CHAPTER XVI

LONDON

What can't be appreciated can always be ridiculed--whether it's Old Masters, new waltzes, or a wife's Easter bonnet--and this is the reason we have always had such reams of journalistic "fun" at the expense of the broad English "a" and the narrow English view.

For my part, I consider that--next to the French in New Orleans--the English in England are the golden-ruliest people to be found in profane history.

You'll find that they're "insular" only when they're traveling off their dear island--and it's homesickness, after all, which makes them so disagreeably arrogant.

To be sure, the Frenchman in New Orleans will, if you ask him for a word of direction toward the Old Absinthe House, take you into his private office, draw for you a diagram of the whole city, advise you at length not to go unescorted into the Market, then follow you to the door with the final warning: "And it would be well for you to observe a certain degree of caution, my dear young lady, for our city is filled with wickedness, and your eyes are--_pardon?_--most charming!"

This is delightful, of course, and by far the most romantic thing in the way of adventure America has to offer, but rambling around London presents a dearer and more home-like charm.

The Englishman who directs you to a church, or a university square, stops to say nothing about your eyes--much less would he mention the existence of good and evil--but he points out to you the tomb, or chained Bible, or famous man's pew you are seeking, then glides modestly away before you've had time to say: "It's awfully good of you to take all this trouble for a stranger!"

But the truth of the matter is that you don't in the least feel yourself a stranger in London, and you like your kindly Englishman so cordially that you secretly resolve to put a muzzle on your own particular cannon cracker the next Fourth of July.

The shilling guide-books speak of London as the "gray old grandmother of cities," meaning thereby to call attention to her upstart progeny across the seas, but to my mind the title of grandmother is much more applicable on account of the joyous surprises she has shut away in dark closets.

One of the main pleasures of a visit to any grandmother is the gift of treasure which she is likely to call forth mysteriously from some tightly-closed cupboard and place in your hands for your own exclusive possession--and certainly this old dingy city outgrannies granny when it comes to that.

In the dingiest little book-stall imaginable, lighted by a candle and tended by a ragged-cuffed gentleman with a passion for Keats, you may find the very edition of something that college professors in your native town are offering half a year's salary for! You buy it for five dollars--which seems much more insignificant when spoken of by the pound--then run out and hail the nearest cab, offering the chauffeur an additional shilling to get you out of the neighborhood in ten seconds! Your heart is thumping in guilty fear that the ragged-cuffed gentleman with the passion for Keats may discover his mistake and run after you to demand his treasure back!

You make a similar escape, a few hours later, with a Wedgwood tea-caddy, whose delicate color the pottery has never been able to duplicate--and with Sheffield plate your suit-case runneth over!

And your emotions while doing all this? Why, you've never before known what "calm content" could mean.

In the first place, you never feel countrified and unpopular in London, as you do in New York. Your clothes have a way of brightening up and looking noticeably smart as if they'd just enjoyed a sojourn at the dry cleaner's--and everybody you meet seems to care particularly for Americans. You are at home there--not merely with the at-home feeling which a good hotel and agreeable society give--but there's a feeling of satisfaction much deeper than this. Something in you, which has always known and loved England, is seeing familiar faces again--the something which made you strain your eyes over _Mother Goose_ by firelight years ago, and thrill over _Ivanhoe_ and anything which held the name "Sherwood Forest" on its printed page. It's something congenial--or prenatal--who knows?

(Oh yes! I answer very readily "Present!" when any one calls: "Anglomaniac!")

It was only natural that I should let my adoration for Great Britain show through in the copy I sent home to _The Oldburgh Herald_, and as if to prove that honesty is the best policy, I received a letter of praise from Captain Macauley.

"Anybody can run a foreign country down," he wrote, "but you've proved that you're original by praising one! Stay there as long as you have an English adjective left to go upon, then forget your sorrows, chase away down to Italy and show us what you can do with 'bellissimo.'"

But I didn't do this, for the letter overtook me only after I had reached Bannerley, and was seeing things which I could hope for no words, either English or Italian, to describe.

I left London on Friday--which I ought to have had better sense than to do, having been properly brought up by a black mammy--hoping to reach the home of my shipboard friends early enough Saturday morning to hear the pigeons coo under the eaves of Bannerley Hall. All my life I had cherished an ambition to hear pigeons coo under eaves of an ancestral place, and with this thought uppermost in my heart, I packed my suit-case and drove to Paddington Station. I received my first damper at the ticket window.

"Bannerley?" the agent repeated, looking at me with a shade of pity, as I mentioned my destination. "Bannerley?"

"Certainly, Bannerley!" I insisted, with some effort toward a dignified bearing, but the first glance at his doubtful face caused my spirits to sink. Being by nature an extremist, they sank to the bottom. All in a twinkling the cooing of pigeons in my mental picture was changed to the croaking of ravens. "It's not so very difficult to get to Bannerley, is it?"

He scratched his head.

"No-o--not in a general way, miss, but there ain't no telling _when_ you'll get there."

I drew back, more hurt than angry.

"But my friends have already warned me that I shall have to change at Leamington--and Manchester--and Oldham--and----"

"Can't help that!" he exclaimed heartlessly, looking over my shoulder at the line of waiting tourists. "Since the coal strike, trains on them side-lines has been as scarce and irregular as a youngster's teeth at shedding time."

I tried to smile politely, but another glance at his face showed me that he wasn't expecting such an act of supererogation.

"Getting off into the unbeaten paths sounds pretty enough in a guide-book," he kept on hastily, "but the first thing you do when you meet an unbeaten path is to want to beat it!"

I faded out of the line and let my successor take my place.

"He's just an old grouch!" I told myself consolingly, as I got a seat next a window. "Nothing really terrible can befall you when traveling--if you've got a Masonic pin on your coat!"

(One of my Christie relations had thus decorated me and assured me.)

Then I forgot all about his gloomy warnings, for the train rumbled across a thousand street crossings--then out into all the sheep pastures in the civilized world, and--it was summer!

"This country _must_ be Kent!" I mused, not geographically, but esthetically certain--as soft feathery green broke off occasionally into a pollard-trimmed swamp--then came up again a little later into a gentle, sheep-dotted rise. And I remembered the Duchess once more--"A stalwart, fair-haired lover, and a dozen Kentish lanes!"

I have lived to learn that this is common to Americans who have been brought up to understand that Kent is the garden-spot of England. No matter at which point along the entire coastline they may board a train, their first conviction upon seeing suburban scenery is that it _must_ be Kent! (I say "suburban" advisedly, for none of it is far enough away from the other to be rural.)

So my journey through an elongated and rather circuitous Kent kept my mind away from the croakings of the ticket seller at Paddington--until the next morning at daybreak, when I found myself put down with mournful ceremony at a little wayside station which ought to have been labeled "St. Helena."

"Just as sorry as you are, miss, but this is your nearest hope for a train to Bannerley!" the guard said, by way of an appropriate farewell, so off I got.

"But this place is surely named St. Helena," I groaned, as I looked about me, yet the only actual similarity was in the matter of its being entirely surrounded. The island entirely surrounded by water, of course--this station entirely surrounded by land. I believe that I had never before in my life seen such a stretch of unimproved property!

"'The woods and I--and their infinite call,'" I quoted, as I looked out somewhat shamefacedly across the acres. For it was exactly the kind of place I had always longed to possess for my very own--yet here I had arrived at it, and might, for all I knew to the contrary, take possession of it by right of discovery--yet I was feeling lonely and resentful at the very start.

Then I remembered Robinson Crusoe and took heart, straining my eyes in hope of a sail, but nowhere was there a human face to be seen, nor sign of life. Not even a freight car stood drearily on a side-track--and, as you know, you have to be very far away from the center of things not to find a freight car! None was here, however, for there wasn't a side-track for it to stand upon--the main line running in two shining threads far away toward Ireland.

The only moving bodies visible were a paper sack being blown gently down the track, a blue fly buzzing around a blackened banana peeling and a rook cawing overhead. I looked up at the rook and smiled philosophically.

"I anticipated a 'coo,' then apprehended a 'croak'--what I get is a happy compromise, a 'caw,'" I said, and I find that things usually turn out this way in the great journey of life. Nothing is ever so good, nor so bad, as you think it's going to be when you're standing at the ticket window. The great anticipator is also a great apprehender--therefore realization is bound to be a relief.

Then, as if in reward of my optimism, I began to scent the odor of escaping coffee.

"It _is_ inhabited!" I cried.

Springing up, I darted around to the other side of the station, and there, in a clump of trees, lying snug and humane-looking in the morning light, was a tiny cottage. I waited, and presently there issued from the doorway a man--wiping his mouth reminiscently.

He espied me at once and came up, cap in hand.

"Was you wanting something, miss?" he asked.

"A train," I replied, trying to sound inconsequential with the lordliness that comes of intense disgust. "I have a ticket to Bannerley--and I have friends there _waiting_!"

The man dared to smile.

"Since the coal strike that's mostly what folks does, miss," he explained.

There was a moment of strained silence, which was broken by the appearance of a young boy--an eerie creature who had seemed to glide straight out of the eastern horizon on a bicycle. The station-master turned to him.

"Take this here parcel up to Lord Erskine--and be quicker than you was yesterday!" he said.

The boy's face and mine changed simultaneously, his brightening, mine paling.

"Lord Erskine!" I cried, a little ghostly feeling of fear stealing over me--for my American instincts failed to grasp the rapidity with which dead men's shoes can be snatched off and fitted with new rubber heels in England--"Lord Erskine is dead."

The little messenger boy looked at me pityingly.

"'E _wuz_," he explained, "but 'e ain't now!"

"And--and do you mean to tell me that this is the station for Colmere Abbey?" I demanded, turning again to the man.

"Yes, miss."

He tried hard not to look supercilious, but there, six feet above my head, was the name "Colmere" in faded yellow letters against the black background of the sign-board. And I had always believed in psychic warnings!

"I--I hadn't thought to look at the sign-board," I endeavored to explain. "It seems that it doesn't matter what your station is, for you're as far away from your destination at one place as at another--during the coal strike! You think I can't get a train to Bannerley until----"

"Perhaps to-night--perhaps not until to-morrow morning," he answered with cruel frankness, and I knew from heresay that trains did occasionally wander, comet-fashion, out of their orbit, and come through stations at unexpected moments. "Still, there's a railroad hotel about a mile down the track."

"A railroad hotel?"

"Where the men get their meals--the guards and porters!"

My spirits sank.

"That old kill-joy at Paddington knew what he was talking about!" I said to myself--then aloud: "But, couldn't I get a carriage, or a----"

He shook his head.

"We mostly uses bicycles around here--when we don't walk," he explained.

"But I must get to Bannerley!" I burst out in desperation. "And I am a first-rate walker! How far is it?"

I was beginning to realize that the adventure might make good copy, headed: "Wonderful Pedestrian Journey through Historic Lancashire." Many a slighter incident has called forth heavier head-lines.

"Walk?"

"Certainly--then take up the matter with the railroad company in Glasgow, just before I sail for home!"

My terrible manner caused him to look me over, quickly.

"Was you wanting to get to the village--or the hall?" he asked, evidently impressed by my severity, and my heart softened.

"To the hall," I answered. "Mrs. Montgomery is expecting me."

He tried hard not to show that he was impressed, but he failed. Evidently Mrs. Montgomery was a great personage, and I took on a tinge of reflected glory not to be entirely ignored.

"The hall is a mile from the village--and the village is three miles from here," he explained gently. "Of course, there's short cuts, if a body knows 'em--but for a lady like you----"

The click of the telegraph instrument clamored for his attention, so he reluctantly left me. I remained outside, listening to the caw of the rook. Presently he came out again.

"There will be a train through here pretty soon--but it's coming from the direction of Bannerley instead of going toward there--still----"

"Still, it will give us occasion to hope for better things later on," I answered cheerfully. "And it has occurred to me that I might while away a portion of the morning by walking up to the gates of Colmere Abbey. That boy went in this direction, didn't he?"

"Not a quarter of a mile, miss--down in this direction," he assured me. "Just follow this road, and you'll find the lodge in a clump of trees."

The "May" hedges were glistening with the early sunbeams, and as I walked down the railroad track the distance seemed quite a good deal short of the quarter of a mile mentioned. I found the clump of trees indicated--then a small gray building. My heart bounded, and I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I was awake.

"Is this the entrance to Colmere Abbey?" I asked of the boy on the bicycle, who was turning out of the gate at that moment.

"This is one of the lodges--but not the grand one, madam!" he answered anxiously.

"Oh, indeed? But one can get to the park through this gate?" I persisted.

"Oh, yes, madam."

He showed an inclination to act as my esquire, but I got rid of him by promising him sixpence if he would take care of my bag until I returned to the station--then I crossed the greasy railroad track and entered the shade of the trees. It was far from being my ideal entrée into the old house of my heart's desire, but it was something of an adventure--until I reached the gates. There I was halted.

"Yes, miss--if you please?"

It was an acid voice, and I looked at the doorway of the house, out of which an old woman was issuing. She was garbed in profound black.

"I want to get in--to see the grounds of the abbey," I explained casually, but she was not to be overwhelmed by any airy nonchalance. She shook her head.

"But that can't be!"

The smile which accompanied this information was almost gleeful.

"No? But why not?"

She looked at me pityingly.

"Didn't you know we was in mourning?" she demanded, bristling with importance.

I instantly made a penitent face, then glanced appreciatively at her gown, but she gave no evidence of being a physiognomist. She failed to take note of my contrite expression.

"You can't go sight-seeing in here!" she said.

"Not even a little way?"

I accompanied this plea by the display of a shining half-crown, which I carried in my glove for emergency. That's one good thing about being away from the United States--you don't have to regard money so tenderly. You realize that shillings and francs and lire were made to spend for souvenirs and service, but dollars--ugh! They were made to put in the bank! So I twinkled this ever-ready half-crown temptingly in the morning light, but she shook her head again.

"While we was in mourning?" she demanded, with a gasp of outraged propriety. "Why--_wha'ud the minister say?_"

At this I turned away sadly--for I had been in England long enough to know there's never any use trying to surmise _what_ the minister 'ud say!

"Just the same, you'd make a dandy old servant--and I'm a great mind to buy you and put you in my suit-case, along with the Sheffield candlesticks," I thought, as I made my way back to the station.

During my absence a train had come clattering in--and it stood stock-still now, while the engineer and the station-master held a long conversation over a basket of homing pigeons which had been deposited upon the platform. I viewed the locomotive listlessly enough--the walk having taken some of my former impatient energy away, but my interest was aroused as I came upon the platform by the appearance of a servant in livery, disentangling from one of the compartments a suit-case and leather hat-box.

The man's back was toward me, as he struggled to lift his burden high above the precious basket of pigeons which was usurping place and attention, but the look of the traveling paraphernalia held my eye for a moment.

"Could it belong to an American?" I mused.

The servant deposited the cases on the platform, then turned, still with his back toward me, and took part in the lively pigeon argument. I looked at the beautiful smoothness of the leather.

"Of course they're American!" I decided, for you must know that nearly any Englishman's luggage would compare unfavorably with the bags Aunt Jemima brings with her when she comes up to the city for a week's mortification to her nephews.

"Never judge an Englishman by the luggage he lugs!" is only a fair act of discretion.

I crossed the platform, partly to get away from the mournful sounds emanating from the wicker basket, and then, at the door of the little station I was arrested by another sound. It was a sound which had certainly not been there when I had left, half an hour before! I halted--wondering if there really could be anything in psychic warnings!

Inside the dingy little room some one was whistling! The melody was falling upon the air with a certain softness which, however, did not conceal its suppressed vehemence--and the tune was _Caro Mio Ben!_

"Anybody has a right to whistle it!" I told myself savagely, but I still hesitated--my heart standing still from the mere force of the hypothesis. After a moment it began beating again, as if to make up for lost time.

The whistling man inside left off his music--then I heard his footsteps tramping impatiently across the bare wooden floor. He finally came to the door and looked out. I glanced up, and our eyes met! It _was Caro Mio Ben! It was Caro Mio Ben!_

"Well?" he said.

He stood perfectly still for half a minute it seemed--making no effort toward a civilized greeting.

"Well!" I responded--as soon as I could.

"This is queer, isn't it?"

I looked at him.

"'Queer?'" I managed to repeat--that is, I heard the word escaping past the tightening muscles of my throat. "_Queer!_"

"Most extraordinary!"

"I should--I think I should like to sit down!" I decided, as he continued to stand staring at me, and I suddenly realized that I was very tired.

He moved aside.

"By all means! Come in and sit down, Miss Christie. This station fellow here tells me that you have been disappointed in your train."

"I have," I answered.

I might have added that I had been disappointed in everything most important in life, as well--but his own face was wearing such an expression of calm serenity that I was soothed as I looked at it.

"That's quite a problem here in England just now," he observed politely.

"So I have been informed."

After this, conversation flagged, until the silence made me nervous.

"I should think we ought to be asking each other--questions!" I suggested, trying to bring him to a realization of the necessary formalities, but he only turned and looked down at me, with a slightly amused, slightly superior smile.

"Questions?"

"About _ships_--and how long we intend staying--and what travelers usually ask!" I said.

He shook his head, as if the subjects held little interest for him.

"Why should I ask that--when I happen to know?" he inquired.

"You know--what?"

"That you came over on the _Luxuria_."

"Yes?"

"And that _The Oldburgh Herald_ sent you--to write up the coal strike."

"Yes--it did."

"And that you are going to stay--some time."

I was decidedly uncomfortable.

"Will you please explain how you knew all this?" I asked.

His smile died away.

"Mrs. Hiram Walker wrote her son to call on me while I was in New York," he explained in his serious lawyer-like manner, "and he happened to leave a copy of _The Oldburgh Herald_ in my rooms."

"Oh! That was quite simple, wasn't it?"

"Quite!"

It occurred to me then that there was no use trying to keep fate's name out of this conversation--and also it came to me that the orchids were no longer a mystery--but before I could make up my mind to mention this he turned to me ferociously.

"You _did_ make a fool of me!" he accused.

My heart began thumping again.

"What do you mean?" I began, but he cut me short.

"It is this that I can not get over! The thought has come to me that perhaps if I might hear you acknowledge it, I might be able to forgive you better."

"Forgive me?"

He leaned toward me.

"If you don't mind, I should like to hear you say: 'Maitland Tait, I did make a fool of you!'"

"But I didn't!" I denied stoutly, while my face flushed, and all the fighting blood in me seemed to send forth a challenge from my cheeks. "I'll say what I _do_ think, however, if you wish to hear it!"

"And that is----?"

"Maitland Tait, you made a fool of yourself!"

He looked disappointed.

"Oh, I know that!" he replied.

"You do? Since when, please?"

"Why, I knew it before I crossed the Ohio River!" he acknowledged, seeming to take some pride in the fact. "I--I intended to apologize--or something--when I got to Pittsburgh, but when I reached New York, on my way here, I saw that you were coming to England, too----"

"So you thought the matter could easily wait--I see!" I observed, then, to change the subject, I asked: "Have you been here long?"

"Two weeks! I knew that I should get news of you in _this_ neighborhood, sooner or later."

I instantly smiled.

"I have come here for my first Sunday, you see, but----"

"But you haven't been to the abbey yet, have you?" he asked.

The boyish anxiety in his tone gave me a thrill. Something in the thought of his remembering my romantic whim touched me.

"No. I have just come from there--the lodge--but the old woman at the gates wouldn't let me in."

He looked interested.

"No? But why not?"

"The master of the house has just died," I explained. "It would be a terrible breach of etiquette to go sight-seeing over the mourning acres."

His lips closed firmly.

"Nonsense! I'll venture that's just a servant's whim." He slipped out his watch. "Shall I go over and try to beg or bribe permission for you? I'm not easily daunted by their refusals, and--I'll have a little time to spare this morning, if you'd care to put your marooned period to such a use."

"I _am_ marooned," I told him, wondering for a moment what the Montgomerys would think of my delay, "and I should like this, of course, above anything else that England has to offer, but----"

Then, after his precipitate fashion, he waited for no more. He paused at the edge of the platform for a low-toned colloquy with Collins--I could easily distinguish now that the liveried creature was Collins--and the two disappeared down the car track. After the briefest delay he returned.

"What can't be cured must be ignored," he said with a shrug, as he came up. "The poor old devil evidently regards us as very impious and--American, but I made everything all right with her."

"But how----?" I started to inquire, also at the same moment starting down the track toward the lodge house, when he stopped both my question and my progress.

"Let us wait here--I have sent Collins to get a car for us from the garage not far away."

He led the way out to a drive, sheltered with trees, on the other side of the track, and we awaited the coming of Collins--neither showing any disposition to talk.

"Is this _your_ car?" I presently asked, as the servant driving a gleaming black machine drew up in front of us. "I hadn't imagined that you would have your own car down in the country with you."

"I've had experience with these trains," he explained briefly, then he looked the car over with a masterful eye. "Yes, it's mine."

"I really shouldn't have needed to ask--there's so strong a family resemblance to the other one--the limousine you had in Oldburgh."

He looked pleased.

"I hope you'll like this one--it's a Blanton Six, you see," he explained with a pat of affectionate pride upon the door-handle as he helped me in.

Collins climbed to his place at the wheel, and without another word--without one backward look--I was whirled away into the Land of Long Ago--the period where I had always belonged.

* * * * *

At the second lodge--the grand one--I pinched myself. I had to, to see whether I was awake--or dreaming a Jane Austen dream. Maitland Tait, watching me closely, saw the act.

"You're quite awake," he assured me gravely.

"But--what are you?" I inquired. "Are you yourself--or Aladdin, or----"

I broke off abruptly, for the car was gliding over a bridge, and underneath was a silvery, glinting ribbon, that might, in fairy-land, pass for a river.

"Shall I stop the car and let you dabble the toe of your shoe in the water?" my guide asked.

I looked at him in bewilderment.

"I shan't be able to believe it's just water--unless you do," I explained. He had seen the look I let fall upon the shining breast of the stream.

"And I'll send Collins away."

"Of course! It's sacrilegious to let any wooden-faced human look upon--all this!"

The car obediently let us out, then steamed softly away, up the road and out of sight.

Mr. Tait held out his hand to me and helped me down the steep little river bank. I dabbled the toe of my shoe in the water, and as he finally drew me away, with the suggestion of further delights, I caught sight of a tiny fish, lying whitely upward in a tangle of weeds.

"How _could_ he die?" I asked mournfully, as we walked away and climbed back to the level of the park. "It seems so unappreciative."

The man beside me laughed.

"_Things_--even the most beautiful things on earth--don't keep people--or fish alive," he said. "They can't even make people want to stay alive--if this is all they have, and after all, the river is just a thing--and the park is a thing--and the house is a thing!"

We had walked on rapidly, and at that moment the house itself became apparent. I clutched his arm.

"A thing!" I denied, looking at it in a dazed fashion. "Why, it's the House of a Hundred Dreams! It's all the dreams of April mornings--and Christmas nights--and----"

"And what?" he asked gravely. But my eyes were still intoxicated.

"Why, it's Religion--and Art--and _Love_--and Comfort!"

He looked at it wonderingly, as if he expected to see statues representing these chapters in the book of Life.

What he saw was a tangle of gravel walks, gray as the desert, drawing away from grassy places and coming up sharply against the house. _Such_ a house! A church--a tomb--a fluttering-curtained living-hall--all stretched out in one long chain of battlemented stone. Where the church began and the living-hall ended no one could say, for there were trees everywhere.

"The lower part of the abbey is in good condition, it seems," my conductor remarked, as we approached.

"Good condition!" I echoed. "Why, those doorways are as realistic as--Sunday morning! I feel that I ought to have on a silk dress--and hold the corners of my prayer-book with a handkerchief--to keep from soiling my white gloves."

"If you listen perhaps you can hear the choir-boys," he said, after a pause, and without smiling.

"But there might be a sermon, too!" I objected.

High above the doors was a great open space of a missing window; then, over this, smaller spaces for smaller windows; and--in a niched pinnacle--the Virgin.

"How can she--a woman in love--endure all this beauty?" I asked, my voice hushed with awe.

"She's endured it for many centuries, it seems," he answered.

But we came closer then.

"Why, she hasn't even seen it--not once!" I cried, for I saw then that she was not looking up, but down--at the burden in her arms.

Instinctively Maitland Tait bared his head as we crossed the threshold.

"Shall we try to find a way through here into the gardens?" he asked.