, heavy-handed way
people have, that makes you back away nervously and feel yourself
a fright. I went to my room wondering whether my affection for Lady
Torquilin would ever culminate in the sacrifice of my bangs. I could not
say, seriously, that I felt equal to it then.

We went to Mrs. Fry Hamilton's in a hansom--not, as Lady Torquilin said,
that she had the least objection to omnibuses, especially when they
didn't drop one at the very door, but because there were no omnibuses
very convenient to the part of Cromwell Road that Mrs. Fry Hamilton
lived in. We inspected several before Lady Torquilin made a
selection--rubber-tyred, yellow-wheeled, with a horse attached that
would hardly stand still while we got in. I was acutely miserable, he
went so fast; but Lady Torquilin liked it. 'He's perfectly fresh, poor
darling!' she said. 'It breaks my heart to drive behind a wretched
worn-out creature with its head down.' I said, Yes, I thought he was
very fresh indeed, and asked Lady Torquilin if she noticed how he
waggled his head. 'Dear beastie!' she replied, he's got a sore mouth.
Suppose your mouth were perfectly raw, and you had a bit in it, and a
man tugging at the reins----' But I couldn't stand it any longer; I put
my parasol up through the door in the top.

 'Make him stop waggling!' I called to the driver. 'It's only a little 'abit of 'is, miss,' the driver said, and then, as the horse dropped his pace, he whipped him. Instantly Lady Torquilin's parasol admonished him. 'If you flog your horse,' she said emphatically, 'I get out.' I don't think I have ever driven in a hansom with Lady Torquilin since that our parasols have not both gone through the roof to point statements like these to the cabman, Lady Torquilin usually anguished on the dear horse's account, and I unhappy on my own. It enlivens the most monotonous drive, but it is a great strain on the nerves. I generally beg for a four-wheeler instead; but Lady Torquilin is contemptuous of four-wheelers, and declares she would just as soon drive in the British Museum. She says I will get used to it if I will only abstract my mind and talk about something else; and I am trying, but the process is a very painful one.

When we arrived at Mrs. Fry Hamilton's I rang the bell.

'Bless you, child!' said Lady Torquilin, 'that's not the way. They'll
take you for a nursery governess, or a piano-tuner, or a bill! This
is the proper thing for visitors.' And with that Lady Torquilin rapped
sonorously and rang a peal--such a rap and peal as I had never heard
in all my life before. In America we have only one kind of ring for
everybody--from the mayor of the city to the man who sells plaster
Cupids and will take old clothes on account. We approach each other's
door-bells, as a nation, with much greater deference; and there is a
certain humility in the way we introduce our personalities anywhere.

I felt uncomfortable on Mrs. Fry Hamilton's doorstep, as if I were not,
individually, worth all that noise. Since then I have been obliged to
rap and ring myself, because Lady Torquilin likes me to be as proper
as I can; but there is always an incompleteness about the rap and an
ineffectualness about the ring. I simply haven't the education to do
it. And when the footman opens the door I feel that my face expresses
deprecatingly, 'It's only me!' 'Rap and ring!' says Lady Torquilin,
deridingly, 'it's a tap and tinkle!' Lady Torquilin is fond of
alliteration.

Inside quite a few people were ascending and descending a narrow
staircase that climbed against the wall, taking up as little room as
it could; and a great many were in the room on the ground-floor, where
refreshments were being dispensed. They were all beautifully dressed--if
I have learned anything in England, it is not to judge the English
by the clothes they wear in America--and they moved about with great
precision, making, as a general thing, that pleasant rustle which
we know to mean a silk foundation. The rustle was the only form of
conversation that appeared to be general, but I noticed speaking going
on in several groups of two or three. And I never saw better going up
and down stairs--it was beautifully done, even by ladies weighing, I
should think, quite two hundred pounds apiece, which you must reduce to
"stun" for yourself. Lady Torquilin led the way with great simplicity
and directness into the dining-room, and got tea for us both from one of
the three white-capped modestly-expressionless maids behind the
table--I cannot tell you what a dream of peace your servants are in
this country--and asked me whether I would have sponge-cake, or a
cress sandwich, or what. 'But,' I said, 'where is Mrs. Fry Hamilton?--I
haven't been introduced.'

'All in good time,' said Lady Torquilin. 'It's just as well to take our
tea when we can get it--we won't be able to turn round in here in half
an hour!'--and Lady Torquilin took another sandwich with composure. 'Try
the plum-cake,' she advised me in an aside. 'Buszard----I can tell at a
glance! I have to deny myself.'

And I tried the plum-cake, but with a sense of guilty apprehension
lest Mrs. Fry Hamilton should appear in the doorway and be naturally
surprised at the consumption of her refreshments by an utter stranger.
I noticed that almost everybody else did the same thing, and that nobody
seemed at all nervous; but I occupied as much of Lady Torquilin's shadow
as I could, all the same, and on the way up implored her, saying,
'Have I any crumbs?' I felt that it would require more hardihood than
I possessed to face Mrs. Fry Hamilton with shreds of her substance,
acquired before I knew her, clinging to my person. But concealment was
useless, and seemed to be unnecessary.

'Have you had any tea?' said Mrs. Fry Hamilton to Lady Torquilin, her
question embracing us both, as we passed before her; and Lady Torquilin
said, 'Yes, thanks,' as nonchalantly as possible.

Lady Torquilin had just time to say that I was an American.

'Really!' remarked Mrs. Fry Hamilton, looking at me again. 'How nice.
The only one I have to-day, I think.' And we had to make room for
somebody else. But it was then that the curious sensation of being
attached to a string and led about, which I have felt more or less in
London ever since, occurred to me first--in the statement that I was the
only one Mrs. Fry Hamilton had to-day.

Lady Torquilin declared, as she looked round the room, that she didn t
see a soul she knew; so we made our way to a corner and sat down, and
began to talk in those uninterested spasms that always attack people
who come with each other. Presently--'There is that nice little Mrs.
Pastelle-Jones!' said Lady Torquilin, 'I must go and speak to her!'--and
I was left alone, with the opportunity of admiring the china. I don't
wonder at your fondness for it in London drawing-rooms. It seems to be
the only thing that you can keep clean. So many people were filing in
past Mrs. Fry Hamilton, however, that the china soon lost its interest
for me. The people were chiefly ladies--an impressive number of old,
stout, rosy, white-haired ladies in black, who gave me the idea of
remarkable health at their age; more middle-aged ones, rather inclined
to be pale and thin, with narrow cheek-bones, and high-arched noses, and
sweet expressions, and a great deal of black lace and jet, much puffed
on the shoulders; and young ones, who were, of course, the very first
English young ladies I had ever seen in an English drawing-room. I
suppose you are accustomed to them; you don't know what they were
to me--you couldn't understand the intense interest and wonder and
admiration they excited in me. I had never seen anything human so tall
and strong and fine and fresh-coloured before, with such clear limpid
eyes, such pretty red lips, and the outward showing of such excellent
appetites. It seemed to me that everyone was an epitome of her early
years of bread-and-butter and milk puddings and going to bed at
half-past nine, and the epitomes had a charming similarity. The English
young lady stood before me in Mrs. Fry Hamilton's drawing-room as an
extraordinary product--in almost all cases five-eight, and in some quite
six feet in height. Her little mamma was dwarfed beside her, and when
she smiled down upon the occasional man who was introduced to her, in
her tall, compassionate way, he looked quite insignificant, even if he
carried the square, turned-back shoulders by which I have learned to
tell military men in this country. We have nothing like it in America,
on the same scale; although we have a great deal more air to breathe and
vegetables to eat than you. I knew that I had always been considered
'a big girl,' but beside these firm-fleshed young women I felt myself
rather a poor creature, without a muscular advantage to my name. They
smiled a good deal, but I did not see them talk much--it seemed enough
for them to be; and they had a considering air, as if things were new to
them, and they had not quite made up their minds. And as they considered
they blushed a good deal, in a way that was simply sweet. As I sat
musing upon them I saw Lady Torquilin advancing toward me, with one
of the tallest, pinkest, best-developed, and most tailor-made of all
immediately behind her, following, with her chin outstretched a little,
and her eyes downcast, and a pretty expression of doing what she was
told.

'My dear,' said Lady Torquilin, 'this is Miss Gladys Fortescue.
Gladys--Miss Wick, my young lady friend from Chicago. Miss Fortescue has
a brother in America, so you will have something to chat about.'

'Howdj-do?' said Miss Fortescue. She said it very quickly, with a
sweet smile, and an interesting little mechanical movement of the head,
blushing at the same time; and we shook hands. That is, I think one of
us did, though I can't say positively which one it was. As I remember
the process, there were two shakes; but they were not shakes that ran
into each other, and one of them--I think it was mine--failed to 'come
off,' as you say in tennis. Mine was the shake that begins nowhere in
particular, and ends without your knowing it--just the ordinary American
shake arranged on the muscular system in common use with us. Miss
Fortescue's was a rapid, convulsive movement, that sprang from her
shoulder and culminated with a certain violence. There was a little push
in it, too, and it exploded, as it were, high in air. At the same time I
noticed the spectacles of a small man who stood near very much in peril
from Miss Fortescue's elbow. Then I remembered and understood the sense
of dislocation I had experienced after shaking hands with Mrs. Fry
Hamilton, and which I had attributed, in the confusion of the moment, to
being held up, so to speak, as an American.

'Do you know my brother?' said Miss Fortescue.

'I am afraid not,' I replied. 'Where does he live?'

'In the United States,' said Miss Fortescue. 'He went out there six
months ago with a friend. Perhaps you know his friend--Mr. Colfax.'

I said I knew two or three Mr. Colfaxes, but none of them were
English--had not been, at least, for some time back; and did Miss
Fortescue know what particular part of the Union her brother and his
friend had gone to? 'You know,' I said, 'we have an area of three
million square miles,' I daresay I mentioned our area with a certain
pardonable pride. It's a thing we generally make a point of in America.

I shouldn't have thought there was anything particularly humorous in
an area, but Miss Fortescue laughed prettily. 'I remember learning that
from my governess,' she said. 'My brother is out in the West--either
in the town of Minneapolis and the State of Minnesota, or the town of
Minnesota and the State of Minneapolis. I never know, without looking
out his address, which comes first. But I daresay there are a good many
people in the United States--you might easily miss him.'

'We have sixty millions, Miss Fortescue,' I said; and Miss Fortescue
returned that in that case she didn't see how we could be expected to
know anybody; and after that the conversation flagged for a few seconds,
during which we both looked at the other people.

'I have never been to America,' Miss Fortescue said. 'I should like to
go. Is it very cold?'

I did not mention the area again. 'In some places,' I said.

'I should not like that. But then, you have the toe-beganing--that must
be nice.

I assented, though I did not in the least know, until Miss Fortescue
spoke of skating, what she meant. Miss Fortescue thought the skating
must be nice, too, and then, she supposed, though it was cold, we
always went out prepared for it. And the conversation flagged again.
Fortunately, a gentleman at the other end of the room, where the piano
was, began at that moment to sing something very pleading and lamentable
and uncomfortable, with a burden of 'I love thee so,' which generally
rhymed with 'woe'--an address to somebody he called 'Dear-r-r
Hear-r-r-t!' as high as he could reach, turning up his eyes a good deal,
as if he were in pain. And for the time it was not necessary to talk.

When he had finished Miss Fortescue asked me if it was not delightful,
and I said it was--did she know the gentleman's name? Miss Fortescue
said she did not, but perhaps Lady Torquilin would. And then, just as
Lady Torquilin came up, 'How do you like England?' asked Miss Fortescue.



'Well,' asked Lady Torquilin, as we drove home in another hansom, what
did you and Gladys Fortescue find to say to each other?'

I said, quite truly, that I did not remember at the moment, but I
admired Miss Fortescue--also with great sincerity--so enthusiastically,
that I daresay Lady Torquilin thought we had got on splendidly together.

And what I wonder is, if Miss Fortescue had been asked about our
conversation, what she would have said.





IX

YOU are sure you know where you're going?' said Lady Torquilin,
referring to the 'Army and Navy.' 'Victoria omnibus, remember, at
Sloane-square; a penny fare, and not more, mind. You must learn to look
after your pennies. Now, what are you to do for me at the Stores?'

'A packet of light Silurian; your camphor and aconite pilules; to ask
how long they intend to be over the valise, they're fixing for you----'

'Portmanteau they're re-covering. Yes, go on!'

'And what their charge is for cleaning red curtains.'

'And to complain about the candles,' added Lady Torquilin.'

'And to complain about the candles.'

'Yes. Don't forget about the candles, dear. See what they'll do. And I'm
very sorry I can't go with you to Madame Tussaud's, but you know I've
been trotting about the whole morning, and all those wax people, with
their idiotic expressions, this afternoon would simply finish me off!
I'll just lie down a bit, and go with you another day; I couldn't
stand up much longer to talk to the Queen herself! You pop into the
"Underground," you know, at St. James's Park, and out at Baker Street.
Now, where do you pop in?--and out? That's quite right. Good-bye, child.
I rang for the lift to come up a quarter of an hour ago; it's probably
there now, and we mustn't keep it waiting. Off you go!' But the
elevator-door was locked, and our descent had begun, when Lady Torquilin
hurried along the passage, arrested, and kept it waiting on her own
account. 'It's only to say, dear,' she called through the grating, 'that
you are on no consideration whatever to get in or out of an Underground
train while it is moving. On no consideration what-;' but the grating
slowly disappeared, and the rest of Lady Torquilin's admonition came
down on the top of the elevator.

I had done every one of the commissions. I had been magisterially raised
and lowered from one floor to another, to find that everything I wanted
was situated up and down so many staircases 'and turn to your right,
madam,' that I concluded they kept an elevator at the Stores for
pleasure. I had had an agreeable interview with a very blonde young
druggist upon the pilules in the regions above, and had made it all
right with a man in mutton-chop whiskers and an apron about the candles
in the regions below. I had seen a thing I had never seen in my life
before, a very curious thing, that interested me enormously--a husband
and father buying his wife's and daughters' dry-goods--probably Lady
Torquilin would tell me to say 'dress materials.' In America our
husbands and fathers are too much occupied to make purchases for their
families, for which it struck me that we had never been thankful enough
'I will not have you in stripes!' I heard him say, as I passed, full of
commiseration for her. 'What arrogance!' I thought. 'In America they are
glad to have us in anything.' And I rejoiced that it was so.

But, as I was saying, I had done all Lady Torquilin's commissions, and
was making my last trip to the ground-floor with the old soldier in the
elevator, when a gentleman got in at one of the stopping-places, and
sat down opposite me. He had that look of deliberate indifference that
I have noticed so many English gentlemen carry about with them--as
if, although they are bodily present, their interest in life had been
carefully put away at home--and he concentrated his attention upon
the point of his umbrella, just as he used to do upon the salt-cellars
crossing the Atlantic Ocean. And he looked up almost with astonishment
when I said, 'How do you do, Mr. Mafferton?' rather as if he did not
quite expect to be spoken to in an elevator by a young lady. Miss Wick!'
he said, and we shook hands as the old soldier let us out. 'How very
odd! I was on the point of looking you up at Lady Torquilin's. You see,
I've found you out at last--no thanks to you--after looking all over the
place.'

There was a very definite reproach in this, so I told Mr. Mafferton
as we went down the steps that I was extremely sorry he had taken any
trouble on my account; that I had fully intended to write to him in
the course of a day or two, but he had no idea how much time it took
up getting settled in a flat where the elevator ran only at stated
intervals. 'But,' I said, with some curiosity, 'how did you find me out,
Mr. Mafferton?' For if there is one interesting thing, it is to discover
how an unexpected piece of information about yourself has been come by.

'Lady Torquilin dropped me a line,' replied Mr. Mafferton; 'that is,
she mentioned it in--in a note yesterday. Lady Torquilin,' Mr. Mafferton
went on, 'is a very old friend of mine--and an awfully good sort, as I
daresay you are beginning to find out.'

By this time we had reached the pavement, and were standing in
everybody's way, with the painful indetermination that attacks people
who are not quite sure whether they ought to separate or not. "'Ansom
cab, sir?" asked one of the porters. 'No!' said Mr. Mafferton. 'I was
on the very point,' he went on to me, dodging a boy with a bandbox, 'of
going to offer my services as cicerone this afternoon, if you and Lady
Torquilin would be good enough to accept them.'

''Ansom cab, sir?' asked another porter, as Mr. Mafferton, getting out
of the way of a resplendent footman, upset a small child with a topheavy
bonnet, belonging to the lady who belonged to the footman.

Original 'No!' said Mr. Mafferton, in quite a temper. 'Shall we get out of this?' he asked me, appealingly; and we walked on in the direction of the Houses of Parliament. 'There's nothing on in particular, that I know of he continued; 'but there are always the stock shows, and Lady Torquilin is up to any amount of sight-seeing, I know.'

'She isn't today, Mr. Mafferton. She's lying down. I did my best to
persuade her to come out with me, and she wouldn't. But I'm going
sight-seeing this very minute, and if you would like to come too, I'm
sure I shall be very glad.'

Mr. Mafferton looked a little uncomfortable. 'Where were you thinking of
going?' he asked.

'To Madame Tussaud's,' I said. 'You go by the Underground Railway
from here. Get in at St. James's Park Station, and out at Baker Street
Station--about twenty-five minutes in the cars. And you are not,'
I said, remembering what I had been told, 'under any consideration
whatever, to get in or out of the train while it is moving.'

Mr. Mafferton laughed. 'Lady Torquilin has been coaching you,' he said:
but he still looked uncomfortable, and thinking he felt, perhaps, like
an intruder upon my plans, and wishing to put him at his ease, I said:
'It would really be very kind of you to come, Mr. Mafferton, for even at
school I never could remember English history, and now I've probably got
your dynasties worse mixed up than ever. It would be a great advantage
to go with somebody who knows all the dates, and which kings usurped
their thrones, and who they properly belonged to.'

Mr. Mafferton laughed again. 'I hope you don't expect all that of me,'
he said. 'But if you are quite sure we couldn't rout Lady Torquilin out,
I will take you to Madame Tussaud's with the greatest pleasure, Miss
Wick.'

'I'm quite sure,' I told Mr. Mafferton, cheerfully. 'She said all those
wax people, with their idiotic expressions, this afternoon would simply
finish her up!'--and Mr. Mafferton said Lady Torquilin put things very
quaintly, didn't she? And we went together into one of those great
echoing caverns in the sides of the streets that led down flights of
dirty steps, past the man who punches the tickets, and widen out into
that border of desolation with a fierce star burning and brightening in
the blackness of the farther end, which is a platform of the Underground
Railway.

'This,' said I to Mr. Mafferton as we walked up and down waiting for our
train, 'is one of the things I particularly wanted to see.'

'The penny weighing-machine?' asked Mr. Mafferton, for I had stopped to
look at that.

'The whole thing,' said I--'the Underground system. But this is
interesting in itself,' I added, putting a penny in, and stepping on the
machine.

 'Please hold my parasol, Mr. Mafferton, so that I may get the exact truth for my penny.' Mr. Mafferton took the parasol with a slightly clouded expression, which deepened when one of two gentlemen who had just come on the platform bowed to him. 'I think, if you don't mind, Miss Wick, we had better go farther along the platform--it will be easier to get the carriage,' he said, in a manner which quite dashed my amiable intention of telling him how even the truth was cheaper in this country than in America, for our weighing-machines wouldn't work for less than a nickel, which was twice and a-half as much as a penny. Just then, however, the train came whizzing in, we bundled ourselves into a compartment, the door banged after us with frightful explosiveness--the Underground bang is a thing which I should think the omnibus companies had great cause to be thankful for--and we went with a scream and a rush into the black unknown. It seemed to me in the first few minutes that life as I had been accustomed to it had lapsed, and that a sort of semi-conscious existence was filling up the gap between what had been before and what would be again. I can't say I found this phase of being agreeable. It occurred to me that my eyes and my ears and my lungs might just as well have been left at home. The only organ that found any occupation was my nose--all sense seemed concentrated in that sharp-edged, objectionable smell. 'What do you think of the Underground?' said Mr. Mafferton, leaning across, above the rattle.

I told him I hadn't had time to analyse my impressions, in a series of
shrieks, and subsided to watch for the greyness of the next station.
After that had passed, and I was convinced that there were places where
you could escape to the light and air of the outside world again, I
asked Mr. Mafferton a number of questions about the railway, and in
answering them he said the first irritating thing I heard in England.
'I hope,' he remarked, 'that your interest in the Underground won't take
you all the way round the Circle to see what it's like.'

'Why do you hope that, Mr. Mafferton?' I said. 'Is it dangerous?'

'Not in the least.' he returned, a little confusedly. 'Only--most
Americans like to "make the entire circuit," I believe.'

'I've no doubt they want to see how bad it can be,' I said. 'We are a
very fair nation, Mr. Mafferton. But though I can't understand your hope
in the matter, I don't think it likely I shall travel by Underground any
more than I can help.' Because, for the moment, I felt an annoyance. Why
should Mr. Mafferton 'hope' about my conduct?--Mr. Mafferton was not
my maiden aunt! But he very politely asked me how I thought it compared
with the Elevated in New York, and I was obliged to tell him that I
really didn't think it compared at all. The Elevated was ugly to look
at, and some people found it giddy to ride on, but it took you through
the best quality of air and sunlight the entire distance; and if
anything happened, at all events you could see what it was. Mr.
Mafferton replied that he thought he preferred the darkness to looking
through other people's windows; and this preference of Mr. Mafferton's
struck me later as being interestingly English. And after that we both
lapsed into meditation, and I thought about old London, with its Abbey,
and its Tower, and its Houses of Parliament, and its Bluecoat boys,
and its monuments, and its ten thousand hansom cabs, lying just over my
head; and an odd, pleasurable sensation of undermining the centuries and
playing a trick with history almost superseded the Underground smell.
The more I thought about it, and about what Mr. Mafferton had said, the
more I liked that feeling of taking an enormous liberty with London,
and by the time we reached Baker Street Station I was able to say to Mr.
Mafferton, with a clear conscience, in spite of my smuts and half-torpid
state of mind, that on consideration I thought I would like to compass
London by the Underground--to 'make the entire circuit.'





X



Original T struck me, from the outside, as oddly imposing--Madame Tussaud's. Partly, I suppose, because it is always more or less treated jocosely, partly because of the homely little familiar name, and partly because a person's expectations of a waxwork show are naturally not very lofty. I was looking out for anything but a swelling dome and a flag, and the high brick walls of an Institution. There seemed a grotesqueness of dignity about it, which was emphasised by the solemn man at the turnstile who took the shillings and let us through, and by the spaciousness inside--emphasised so much that it disappeared, so to speak, and I found myself taking the place quite seriously--the gentleman in tin on the charger in the main hall below, and the wide marble stairs, and the urns in the corners, and the oil paintings on the landings, and everything. I began asking Mr. Mafferton questions immediately, quite in the subdued voice people use under impressive circumstances; but he wasn't certain who the architect was, and couldn't say where the marble came from, and really didn't know how many years the waxworks had been in existence, and hadn't the least idea what the gross receipts were per annum--did not, in fact, seem to think he ought to be expected to be acquainted with these matters. The only thing he could tell me definitely was that Madame Tussaud was dead--and I knew that myself. 'Upon my word, you know,' said Mr. Mafferton, 'I haven't been here since I was put into knickers!' I was surprised at this remark when I heard it, for Mr. Mafferton was usually elegant to a degree in his choice of terms; but I should not be now. I have found nothing plainer in England than the language. Its simplicity and directness are a little startling at first, perhaps, to the foreign ear; but this soon wears off as you become accustomed to it, and I dare say the foreigner begins to talk the same way--in which case my speech will probably be a matter of grave consideration to me when I get back to Chicago. In America we usually put things in a manner somewhat more involved. Yes, I know you are thinking of the old story about Americans draping the legs of their pianos; but if I were you I would discount that story. For my own part, I never in my life saw it done.

The moment we were inside the main hall, where the orchestra was
playing, before I had time to say more than 'How very interesting, Mr.
Mafferton! Who is that? and why is he famous?' Mr. Mafferton bought one
of the red and gilt and green catalogues from the young woman at the
door, and put it into my hand almost impulsively.

'I fancy they're very complete--and reliable, Miss Wick,' he said.
'You--you really mustn't depend upon me. It's such an unconscionable
time since I left school.'

I told Mr. Mafferton I was sure that was only his modest way of putting
it, and that I knew he had reams of English history in his head if he
would only just think of it; and he replied, 'No, really, upon my word,
I have not!' But by that time I realised that I was in the immediate
society of all the remarkable old kings and queens of England; and the
emotions they inspired, standing round in that promiscuous touchable
way, with their crowns on, occupied me so fully, that for at least ten
minutes I found it quite interesting enough to look at them in silence.
So I sat down on one of the seats in the middle of the hall, where
people were listening to the orchestra's selections from 'The
Gondoliers,' and gave myself up to the curious captivation of the
impression. 'It's not bad,' said Mr. Mafferton, reflectively, a little
way off. 'No,' I said, 'it's beautiful!' But I think he meant the
selections, and I meant the kings and queens, to whom he was not paying
the slightest attention. But I did not find fault with him for that--he
had been, in a manner, brought up amongst these things; he lived in a
country that always had a king or queen of some sort to rule over it;
he was used to crowns and sceptres. He could not possibly have the
same feelings as a person born in Chicago, and reared upon Republican
principles. But to me those quaint groups of royalties in the robes and
jewels of other times, and arrayed just as much in their characters as
in their clothes--the characters everybody knows them by--were a
source of pure and, while I sat there, increasing delight. I don't mind
confessing that I like the kings and queens at Madame Tussaud's better
than anything else I've seen in England, at the risk of being considered
a person of low intelligence. I know that Mr. James Russell Lowell--whom
poppa always used to say he was proud to claim as a fellow-countryman,
until he went Mugwump when Cleveland was elected--said of them that they
were 'much like any other English party'; but I should think from that
that Mr. Lowell was perhaps a little prejudiced against waxworks, and
intolerant of the form of art which they represent; or, possibly, when
he said it he had just come to London, and had not attended many English
parties. For it seems to me that the peculiar charm and interest of the
ladies and gentlemen at Madame Tussaud's is the ingenuous earnestness
with which they show you their temperaments and tastes and dispositions,
which I have not found especially characteristic of other English ladies
and gentlemen. As Lady Torquilin says, however, 'that's as it may be.'
All I know is, that whatever Mr. Lowell, from his lofty Harvard standard
of culture, may find to say in deprecation of all that is left of your
early sovereigns, I, from my humble Chicago point of view, was immensely
pleased with them. I could not get over the feeling--I have not got over
it yet--that they were, or at any rate had once been, veritable kings
and queens. I had a sentiment of respect; I could not think of them,
as I told Mr. Mafferton, 'as wax'; and it never occurred to me that
the crowns were brass and the jewels glass. Even now I find that an
unpleasant reflection; and I would not go back to Madame Tussaud's on
any account, for fear the brassiness of the crowns and the glassiness
of the jewels might obtrude themselves the second time, and spoil the
illusion. English history, with its moated castles, and knights in
armour, and tyrant kings and virtuous queens, had always seemed more
or less of a fairy tale to me--it is difficult to believe in mediæval
romance in America--and there, about me, was the fairy tale realised:
all the curious old people who died of a 'surfeit of lampreys,' or of
a bad temper, or of decapitation, or in other ways which would be
considered eccentric now, in all their dear old folds and fashions,
red and blue and gold and ermine, with their crowns on! There was a
sociability among them, too, that I thought interesting, and that struck
me as a thing I shouldn't have expected, some of their characters being
so very good, and some so very bad; but I suppose, being all kings and
queens, any other distinction would be considered invidious. I looked up
while I was thinking about them, and caught Mr. Mafferton yawning.

'Are you impressed?' he said, disguising it with a smile.

'Very much,' I answered him. 'In a way. Aren't you?' 'I think they're
imbecile,' said Mr. Mafferton. 'Imbecile old Things! I have been
wondering what they could possibly suggest to you.'

Mr. Mafferton certainly spoke in that way. I remember it distinctly.
Because I depended upon it in taking, as we went round, a certain
freedom of criticism--depended upon it, I had reason to believe
afterwards, unwarrantably.

'Let us look at them individually,' I said, rising. 'Collectively, I
find them lovable.'

'Well, now, I envy them!' replied Mr. Mafferton, with great coolness.
This was surprisingly frivolous in Mr. Mafferton, who was usually quite
what would be called a serious person, and just for a minute I did not
quite know what to say. Then I laughed a little frivolously too. 'I
suppose you intend that for a compliment, Mr. Mafferton,' I said.
Privately, I thought it very clumsy. 'This is Number One, I think'--and
we stopped before William the Conqueror asking Matilda of Flanders to
sit down.

'I don't know that I did,' said Mr. Mafferton--which made the situation
awkward for me; for if there is an uncomfortable thing, it is to
appropriate a compliment which was not intended. An Englishman is a
being absolutely devoid of tact.

'So this is William the Conqueror?' I said, by way of changing the
subject.

 'It may be a little like his clothes,' said Mr. Mafferton, indifferently.

'Oh! don't say that, Mr. Mafferton. I'm sure he looks every inch a
William the Conqueror! See how polite he is to his wife, too--I suppose
that's because he's French?'

Mr. Mafferton didn't say anything, and it occurred to me that perhaps I
had not expressed myself well.

'Do you notice,' I went on, 'how he wears his crown--all tipped to one
side? He reminds me just a little, Mr. Mafferton, with that type of
face--enterprising, you know--and hair that length, only it ought to
be dark, and if the crown were only a wide-brimmed, soft felt hat--he
reminds mo very much of those Californian ranchers and miners Bret Harte
and Joaquin Miller write about.'

'Do you mean cowboys?' asked Mr. Mafferton, in a way that told me he
wasn't going to agree with me.

'Yes, that kind of person. I think William the Conqueror would make a
beautiful cowboy--a regular "Terror of the Canyon."'

'Can't say I see it,' said Mr. Mafferton, fixing his eye upon the bass
'cello at the other end of the room.

'It isn't in that direction,' I said, and Mr. Mafferton became
exceedingly red. Then it occurred to me that possibly over here that
might be considered impertinent, so I did my best to make up for it.
'A very nice face, isn't it?' I went on. 'What is he particularly noted
for, Mr. Mafferton, besides the Curfew, and the Doomsday Book, and
introducing old families into England?'

Mr. Mafferton bit his moustache. I had never seen anybody bite his
moustache before, though I had always understood from novels that it
was done in England. Whether American gentlemen have better tempers, or
whether they are afraid of injuring it, or why the habit is not a common
one with us, I am unable to say.

'Really, Miss Wick,' Mr. Mafferton responded, with six degrees of frost,
'I--is there nothing about it in the catalogue? He established the only
date which would ever stick in my memory--1066. But you mustn't think he
brought all the old families in England over with him, Miss Wick--it is
incorrect.'

'"I daresay," I said; 'people get such curious ideas about England in
America, Mr. Mafferton.' But that did not seem to please Mr. Mafferton
either. 'I think they ought to know,' he said, so seriously that I
did not like to retaliate with any English misconceptions of American
matters. And from what I know of Mr. Mafferton now, I do not think he
would have seen the slightest parallel.

'How this brings it all back, I said, as we looked at William the
Second, surnamed Rufus, in blue and yellow, with a plain front--'the
marks in history at school, and the dates let in at the sides of the
pages! "His dead body, with an arrow sticking in it, was found by
Purkiss, a charcoal-burner, and carried in a cart to Winchester, where
it was buried in the Cathedral." I remember I used to torment myself by
wondering whether they pulled the arrow out, because in my history it
didn't say they did.'

'It's a fact,' said Mr. Mafferton; 'one always does think of the old
chap with the arrow sticking in him. Burne-Jones or one of those
fellows ought to paint it--the forest, you know, twilight, and the
charcoal-burner in a state of funk. Tremendously effective--though, I
daresay, it's been done scores of times.'

'And sold to be lithographed in advertisements!' I added.

'Ah, Miss Wick, that is the utilitarian American way of looking at
things!' Mr. Mafferton remarked, jocularly; and I don't think I could
have been expected to refrain from telling him that I had in mind a
certain soap not manufactured in America.

When we got as far as Henry the Second, Curtmantle, whom Madame Tussaud
describes as a 'wise and good king,' and who certainly has an amiable,
open countenance, I noticed that all the crowns were different, and
asked Mr. Mafferton about it--whether at that time every king had his
crown made to order, and trimmed according to his own ideas, or had to
take whatever crown was going; and whether it was his to do as he liked
with, or went with the throne; and if the majority of the kings had
behaved properly about their crowns, and where they all were. But if Mr.
Mafferton knew, he chose to be equivocal--he did not give me any answer
that I feel I could rely upon sufficiently to put into print. Then we
passed that nice brave crusading Richard the First, surnamed Coeur
de Lion, in some domestic argument with his sweet Berengaria; and Mr.
Mafferton, talking about her, used the expression, 'Fair flower of
Navarre.' But at that time he was carrying the catalogue.

King John I thought delightful; I could not have believed it possible
to put such a thoroughly bad temper into wax, and I said so to Mr.
Mafferton, who agreed with me, though without enthusiasm. 'The worst
king who ever sat on the English throne!' I repeated, meditatively,
quoting from Madame Tussaud--'that's saying a great deal, isn't it, Mr.
Mafferton?' My escort said No, he couldn't say he thought it represented
such an acme of wickedness, and we walked on, past swarthy little sad
Charles the Second, in armour and lace, who looks--and how could he
help it?--as if he were always thinking of what happened to his sire--I
suppose the expression 'poppa' is unknown among royalties. Mr. Mafferton
would not agree to this either; he seemed to have made up his mind not
to agree to anything further.

I should like to write a whole chapter about Henry the Eighth as he
looked that day, though I daresay it is an habitual expression, and you
may have seen it often yourself. He was standing in the midst of a
group of ladies, including some of his wives, stepping forward in an
impulsive, emotional way; listening, with grief in both his eyes, to the
orchestra's rendition of



Bury! Bury! Let the grave close o'er.



as if deeply deprecating the painful necessity of again becoming a
widower. It was beautiful to see the way the music worked upon his
feelings. It will be impossible for me ever to think so badly of him
again.

'What is your impression of him?' asked Mr. Mafferton.

I said I thought he was too funny for words.

'He was a monster!' my friend remarked, 'and you are quite the first
person, I should say, who has ever discovered anything humorous in him.'
And I gathered from Mr. Mafferton's tone that, while it was pardonable
to think badly of an English monarch, it was improper to a degree to
find him amusing.

Then I observed that they were all listening with Henry the
Eighth--Philippa of Hainault with her pink nose, and the Black Prince in
mail, and Catharine of Arragon embracing her monkey, and Cardinal Wolsey
in red, and Caxton in black, and Chaucer in poet's grey, listening
intently--you could tell even by their reflections in the glass--as the
orchestra went on--



The days that have been, and never shall be more!



Personally, I felt sorry for them all, even for that old maid in armour,
James the Second. Mr. Mafferton, by the way, could see nothing in the
least old-maidish about this sovereign. They must have had, as a rule,
such a very good time while it lasted--it must have been so thoroughly
disagreeable to die! I wanted immensely to ask Mr. Mafferton--but
somehow his manner did not encourage me to do it--whether in those
very early times kings were able to wear their crowns every day without
exciting comment, as Madame Tussaud distinctly gives you the idea that
they did. And it seemed to me that in those days it must have been
really worth while to be a king, and be different from other people,
in both dress and deportment. I would not go through the other rooms,
because I did not believe anything could be more beautiful than the
remains of your early sovereigns, and, moreover, Mr. Mafferton was
getting so very nearly sulky that I thought I had better not. But just
through the door I caught a glimpse of one or two American Presidents
in black, with white ties. They had intelligent faces, but beside your
Plantagenets I don't mind confessing they didn't look anything!





XI

I HAD not the least expectation of being fortunate enough to see your
Parliament open, having always heard that all the peeresses wanted to go
on that occasion, and knowing how little sitting accommodation you had
for anybody. Americans find nothing more impressive in England than the
difficulty of getting a look at your system of government--our own is so
very accessible to everyone who chooses to study it, and to come and sit
in the general gallery of the House of Congress or the Senate without
making a disturbance. The thing an American tells first, and with
most pride, when he comes home after visiting England, is that he has
attended a sitting of Parliament and seen Mr. Gladstone; if he has heard
your veteran politician speak, he is prouder still. So I had cherished
the hope of somehow getting into the House while Parliament was in
session, and seeing all the people we read so much about at home in
connection with the Irish Question--it was the thing, I believe, I had
set my heart upon doing most; but tickets for the opening of Parliament
from Mr. Mafferton, with a note informing Lady Torquilin that his cousin
had promised to look after us on the occasion, represented more than my
highest aspiration.

Lady Torquilin was pleased, too, though I don't think she intended
to express her pleasure when she said, with an air of philosophical
acceptance of whatever Fate might send, 'Providence only knows, my dear,
how the old man will behave! He may be as agreeable as possible--as
merry as a grig--and he may be in a temper like the------'; and Lady
Torquilin compressed her lips and nodded her head in a way that told me
how her remark would finish if she were not a member of the Church of
England, rather low, and a benefactor to deep-sea fishermen and Dr.
Barnardo, with a strong objection to tobacco in any form. 'We must
avoid subjects that are likely to provoke him: local self-government for
Ireland has given him apoplexy twice; I've heard of his getting awful
tantrums about this last Licensing Bill; and marriage with a deceased
wife's sister, I know, is a thing to avoid!'

Then it dawned upon me that this was Mr. Mafferton's cousin, who was a
lord, and I had a very great private satisfaction that I should see what
he was like.

'I remember,' I said. 'This is the cousin that you said was an old----'

'Brute!' Lady Torquilin finished for me, seeing that I didn't quite like
to. 'So he is, when he's in a rage! I wouldn't be Lady Mafferton, poor
dear, for something! An ordinary "K" and an ordinary temper for me!' I
asked Lady Torquilin what she meant by 'an ordinary K'; and in the next
half-hour I got a lesson on the various distinctions of the English
aristocracy that interested me extremely. Lady Torquilin's 'K,' I may
say, while I am talking about it, was the 'C.M.G.' kind, and not the
'K' sometimes conferred late in life upon illustrious butchers. Lady
Torquilin didn't seem to think much of this kind of 'K,' but I was glad
to hear of it. It must be a great encouragement to honesty and industry
in the humbler walks of life, or, as you would say, among the masses;
and though, I suppose, it wouldn't exactly accord with our theory of
government, I am sorry we have nothing even remotely like it in America.

It was a nice day, a lovely day, an extraordinary day, the February
day Lady Torquilin and I compromised upon a hansom and drove to the
Parliament buildings. A person has such a vivid, distinct recollection
of nice days in London! The drive knocked another of my preconceived
ideas to pieces--the idea that Westminster was some distance off,
and would have to be reached by train--not quite so far, perhaps, as
Washington is from New York, for that would just as likely as not put it
in the sea, but a considerable distance. I suppose you will think that
inexcusable; but it is very difficult to be enough interested in foreign
capitals to verify vague impressions about them, and Westminster is a
large-sounding name, that suggests at least a mayor and a town council
of its own. It was odd to find it about twenty minutes from anywhere
in Loudon, and not to know exactly when you had arrived until the cab
rolled under the shadow of the Abbey, and stopped in the crowd that
waited to cheer the great politicians. Lady Torquilin immediately
asked one of the policemen which way to go--I don't know anybody who
appreciates what you might call the encyclopaedic value of the London
police more that Lady Torquilin--and he waved us on. 'Straight ahead,
madame, and turn in at the 'orseback statyou,' he said, genially, the
distance being not more than two hundred yards from where we stood, and
the turning-in point visible On the way, notwithstanding, Lady Torquilin
asked two other policemen. My friend loves the peace of mind that
follows absolute certainty. Presently we were following the rustling
elegance of two or three tall ladies, whom I at once pronounced to be
peeresses, through the broad, quiet, red corridor that leads to the
House of Lords.

We were among the very first, and had our choice of the long, narrow
seats that run along the wall in a terrace on each side of the Chamber.
Fortunately, Lady Torquilin had attended other openings of Parliament,
and knew that we must sit on the left; otherwise we might just as likely
as not have taken our places on the other side, where there were only
two or three old gentlemen with sticks and silk hats--which, I reflected
afterwards, would have been awful. But, as it happened, we sat down very
decorously in our proper places, and I tried to realise, as we looked at
the crowded galleries and the long, narrow, solemn crimson room with the
throne-chair at one end, that I was in the British House of Lords. Our
Senate, just before the opening of Congress, is so very different. Most
of the senators are grey-haired, and many of them are bald, but they all
walk about quite nimbly, and talk before the proceedings begin with
a certain vivacity; and there are pages running round with notes and
documents, and a great many excited groups in the lobbies, and a general
air of crisp business and alacrity everywhere. The only thing I could
feel in the House of Lords that morning was a concentrated atmospheric
essence of Importance. I was thinking of a thing Senator Ingalls said to
me two years ago, which was what you would call 'comic,' when the idea
struck me that it was almost time for Parliament to open, and not a
single peer had arrived. So I asked Lady Torquilin when the lords might
be expected to come in. Up to this time we had been discussing the
millinery by which we were surrounded.

'I daresay there won't be many to-day,' said Lady Torquilin. 'Certainly
very few so far!'

'Are there any here?' I asked her.

'Oh, yes--just opposite, don't you see, child! That wellset-up man with
the nice, wholesome face, the third from the end in the second row from
the bottom--that's Lord Rosebery; and next him is the great beer-man--I
forget his title; and here is Lord Mafferton now--don't look--coming
into the first row from the bottom, and leaning over to shake hands with
Lord Rosebery.'

'Tell me when I can look,' I said, 'because I want to awfully. But, Lady
Torquilin, are those peers? They look very respectable and nice, I'm
sure, but I did expect more in the way of clothes. Where are their
flowing mantles, and their chains and swords and things?'

'Only when the Queen opens Parliament in person,' said Lady Torquilin.
'Then there is a turn-out! Now you can look at Lord Mafferton--the rude
old man! Fancy his having the impudence to sit there with his hat on!'

I looked at Lord Mafferton, who certainly had not removed his hat--the
large, round, shiny silk hat worn by every gentleman in England, and
every commercial traveller in America. Under the hat he was very pink
and fat, with rather a snubby nose, and little twinkling blue eyes, and
a suggestion of white whisker about the place where his chin and his
cheek disappeared into his neck. He wore lavender-kid gloves, and was
inclined to corpulency. I should not have trusted this description of
a peer of your realm if it had come from any other American pen than
my own--I should have set it down as a gross exaggeration, due to envy,
from the fact that we can neither produce peers in our own country nor
keep them there for any length of time; but I was obliged to believe
my own eyes, and that is the way they reported Lord Mafferton from the
other side of your Upper House. There were other gentlemen in the rows
opposite--gentlemen all in black, and gentlemen in light waistcoats,
bearded and clean-shaven, most of them elderly, but a few surprisingly
middle-aged--for your natural expectation is to see a peer
venerable--but I must say there was not one that I would have picked out
to be a peer, for any particular reason, in the street. And it seemed
to me that, since they are constitutional, as it were, there ought to
be some way of knowing them. I reasoned again, however, that perhaps
my lack of discrimination was due to my not being accustomed to seeing
peers--that possibly the delicate distinctions and values that make up a
peer would be perfectly evident to a person born, so to speak, under the
shadow of the aristocracy. And in the meantime the proceedings began
by everybody standing up. I don't know whether I actually expected a
procession and a band, but when I discovered that we were all standing
while four or five gentlemen in red gowns walked to the other end of
the room and took chairs, my emotions were those of blank surprise.
Presently I felt Lady Torquilin give an emphatic tug to my skirt. 'Sit
down, child!' she said. 'Everybody else has! Do you want to make a
speech?'--and I sat down quickly. Then I observed that a gentleman in
black, also in fancy dress, was reading something indistinctly to the
four or five red-gowned gentlemen, who looked very solemn and stately,
but said nothing. It was so difficult for a stranger to understand, that
I did not quite catch what was said to another gentleman in black with
buckled shoes, but it must have been to the purport of 'Go and fetch
it!' for he suddenly began to walk out backwards, stopping at every few
steps to bow with great deference to them of the red gowns, which must
have been very trying, for nobody returned the bows, and he never could
tell who might have come in behind him. 'I suppose he has gone out for a
minute to get something,' I said to Lady Torquilin; and then she told me
what, of course, I ought to have known if I had refreshed myself with
a little English history before starting--that he was the Usher of
the Black Rod, and had been sent to bring the members of the other
Parliament. And presently there was a great sound of footsteps in the
corridors outside, and your House of Commons came hurrying to the 'bar,'
I believe it is called, of your House of Lords. It was wonderfully
interesting to look at, to a stranger, that crowd of members of your
Lower House as it came, without ceremony, to the slender brass rod and
stopped there, because it could come no farther--pressing against it,
laying hands upon it, craning over it, and yet held back by the visible
and invisible force of it. Compared with the well-fed and well-groomed
old gentlemen who sat comfortably inside, these outsiders looked lean
and unkempt; but there were so many of them, and they seemed so much
more in earnest than the old gentlemen on the benches, that the power
of the brass rod seemed to me extraordinary. I should not have been an
American if I had not wondered at it, and whether the peers in mufti
would not some day be obliged to make a habit of dressing up in their
mantles and insignia on these occasions to impress the Commoners
properly with a sense of difference and a reason for their staying
outside.

Then, as soon as they were all ready to pay attention, the
Vice-Chancellor read the Queen's letter, in which Her Majesty, so far as
I could understand, regretted her inability to be present, told them
all a good deal about what she had been doing since she wrote last,
and closed by sending her kind regards and best wishes--a very pleasant
letter, I thought, and well-written. Then we all stood up again while
the gentlemen in red, the Lord Chancellor, and the others walked out;
after which everybody dispersed, and I found myself shaking hands with
Lord Mafferton in a pudgy, hearty way, as he and Lady Torquilin and I
departed together.

Original 'So this is our little Yankee!' said Lord Mafferton, with his fat round chin stretched out sideways, and his hands behind his back. Now I am quite five-feet eight, and I do not like being called names, but I found a difficulty in telling Lord Mafferton that I was not their little Yankee; so I smiled, and said nothing. 'Well, well! Come over the "duckpond"--isn't that what you call the Atlantic Ocean?--to see how fast old England is going to pieces, eh?'

'Oh!' said Lady Torquilin, 'I think Miss Wick is delighted with England,
Lord Mafferton.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I am. Delighted with it! Why should anybody think it is
going to pieces?'

'Oh, it's a popular fancy in some quarters,' said Lord

Mafferton. Being a lord, I don't suppose he winked at Lady Torquilin,
but he did something very like it.

'I should call it a popular fallacy,' I declared; at which Lord
Mafferton laughed, and said, 'It was all very well, it was all very
well,' exactly like any old grandpapa. 'Miss Wick would like a look over
the place, I suppose,' he said to Lady Torquilin. 'You think it would
be safe, eh? No explosives concealed about her--she doesn't think of
blowing us up?' And this very jocular old peer led the way through a
labyrinth of chambers and corridors of which I can't possibly remember
the locality or the purpose, because he went so fast.

'No doubt you've heard of Cromwell,' he said beside one door. I should
have liked to know why he asked me, if there was no doubt of it; but I
suppose a lord is not necessarily a logician. 'This is the room in which
he signed the death-warrant of Charles the First.'

'Dear me,' I said. 'The one that he's holding a copy of on his lap at
Madame Tussaud's?'

'I dare say! I dare say!' said Lord Maflerton. 'But not so fast, my
dear young lady, not so fast! You mustn't go in, you know. That's not
allowable!' and he whisked us away to the Library. 'Of course, Miss Wick
understands,' he said to Lady Torquilin, 'that every word spoken here
above a whisper means three days in a dungeon on bread and water!' By
this time my ideas of peers had become so confused that I was entirely
engaged in trying to straighten them out, and had very little to say of
any sort; but Lord Mafferton chatted continually as we walked through
the splendid rooms, only interrupting himself now and then to remind me
of the dungeon and the penalty of talking. It was very difficult getting
a first impression of the English House of Parliament and an English
peer at the same time--they continually interrupted each other. It was
in the Royal Banqueting Hall, for instance, where I was doing my best
to meditate upon scenes of the past, that Lord Mafferton stated to Lady
Torquilin his objection to the inside of an omnibus, and this in itself
was distracting. It would never occur to anybody in America to think of
a peer and an omnibus together. The vestibule of the House of Commons
was full of gentlemen walking about and talking; but there was a great
deliberateness about the way it was done--no excitement, and every man
in his silently-expressive silk hat. They all seemed interested in each
other in an observing way, too, and whether to bow or not to bow; and
when Lord Mafferton recognised any of them, he was usually recognised
back with great cordiality. You don't see so much of that when Congress
opens. The members in the lobby are usually a great deal too much
wrapped up in business to take much notice of each other. I observed,
too, that the British Government does not provide cuspidores for its
legislators, which struck me as reflecting very favourably upon the
legislative sense of propriety here, especially as there seemed to be no
obvious demand for such a thing.

'Bless you, my dear young lady, you mustn't go in there!' exclaimed Lord
Mafferton at the door of the House, as I stepped in to take a perfectly
inoffensive look at it. 'Out with you quick, or they'll have you off to
the Tower before you can say George Washington!'

'But why?' I asked, quite breathless with my sudden exit.

'Young people should never ask "why?"' said Lord Mafferton,
serio-comically. 'Thank your American stars that Salisbury or any of
those fellows were not about!'

This peer evidently thought I was very, very young--about twelve; but I
have noticed since that not only peers, but all agreeable old gentlemen
in England, have a habit of dating you back in this way. It is a kindly,
well-meant attitude, but it leaves you without very much to say.

I thought feminine privileges in your House of Commons very limited
indeed then, but considerably more so when I attended a sitting with
Lady Torquilin a week later, and disarranged my features for life trying
to look through the diamonds of the iron grating with which Parliament
tries to screen itself from the criticism of its lady relations.

Lord Mafferton came up that day with us, and explained that the grating
was to prevent the ladies from throwing themselves at the heads of the
unmarried members--a singular precaution. The only other reason I could
hear why it should not be taken down was that nobody had done it since
it was put up--a remarkably British reason, and calculated, as most
things seem to be in this country, to last.

And I saw your Prince that afternoon. He came into the Peers' Gallery
in a light overcoat, and sat down with two or three friends to watch his
people governing their country below. He seemed thoroughly interested,
and at times, when Mr. O'Brien or Mr. O'Connor said something that
looked toward the dismemberment of his empire, amused. And it was an
instructive sight to see your future king pleased and edified, and
unencumbered by any disagreeable responsibilities, looking on.





XII

ITOLD Lady Torquilin that the expression struck me as profane.

'How ridiculous you are, child! It's a good old English word. Nobody
will understand you if you talk about your "rubbers" in this country.
"Goloshes," certainly. G-o-l-o-s-h-e-s, "goloshes." Now, go directly
and put them on, and don't be impertinent about the English language in
England, whatever you may be out of it!'

I went away murmuring, '"G-o-l-o-s-h-e-s, goloshes"! What a perfectly
awful--literally unutterable word! No, I love Lady Torquilin, and I like
her England, but I'll never, never, never say "goloshes"! I'd almost
rather swear!' And as I slipped on the light, thin, flexible articles
manufactured, I believe, in Rochester, N.Y., and privately compared them
with the remarkable objects worn by the British nation for the purpose
of keeping its feet dry, the difference in the descriptive terms gave me
a certain satisfaction.

Lady Torquilin and I were going shopping. I had been longing to shop in
London ever since I arrived, but, as Lady Torquilin remarked, my trunks
seemed to make it almost unreasonable. So up to this time I had been
obliged to content myself with looking at the things in the windows,
until Lady Torquilin said she really couldn't spend so much time in
front of shop-windows--we had better go inside. Besides, she argued, of
course there was this to be said--if you bought a good thing, there
it was--always a good thing! I And it isn't as if you were obliged to
pinch, my dear. I would be the last one to counsel extravagance,' said
Lady Torquilin. 'Therefore we'll go to the cheapest place first'--and
we got an omnibus. It seemed full of people who were all going to the
cheapest place, and had already come, some of them a long way, to go
to it, judging by their fares. They were not poor people, nor
respectably-darned people, nor shabby-genteel people. Some of them
looked like people with incomes that would have enabled them to avoid
the cheapest place, and some gave you the idea that, if it were not
for the cheapest place, they would not look so well. But they had
an invariable expression of content with the cheapest place, or
appreciation of it, that made me quite certain they would all get out
when we stopped there; and they did.

We went in with a throng that divided and hurried hither and thither
through long 'departments,' upstairs and down, past counters heaped with
cheapnesses, and under billowing clouds and streaming banners of various
colours, marked 1s. 1d. and 11d. in very black letters on a very white
ground. The whole place spoke of its cheapness, invited you to approach
and have your every want supplied at the lowest possible scale of
profit--for cash. Even the clerks--as we say in America, incorrectly,
I believe--the people behind the counter suggested the sweet
reasonableness of the tariff; not that I mean anything invidious, but
they seemed to be drawn from an unpretending, inexpensive class of
humanity. The tickets claimed your attention everywhere, and held it,
the prices on them were so remarkably low; and it was to me at first
a matter of regret that they were all attached to articles I could not
want under any circumstances. For, the moment I went in. I succumbed to
the cheapest place; I desired to avail myself of it to any extent--to
get the benefit of those fascinating figures personally and immediately.
I followed Lady Torquilin with eagerness, exclaiming: but nothing would
induce her to stop anywhere; she went straight for the trifles she
wanted, and I perforce after her. 'There are some things, my dear,' she
said, when we reached the right counter, 'that one must come here for,
but beyond those few odds and ends--well, I leave you to judge for
yourself.'

This was calculated to dash a person's enthusiasm, and mine was dashed
at once. There is nothing, in shopping, like a friend's firm and
outspoken opinion, to change your views. I began to think unfavourably
of the cheapest place immediately, and during the twenty-five minutes
of valuable time which Lady Torquilin spent, in addition to some small
silver, upon a box of pink paper trimmings for pudding-dishes, I had
arrived at a state of objection to the cheapest place, which intensified
as we climbed more stairs, shared more air with the British Public
of the cheapest place, and were jostled at more counters. 'For,' Lady
Torquilin said, 'now that we are here, though I loathe coming, except
that it's something you ought to do, we really might as well see what
there is!'--and she found that there were quite a number of little
things at about a shilling and a ha'penny that she absolutely needed,
and would have to pay 'just double for, my dear, anywhere else.' By that
time my objection became active, and embraced the cheapest place and
everything connected with it, quite unreasonably. For there was no doubt
about the genuineness of the values offered all over its counters, or
about the fact that the clerks were doing the best they could to
sell seven separate shillings'-worth at the same moment to different
individuals, or of the respectability of the seven people who were
spending the seven shillings. It would have been a relief, indeed, to
have detected something fraudulent among the bargains, or some very
great adventuress among the customers. It was the deadly monotony of
goodishness and cheapishness in everything and everybody that oppressed
you. There were no heights of excellence and no contrasting depths--all
one level of quality wherever you looked--so that the things they sold
at the cheapest place--sold with mechanical respect, and as fast as
they could tie them up--seemed to lack all individuality, and to have
no reason for being, except to become parcels. There was none of the
exultation of bargain-getting; the bargains were on a regular system of
fixed laws--the poetic delight of an unexpected 'reduction' was wholly
absent. The cheapest place resolved itself into a vast, well-organised
Opportunity, and inside you saw the British Public and the Opportunity
together.

'Ere is your chainge, madam,' said the hollow-eyed young woman who had
been waiting upon Lady Torquilin in the matter of a letter-weight and a
Japanese umbrella. 'Thank you,' said Lady Torquilin. 'I'm afraid you
get very tired, don't you, before the day is over?' my friend asked the
young woman, with as sweet a smile as she could have given anybody. The
young woman smiled back again, and said, 'Very, madame'; but that was
all, for three other people wanted her. I put this in because it is
one of the little things she often says that show the niceness of Lady
Torquilin.

'Now, what do you think of the cheapest place?' asked Lady Torquilin as
we walked together in the Edgware Road. I told her as I have told you.
'H'mph!' said she. 'It's not a shop I like myself, but that's what I
call being too picksome! You get what you want, and if you don't want it
you leave it, and why should you care! Now, by way of variety, we'll go
to the dearest place;' and the omnibus we got into rattled off in the
direction of Bond Street. It struck me then, and often since, how oddly
different London is from an American city to go shopping in. At home the
large, important stores are pretty much together, in the business part
of the city, and anybody can tell from the mere buildings what to expect
in the way of style and price. In London you can't tell at all, and the
well-known shops are scattered over square miles of streets, by twos and
threes, in little individual towns, each with its own congregation
of smaller shops, and its own butchers and bakers and newsstands, and
post-office and squares and 'places,' and blind alleys and strolling
cats and hand organs; and to get from one to another of the little towns
it is necessary to make a journey in an omnibus. Of course, I know there
are a few places preeminent in reputation and 'form' and price--above
all in price--which gather in a few well-known streets; but life in
all these little centres which make up London would be quite complete
without them. They seem to exist for the benefit of that extravagant
element here that has nothing to do with the small respectable houses
and the little domestic squares, but hovers over the city during the
time of year when the sun shines and the fogs are not, living during
that time in notable localities, under the special inspection of the
'Morning Post.' The people who really live in London--the people of
the little centres--can quite well ignore these places; they have their
special shop in Uxbridge Road or St. Paul's Churchyard, and if they
tire of their own particular local cut, they can make morning trips
from Uxbridge Road to the High Street, Kensington, or from either to
Westboume Grove. To Americans this is very novel and amusing, and we get
a great deal of extra pleasure out of shopping in London in sampling, so
to speak, the different submunicipalities.

While I was thinking these things, Lady Torquilin poked me with her
parasol from the other end of the omnibus. 'Tell him to stop!' she said,
and I did; at least, the gentleman in the corner made the request for
me. That gentleman in the corner is a feature of your omnibus system, I
think. His arm, or his stick, or his umbrella, is always at the service
of any lady who wants the bell rung. It seems to be a duty that goes
with the corner seat, cheerfully accepted by every man that sits there.

We had arrived in Bond Street, at the dearest place. From what Lady
Torquilin told me, I gathered that Bond Street was a regular haunt for
dearest places; but it would be impossible for any stranger to suppose
so from walking through it--it is so narrow and crooked and irregular,
and the shops are so comparatively insignificant after the grand sweep
of Regent Street and the wide variety of the circuses. For one, I should
have thought circuses would be the best possible places for business
in London, not only because the address is so easily remembered, but
because once you get into them they are so extremely difficult to get
out of. However, a stranger never can tell.

Inside, the dearest place was a stronger contrast to the cheapest
place than I could describe by any antithesis. There was an exclusive
emptiness about it that seemed to suggest a certain temerity in coming
in, and explained, considered commercially, why the rare visitors
should have such an expensive time of it. One or two tailor-made ladies
discussed something in low tones with an assistant, and beside these
there was nobody but a couple of serious-minded shopwalkers, some
very elegant young ladies-in-waiting, and the dummies that called
your attention to the fashions they were exhibiting. The dummies were
headless, but probably by the variety of their clothes they struck you
as being really the only personalities in the shop. We looked at some
of them before advancing far into the august precincts of the dearest
place, and Lady Torquilin had a sweeping opinion of them. 'Hideous! I
call them,' she said; but she said it in rather a hushed tone, quite
different from the one she would have used in the cheapest place, and I
am sure the shopwalker did not overhear. 'Bulgarian atrocities! How in
the world people imagine such things! And as to setting to work to make
them----'

I can't say I agreed with Lady Torquilin, for there was a distinct idea
in all the dresses, and a person always respects an idea, whether it is
pretty or not; but neither can I profess an admiration for the fashions
of the dearest place. They were rather hard and unsympathetic; they
seemed to sacrifice everything to be in some degree striking; their
motto seemed to be, 'Let us achieve a difference'--presumably from the
fashions of places that were only dear in the comparative degree. While
we were looking at them, one of the pale young women strolled languidly
up and remarked, with an absent expression, that one of them was
'considered a smart little gown, moddam!' 'Smart enough, I daresay,'
said Lady Torquilin, with a slightly invidious emphasis on the
adjective; whereat the young woman said nothing, but looked volumes of
repressed astonishment at the ignorance implied. Lady Torquilin went on
to describe the kind of dress I thought of buying.

Original 'Certainly, moddam! Will you take a seat, moddam? Something quite simple I think you said, moddam, and in muslin. I'll be with you in one moment, moddam.' And the young woman crawled away with the negligence that became the dearest place. After an appreciable time she returned with her arms full of what they used to call, so very correctly, 'furbelows,' in spotted and flowered muslins.

'Dearie me!' said Lady Torquilin. 'That's precisely what I wore when I
was a girl!'

'Yes, moddam!' said the young woman, condescending to the ghost of
a smile. 'The old styles are all comin' in again'--at which burst of
responsiveness she suddenly brought herself up sharply, and assumed a
manner which forbade you to presume upon it.

I picked up one of the garlanded muslins and asked the price of it. It
had three frills round the bottom and various irrelevant ribbon-bows.

'Certainly, moddam! One moment, moddam!' as she looked at the ticket
attached.

'This one is seventeen guineas, moddam. Silk foundation. A Paris model,
moddam, but I dare say we could copy it for you for less.'

Lady Torquilin and I made a simultaneous movement, and looked at each
other in the expressive way that all ladies understand who go shopping
with each other.

'Thanks!' I said. 'It is much too expensive for me.'

'We have nothing of this style under fifteen guineas, moddam,' replied
the young woman, with a climax of weary frigidity. 'Then, shall we go?'

I asked Lady Torquilin--and we went.

'What a price!' said Lady Torquilin, as we left the dearest place behind
us.

I said I thought it was an insult--eighty-five dollars for a ready-made
sprigged muslin dress!--to the intelligence of the people who were
expected to buy it. That, for my part, I should feel a distinct loss of
self-respect in buying anything at the dearest place. What would I be
paying for?

'For being able to say that it came from the dearest place,' said Lady
Torquilin. 'But I thought you Americans didn't mind what anything cost.'

That misconception of Lady Torquilin's is a popular one, and I was
at some pains to rectify it. 'We don't,' I said, 'if we recognise the
fairness of it; but nobody resents being imposed upon more than an
American, Lady Torquilin. We have our idiots, like other nations, and
I daresay a good many of them come to London every year and deal
exclusively at the dearest place; but as a nation, though we don't
scrimp we do like the feeling that we are paying for value received.'

'Well,' said Lady Torquilin, 'I believe that is the case. I know
Americans talk a great deal about the price of things--more, I consider,
than is entertaining sometimes.' I said I knew they did--it was a
national fault--and what did Lady Torquilin think the dress I had on
cost, just to compare it with that muslin, and Chicago was by no means
a cheap place for anything. Lady Torquilin said she hadn't an idea--our
dollars were so difficult to reckon in; but what did I think hers came
to--and not a scrap of silk lining about it. And so the time slipped
away until we arrived in the neighbourhood of Cavendish Square, at
what Lady Torquilin called 'the happy medium,' where the windows were
tempting, and the shopwalker smiled, and the lady-in-waiting was a
person of great dignity, in high, black sleeves, with a delightful
French accent when she talked, which she very seldom forgot, and only
contradicted when she said ''Ow' and ''elliotrope,' and where things
cost just about what they did in America.

Original I have gone very patiently ever since to the happy medium, partly to acquire the beautiful composure of the lady-in-waiting, partly to enjoy the respect which all Americans like so much in a well-conducted English shop, and partly because at the happy medium they understand how to turn shopping into the pleasant artistic pastime it ought to be, which everybody in America is in far too much of a hurry to make a fortune and retire to do for his customers. I am on the most agreeable footing with the lady in the sleeves now, and I have observed that, as our acquaintance progresses, her command of English consonantal sounds remarkably increases. But I have never been able to reconcile myself, even theoretically, either to the cheapest place, in the Edgware Road, or the dearest place, in Bond Street.





XIII



Original AS a nation I can't bear 'em--individually, I like 'em fairly well,' read out Lady Torquilin from a letter at breakfast. 'Bless me!' my friend went on, 'she's talking about Americans, and she's coming to see "your specimen"--meaning you, child--this very afternoon.'

So she did. She came to see me that very afternoon--the lady who
couldn't bear us as a nation, but individually liked us fairly well. Her
name was Corke, and she belonged, Lady Torquilin said, to the Corkes. I
heard all about her before she came. She was a lady of moderate
income, unmarried, about ten years older than I was. She knew all about
everything.

'You never saw such a reader, my dear! I won't say it happens often,
for that it does not, but Peter Corke has made me feel like a perfect
ignoramus.'

'Peter Corke?' I said, with some surprise.

'Too ridiculous, I call it! Her proper name is Catharine Clarissa,
but she hates her proper name--sensible girl as she is in every other
way--prefers Peter! And if she happens to take a fancy to you, she will
tell you all manner of interesting things. For old holes and corners, I
always say, go to Peter Corke.'

'I'm glad,' I said, 'that she likes us, individually, fairly well--it's
the only way in which I would have any chance! But she won't like my
accent.'

'If she doesn't,' Lady Torquilin said, 'I promise you she'll tell you.
And you won't mind a bit.'

When Miss Corke arrived I forgot entirely about the doubtfulness of her
liking me--I was too much absorbed in liking her. She was rather a small
person, with a great deal of dignity in her shoulders and a great deal
of humour in her face--the most charming face I have seen in England,
and I can't even make an exception in favour of the Princess of Wales.
I may tell you that she had delightful twinkling brown eyes, and hair a
shade darker, and the colour and heal

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