Part 2
Another I conscientiously contemplated, and finally dubbed her the Lady Who Isn’t an Actress. This was rather a negative description, but I based it on the neatness of her vanity-bag and the carelessness of her belt, and I am sure it was true.
The Clucking Mother was easily recognized, and a pink-cheeked and white-handed young man, who attempted to talk to me, I snubbed, and then to myself I designated him as Simple Simon.
I wasn’t really rude to him, and I fully intended to make acquaintances among the passengers later on; but I am methodical, and after I had all my other tasks attended to, I hoped to have two or three days left for social intercourse.
But after a time the chair next mine was left vacant, and then a laughing young girl seated herself in it.
Apparently it didn’t belong to her, and she sat down there with the express purpose of talking to me. My arduous study of my fellow-travellers had somewhat wearied me, and her sudden and uninvited appearance disturbed that serene calm which I had supposed unassailable, and so I angrily characterized her in my mind as a Bold-Faced Jig.
This name was so apt that it really pleased me, and I involuntarily smiled in appreciation of my appreciation of her.
So sympathetic was she (as I afterward discovered) that she smiled too, and then I couldn’t, in common decency, be rude to her. She chatted away, and before I knew it I was charmed with her. I didn’t change the name I had mentally bestowed on her, but, instead, I told her of it, and it delighted her beyond measure. I told her, too, how I intended to devote the next two days to planning my summer trip, then a day for writing letters, and after that I hoped to play bridge, or otherwise hobnob socially with certain people whom I had mentally selected for that purpose.
The Bold-Faced Jig laughed heartily at this.
“Haven’t you any idea where you’re going to travel?” she asked.
“Not the slightest.”
“Well, let me advise you——”
“Oh, please don’t!” I cried. “I left my planning until now in order to get away from all advisers. I _must_ decide for myself. I know just what I want, and I can’t bear to be interfered with.”
The B.-F. J. looked amazed at first, and then she laughed.
“All right,” she said. “Now listen, Miss Emmins. I think you’re delightful, and I’m going to help you all I can by _not_ advising you. But if you’ve not finished your itinerary plans in two days, mayn’t I tell you then what I was going to advise?”
“Yes,” I said, with dignity and decision, “if you will keep away from me for two days, and do all you can to keep others away.”
She promised, and it was more of a task than it might seem, for as I sat in my deck-chair, or, oftener, at a table in the library, surrounded by Baedekers, time-tables, maps, guide-books, and Hare’s _Walks in London_, many of the socially inclined or curious-minded paused to make a tentative remark. My replies were so coolly polite that they rarely ventured on a second observation, but I soon discovered that my laughing friend had told her comrades what I was doing, and they awaited the result.
It is strange what trivialities will interest the idle minds of those who dawdle about in the library of an ocean steamer.
Jane would occasionally come and stand by me, saying wisely, “Are you still making your itinnery?”
When I said yes, she sighed and smiled and ran away, being desirous not to bother.
The first morning I engaged in this work, I read interestedly of picture-galleries and architectural specialties. That afternoon my interest waned, and I studied time-tables and statistical information. The next morning I grew sick of the whole performance and, bundling the books and maps away, I went out to my deck-chair, and idled away the hours in waking dreams that never were on sea or land.
That afternoon the Bold-Faced Jig approached me.
“It’s all over,” I said. “I’ve capitulated. I make no plans while I’m on this blessed ocean. It’s wicked to do anything at all but to do nothing.”
“And don’t you want my advice?” she asked, laughing still.
“I don’t care,” I answered. “You can voice your advice if you choose. I sha’n’t listen to it, much less follow it.”
Her girlish laughter rang out again. “That was my advice,” she said. “I was going to tell you not to plan any trip while you are at sea. Just enjoy the days as they come and go; don’t count them; don’t do anything at all but just _be_.
“I’m not through yet,” she went on. “Don’t write any letters or read any books. Don’t study human nature, and of all things don’t voluntarily make acquaintances. If they happen along, as I did, chat a bit if you choose, and when they pass on, forget them.”
And so I took advice after all. I made no plans, I made no abstruse diagnoses of human character, I made no acquaintances save such as casually happened of themselves. And the days passed in a sort of rose-colored haze, as indefinite as a foggy sunrise, and as satisfying as a painted nocturne of Whistler’s. And so, my first impressions of my first ocean crossing are indeed enviable.
“Yes; that is, we shall come every summer now. You see, he made a lot of money in copper,—that’s my husband over there, the one with the plaid travelling-cap,—so we can travel as much as we like. We’ve planned a long trip for this year, and we’ve got to hustle, I can tell you. I’m awfully systematic. I’ve bought all the Baedekers, and this year I’m going to see everything that’s marked with a double star. You know those are the ‘sights which should on no account be omitted.’ Then next year we’ll do up the single stars, and after that we can take things more leisurely.”
“You’ve never been over before, then?” I observed.
“No,” she admitted, a little reluctantly; “I went to California last year. I think Americans ought to see their own country first.”
I couldn’t help wishing she had chosen this year for her California trip, but the accumulation of green vision had somehow magicked me into a mood of cooing amiability, and I good-naturedly assisted her to prattle on, by offering an encouraging word now and then.
“He’s so good to me,” she said, nodding toward her husband. “He says he welcomes the coming and speeds the parting dollar. Isn’t that cute? He’s an awfully witty man.”
She described the home he had just built for her in Chicago, and it seemed to be a sort of Liberal Arts Building set in the last scene of a comic opera.
For a moment, I left the green to itself, while I looked at my unrefractive countrywoman with an emotion evenly divided between pity and envy. For had she not reached the ultimate happiness, the apotheosis of content only possible to the wealthy Nitro-Bromide? And what was I that I should depreciate such soul-filling satisfaction? And why should my carping analysis dub it ignorance? Why, indeed!
After a few more green miles, an important-mannered guard, who proved to be also guide, philosopher, and friend, piloted me to a dining-car which might have been a part of the rolling-stock of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Nothing about it suggested the anticipated English discomfort, unless it might be the racks for the glasses, which, after all, relieved one of certain vague apprehensions.
But at dinner it was my good luck to sit in a quartet, the other three members of which were typical English people.
I suppose it is a sort of reflex nervous action that makes people who eat together chummy at once. The fact of doing the same thing at the same time creates an involuntary sympathy which expands with the effects of physical refreshment.
I patted myself on my mental shoulder as I looked at the three pleasant English faces, and I suddenly became aware that, though of a different color, they affected me with exactly the same sensation as the clean, green English scenery.
This, I conclude, was because English people are so essentially a part of their landscape, a statement true of no Americans save the aboriginal Indian tribes.
My table-mates were a perfect specimen of the British matron, her husband, and her daughter. I should describe them as well-bred, but that term seems to imply an effect of acquisition by means of outside influences. They were, rather, well-born, in a sense that implies congenital good-breeding.
Their name was Travers, and we slid into conversation as easily as a launching ship slides down into the water. Naturally I asked them to tell me of London, explaining that it was my first visit there, and I wished to know how to manage it.
“What London do you want to use?” asked Mr. Travers, interestedly. “You know there are many Londons for the entertainment of visitors. We can give you the Baedeker London, or Dickens’s London, or Stevenson’s London, or Bernard Shaw’s London, or Whistler’s London——”
“Or our own W. D. Howells’s London,” I finished, as he paused in his catalogue.
“I think,” I went on, “the London I want is a composite affair, and I shall compile it as I go along. You know Browning says ‘The world is made for each of us,’ and so I think there’s a London made for each of us, and we have only to pick it out from among the myriad others.”
“That’s quite true,” said Mrs. Travers. “You’ll be using, do you see, many bits of those Londons mentioned, but combining them in such a way as to make an individual London all your own.”
The prospect delighted me, and I mentally resolved to build up such a London as never was on land or sea.
“But,” I observed, “aside from an individually theorized London, there must be a practical side that is an inevitable accompaniment. There must be facts as well as opinions. I should be most glad of any hints or advices from experienced and kind-hearted Londoners.”
“Without doubt,” said Mr. Travers, “the question trembling on the tip of your tongue is the one that trembles on the tip of every American tongue that lands on our shores—‘What fee shall I give a cabman?’”
I laughed outright at this, for it was indeed one of my collection of tongue-tipped questions.
“But, sadly enough,” went on the Englishman, “it is a question that it is useless for me to answer you at present. An American must be in London for four years before he can believe the true solution of the cab-fee problem. The correct procedure is to give the cabby nothing beyond his legal fare. If you give him tuppence, he looks at you reproachfully; if you give him fourpence, he scowls at you fearfully; if you give him sixpence, he treats you to his verbal opinion of you in choice Billingsgate. Whereas, if you give him no gratuity, he assumes that you have lived here for four years, and lifts his hat to you with the greatest respect.”
“Why can’t I follow your rule at once?” I demanded.
“I do not know,” returned Mr. Travers. “Nobody knows; but the fact remains that you cannot. You think you believe the theory now, because you hear me set it forth with an air of authority; but it will take you at least four years to attain a true working knowledge of it. Moreover, you will ask every Englishman you meet regarding cab-fees, and so conflicting will be their advices that you will change your tactics with every hansom you ride in.”
“Then,” said I, with an air of independence, “I shall keep out of hansom-cabs, until I am fully determined what course to pursue in this regard.”
“But you can’t, my dear lady,” continued my instructor. “To be in London is to be in a hansom. They are inevitable.”
“Why not omnibuses?” I asked, eager for general information. “I have long wanted to ride in or on a London ’bus.”
Mr. Travers’s eyes twinkled.
“You have an American joke,” he said, “which cautions people against going into the water before they learn how to swim. I will give you an infallible rule for ’buses: never get on a London ’bus until you have learned to get on and off of them while they are in motion.”
“What waggery!” observed Mrs. Travers, in a calm, unamused tone, and I suddenly realized that I was in the midst of an English sense of humor.
The dinner progressed methodically through a series of specified courses, and when we had reached the vegetable marrow I had ceased to regard the green distance outside and gave my full attention to my lucky find of the Real Thing in English people.
Mr. Travers’s advice was always excellent and practical, though usually hidden in a jest of somewhat heavy _persiflage_.
We discussed the English tendency to elide letters or syllables from their proper names, falling back on the time-worn example of the American who complained that Englishmen spell a name B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p and pronounce it _Chumley_.
“But it’s better for an American,” said Mr. Travers, “to pronounce a name as it is spelled than to elide at his own sweet will. I met a Chicagoan last summer, who said he intended to run out to Win’c’s’le.”
“What _did_ he mean?” I asked, in my ignorance.
“Windsor Castle,” replied Mr. Travers, gravely.
The mention of Chicago made me remember my companion in the parlor car, and I spoke of her as one type of the American tourist.
“I saw her,” said Mrs. Travers, with that inimitable air of separateness that belongs to the true Londoner; “she is not interesting. Merely a smart party who wears a hat.”
As this so competently described the lady from Chicago, I began to suspect, what I later came thoroughly to realize, that the English are wonderfully adept in the making of picturesque phrases.
During our animated conversation, Miss Travers had said almost nothing.
I had read of the mental blankness of the British Young Person, and was not altogether surprised at this.
But the girl was a delight to look at. By no means of the pink-cheeked, red-lipped variety immortalized in English novels, she was of a delicate build, with a face of transparent whiteness. Her soft light brown hair was carelessly arranged, and her violet eyes would have been pathetic but for a flashing, merry twinkle when she occasionally raised their heavy, creamy lids.
Remembering Mrs. Travers’s aptness in coining phrases of description, I tried to put Rosalind Travers into a few words, but was obliged to borrow from the Master-Coiner, and I called her “The Person of Moonshine.”
By the time I was having my first interview with real Cheddar cheese, the Traverses were inviting me to visit them, and I was gladly accepting their delightfully hospitable and unmistakably sincere invitation.
Scrupulously careful to bid good-bye to my Chicago friend before we reached London, alone I stepped from the train at Euston Station with a feeling of infinite anticipation.
Owing probably to an over-excited imagination, the mere physical atmosphere of the city impressed me as something quite different from any city I had ever seen. I felt as if I had at last come into my own, and had far more the attitude of a returning wanderer than a visiting stranger.
The hansom-cabs did not appear any different from the New York vehicles of the same name, but I climbed into one without that vague wonder as to whether it wouldn’t be cheaper to buy the outfit than to pay my fare.
My destination was a club in Piccadilly—a woman’s club, which I had joined for the sole purpose of using its house as an abiding-place.
The cab-driver was cordial, even solicitous about my comfort, but finally myself and my hand-luggage were carefully stowed away, the glass was put down, and we started.
It was after dark, and it was raining, two conditions which might appall an unescorted woman in a strange city. The rain was of that ridiculous English sort, where the drops do not fall, but play around in the air, now and then whisking into the faces of passers-by, but never spoiling their clothes. It was enough, though, to wet the asphalt, and when we swung into Piccadilly, and the flashing lights from everywhere dived down into the street, and rippled themselves across the wet blackness of the pavement, I suddenly realized that I was driving over one of the most beautiful things in the world.
I looked out through my hansom-glass darkly, at London. Unknown, mysterious, silent, but enticing with its twinkling eyes, it was like a masked beauty at a ball. Yet, beneath that mocking, elusive witchery, I was conscious of an implied promise, that my London would yet unmask, and I should know and love her face to face.
As outlines became clearer I noticed a park bench directly opposite my window, on which sat four old women. All were garbed in black, and all were sleeping soundly. I was then unaware of the large proportion of the elderly feminine in London’s seamy side of population, and so casual was the aspect of the quartet that it did not occur to me they were occupying the only earthly home they possessed.
They seemed to me more like duplicate Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshines, who had paused for a time in Green Park instead of in mid-ocean.
But after I had seen the same women there at three o’clock on a dozen consecutive mornings I began to realize that they were part of the landscape.
Nor was I unduly sorry for them. They sat on that bench with the same air of voluntary appropriation that marked the birds in the trees, or the pigeons on the railing. And as the days went on I became accustomed to seeing them there, and ceased to feel any inclination to go out and try to persuade them to enter an old ladies’ home.
At about seven o’clock the omnibuses began to ply. I had never known before what was indicated by the verb _to ply_. But I saw at once that it is the only word that properly expresses the peculiar gait of an omnibus, which is a cross between a rolling lurch and a lumbering wobble. Fascination is a mild term for the effect these things had on me.
One omnibus might not so enthrall me. I don’t know; I have never seen one omnibus alone. But the procession of them along Piccadilly is the one thing on earth of which I cannot conceive myself becoming tired.
Their color, form, motion, and sound all partake of the primeval, and their continuity of effect is eternal.
My Baedeker tells me that the first omnibuses plying in London were “much heavier and clumsier than those now in use.” But of course this is a mistake, for they couldn’t have been.
I have heard that tucked away among the gay-colored advertisements that are patchworked all over these moving Mammoth Caves are small and neatly-lettered signs designating destinations. I do not know this. I have never been able to find them. But it doesn’t matter. To get to Hampstead Heath, you take a Bovril; to go to the City, take Carter’s Ink; and to get anywhere in a hurry, jump on a Horlick’s Malted Milk. There is also a graceful serpentine legend lettered down the back of each ’bus, but as this usually says “Liverpool Street,” I think it can’t mean much.
Personally, I never patronize one of the things. They are too uncanny for me, and their ways are more devious than those of our Seventeenth Street horse-cars.
Besides, I always feared that, if I got in or on one, I couldn’t see the rest of them as a whole. And it is the unbroken continuity that, after the coloring, is their greatest charm. I have spent many hours watching the Piccadilly procession of them, “like a wounded snake drag its slow length along,” and look forward to many hours more of the same delight. But the dawn, the daybreak, and the early morning slipped away, and all too soon my first day in London had begun.