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+Project Gutenberg's Penelope's English Experiences, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Penelope's English Experiences
+
+Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1278]
+Release Date: April, 1998
+Last Updated: March 10, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PENELOPE'S ENGLISH EXPERIENCES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Les Bowler
+
+
+
+
+
+PENELOPE'S ENGLISH EXPERIENCES
+
+Being extracts from the commonplace book of Penelope Hamilton
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+
+
+
+
+          To my Boston friend Salemina.
+
+          No Anglomaniac, but a true Briton.
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+     Part First--In Town.
+
+     I.     The weekly bill.
+     II.    The powdered footman smiles.
+     III.   Eggs a la coque.
+     IV.    The English sense of humour.
+     V.     A Hyde Park Sunday.
+     VI.    The English Park Lover.
+     VII.   A ducal tea-party.
+     VIII.  Tuppenny travels in London.
+     IX.    A Table of Kindred and Affinity.
+     X.     Apropos of advertisements.
+     XI.    The ball on the opposite side.
+     XII.   Patricia makes her debut.
+     XIII.  A Penelope secret.
+     XIV.   Love and lavender.
+
+     Part Second--In the Country.
+
+     XV.    Penelope dreams.
+     XVI.   The decay of Romance.
+     XVII.  Short stops and long bills.
+     XVIII. I meet Mrs. Bobby.
+     XIX.   The heart of the artist.
+     XX.    A canticle to Jane.
+     XXI.   I remember, I remember.
+     XXII.  Comfort Cottage.
+     XXIII. Tea served here.
+     XXIV.  An unlicensed victualler.
+     XXV.   Et ego in Arcadia vixit.
+
+
+
+
+Part First--In Town.
+
+
+
+Chapter I. The weekly bill.
+
+
+Smith's Hotel,
+
+10 Dovermarle Street.
+
+Here we are in London again,--Francesca, Salemina, and I. Salemina is
+a philanthropist of the Boston philanthropists limited. I am an artist.
+Francesca is-- It is very difficult to label Francesca. She is, at her
+present stage of development, just a nice girl; that is about all: the
+sense of humanity hasn't dawned upon her yet; she is even unaware that
+personal responsibility for the universe has come into vogue, and so she
+is happy.
+
+Francesca is short of twenty years old, Salemina short of forty, I short
+of thirty. Francesca is in love, Salemina never has been in love, I
+never shall be in love. Francesca is rich, Salemina is well-to-do, I am
+poor. There we are in a nutshell.
+
+We are not only in London again, but we are again in Smith's private
+hotel; one of those deliciously comfortable and ensnaring hostelries in
+Mayfair which one enters as a solvent human being, and which one leaves
+as a bankrupt, no matter what may be the number of ciphers on one's
+letter of credit; since the greater one's apparent supply of wealth,
+the greater the demand made upon it. I never stop long in London
+without determining to give up my art for a private hotel. There must be
+millions in it, but I fear I lack some of the essential qualifications
+for success. I never could have the heart, for example, to charge a
+struggling young genius eight shillings a week for two candles, and
+then eight shillings the next week for the same two candles, which the
+struggling young genius, by dint of vigorous economy, had managed to
+preserve to a decent height. No, I could never do it, not even if I were
+certain that she would squander the sixteen shillings in Bond Street
+fripperies instead of laying them up against the rainy day.
+
+It is Salemina who always unsnarls the weekly bill. Francesca spends an
+evening or two with it, first of all, because, since she is so young,
+we think it good mental-training for her, and not that she ever
+accomplishes any results worth mentioning. She begins by making three
+columns headed respectively F., S., and P. These initials stand for
+Francesca, Salemina, and Penelope, but they resemble the signs for
+pounds, shillings, and pence so perilously that they introduce an added
+distraction.
+
+She then places in each column the items in which we are all equal, such
+as rooms, attendance, fires, and lights. Then come the extras, which are
+different for each person: more ale for one, more hot baths for another;
+more carriages for one, more lemon squashes for another. Francesca's
+column is principally filled with carriages and lemon squashes. You
+would fancy her whole time was spent in driving and drinking, if you
+judged her merely by this weekly statement at the hotel.
+
+When she has reached the point of dividing the whole bill into three
+parts, so that each person may know what is her share, she adds the
+three together, expecting, not unnaturally, to get the total amount of
+the bill. Not at all. She never comes within thirty shillings of the
+desired amount, and she is often three or four guineas to the good or to
+the bad. One of her difficulties lies in her inability to remember
+that in English money it makes a difference where you place a figure,
+whether, in the pound, shilling, or pence column. Having been educated
+on the theory that a six is a six the world over, she charged me with
+sixty shillings' worth of Apollinaris in one week. I pounced on the
+error, and found that she had jotted down each pint in the shilling
+instead of in the pence column.
+
+After Francesca had broken ground on the bill in this way, Salemina, on
+the next leisure evening, draws a large armchair under the lamp and puts
+on her eye-glasses. We perch on either arm, and, after identifying our
+own extras, we summon the butler to identify his. There are a good
+many that belong to him or to the landlady; of that fact we are always
+convinced before he proves to the contrary. We can never see (until he
+makes us see) why the breakfasts on the 8th should be four shillings
+each because we had strawberries, if on the 8th we find strawberries
+charged in the luncheon column and also in the column of desserts and
+ices. And then there are the peripatetic lemon squashes. Dawson calls
+them 'still' lemon squashes because they are made with water, not with
+soda or seltzer or vichy, but they are particularly badly named. 'Still'
+forsooth! when one of them will leap from place to place, appearing
+now in the column of mineral waters and now in the spirits, now in the
+suppers, and again in the sundries. We might as well drink Chablis or
+Pommery by the time one of these still squashes has ceased wandering,
+and charging itself at each station. The force of Dawson's intellect is
+such that he makes all this moral turbidity as clear as crystal while
+he remains in evidence. His bodily presence has a kind of illuminating
+power, and all the errors that we fancy we have found he traces to their
+original source, which is always in our suspicious and inexperienced
+minds. As he leaves the room he points out some proof of unexampled
+magnanimity on the part of the hotel; as, for instance, the fact that
+the management has not charged a penny for sending up Miss Monroe's
+breakfast trays. Francesca impulsively presses two shillings into his
+honest hand and remembers afterwards that only one breakfast was served
+in our bedrooms during that particular week, and that it was mine, not
+hers.
+
+The Paid Out column is another source of great anxiety. Francesca is a
+person who is always buying things unexpectedly and sending them home
+C.O.D.; always taking a cab and having it paid at the house; always
+sending telegrams and messages by hansom, and notes by the Boots.
+
+I should think, were England on the brink of a war, that the Prime
+Minister might expect in his office something of the same hubbub,
+uproar, and excitement that Francesca manages to evolve in this private
+hotel. Naturally she cannot remember her expenditures, or extravagances,
+or complications of movement for a period of seven days; and when she
+attacks the Paid Out column she exclaims in a frenzy, 'Just look at
+this! On the 11th they say they paid out three shillings in telegrams,
+and I was at Maidenhead!' Then because we love her and cannot bear to
+see her charming forehead wrinkled, we approach from our respective
+corners, and the conversation is something like this:--
+
+Salemina. “You were not at Maidenhead on the 11th, Francesca; it was the
+12th.”
+
+Francesca. “Oh! so it was; but I sent no telegrams on the 11th.”
+
+Penelope. “Wasn't that the day you wired Mr. Drayton that you couldn't
+go to the Zoo?”
+
+Francesca. “Oh yes, so I did: and to Mr. Godolphin that I could. I
+remember now; but that's only two.”
+
+Salemina. “How about the hairdresser whom you stopped coming from
+Kensington?”
+
+Francesca. “Yes, she's the third, that's all right then; but what in the
+world is this twelve shillings?”
+
+Penelope. “The foolish amber beads you were persuaded into buying in the
+Burlington Arcade?”
+
+Francesca. “No, those were seven shillings, and they are splitting
+already.”
+
+Salemina. “Those soaps and sachets you bought on the way home the day
+that you left your purse in the cab?”
+
+Francesca. “No; they were only five shillings. Oh, perhaps they lumped
+the two things; if seven and five are twelve, then that is just what
+they did. (Here she takes a pencil.) Yes, they are twelve, so that's
+right; what a comfort! Now here's two and six on the 13th. That was
+yesterday, and I can always remember yesterdays; they are my strong
+point. I didn't spend a penny yesterday; oh yes! I did pay half a crown
+for a potted plant, but it was not two and six, and it was a half-crown
+because it was the first time I had seen one and I took particular
+notice. I'll speak to Dawson about it, but it will make no difference.
+Nobody but an expert English accountant could find a flaw in one of
+these bills and prove his case.”
+
+By this time we have agreed that the weekly bill as a whole is
+substantially correct, and all that Salemina has to do is to estimate
+our several shares in it; so Francesca and I say good night and leave
+her toiling like Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum. By midnight she
+has generally brought the account to a point where a half-hour's fresh
+attention in the early morning will finish it. Not that she makes it
+come out right to a penny. She has been treasurer of the Boston Band of
+Benevolence, of the Saturday Morning Sloyd Circle, of the Club for the
+Reception of Russian Refugees, and of the Society for the Brooding of
+Buddhism; but none of these organisations carries on its existence by
+means of pounds, shillings, and pence, or Salemina's resignation
+would have been requested long ago. However, we are not disposed to be
+captious; we are too glad to get rid of the bill. If our united thirds
+make four or five shillings in excess, we divide them equally; if it
+comes the other way about, we make it up in the same manner; always
+meeting the sneers of masculine critics with Dr. Holmes's remark that a
+faculty for numbers is a sort of detached-lever arrangement that can be
+put into a mighty poor watch.
+
+
+
+Chapter II. The powdered footman smiles.
+
+
+
+Salemina is so English! I can't think how she manages. She had not been
+an hour on British soil before she asked a servant to fetch in some
+coals and mend the fire; she followed this Anglicism by a request for
+a grilled chop, 'a grilled, chump chop, waiter, please,' and so on from
+triumph to triumph. She now discourses of methylated spirits as if she
+had never in her life heard of alcohol, and all the English equivalents
+for Americanisms are ready for use on the tip of her tongue. She says
+'conserv't'ry' and 'observ't'ry'; she calls the chambermaid 'Mairy,'
+which is infinitely softer, to be sure, than the American 'Mary,'
+with its over-long a; she ejaculates 'Quite so!' in all the pauses of
+conversation, and talks of smoke-rooms, and camisoles, and luggage-vans,
+and slip-bodies, and trams, and mangling, and goffering. She also eats
+jam for breakfast as if she had been reared on it, when every one knows
+that the average American has to contract the jam habit by patient and
+continuous practice.
+
+This instantaneous assimilation of English customs does not seem to be
+affectation on Salemina's part; nor will I wrong her by fancying that
+she went through a course of training before she left Boston. From the
+moment she landed you could see that her foot was on her native heath.
+She inhaled the fog with a sense of intoxication that the east winds of
+New England had never given her, and a great throb of patriotism swelled
+in her breast when she first met the Princess of Wales in Hyde Park.
+
+As for me, I get on charmingly with the English nobility and
+sufficiently well with the gentry, but the upper servants strike terror
+to my soul. There is something awe-inspiring to me about an English
+butler. If they would only put him in livery, or make him wear a silver
+badge; anything, in short, to temper his pride and prevent one from
+mistaking him for the master of the house or the bishop within his
+gates. When I call upon Lady DeWolfe, I say to myself impressively, as
+I go up the steps: 'You are as good as a butler, as well born and well
+bred as a butler, even more intelligent than a butler. Now, simply
+because he has an unapproachable haughtiness of demeanour, which you can
+respectfully admire, but can never hope to imitate, do not cower beneath
+the polar light of his eye; assert yourself; be a woman; be an American
+citizen!' All in vain. The moment the door opens I ask for Lady DeWolfe
+in so timid a tone that I know Parker thinks me the parlour-maid's
+sister who has rung the visitors' bell by mistake. If my lady is within,
+I follow Parker to the drawing-room, my knees shaking under me at
+the prospect of committing some solecism in his sight. Lady DeWolfe's
+husband has been noble only four months, and Parker of course knows it,
+and perhaps affects even greater hauteur to divert the attention of the
+vulgar commoner from the newness of the title.
+
+Dawson, our butler at Smith's private hotel, wields the same blighting
+influence on our spirits, accustomed to the soft solicitations of the
+negro waiter or the comfortable indifference of the free-born American.
+We never indulge in ordinary democratic or frivolous conversation when
+Dawson is serving us at dinner. We 'talk up' to him so far as we are
+able, and before we utter any remark we inquire mentally whether he is
+likely to think it good form. Accordingly, I maintain throughout
+dinner a lofty height of aristocratic elegance that impresses even the
+impassive Dawson, towards whom it is solely directed. To the amazement
+and amusement of Salemina (who always takes my cheerful inanities
+at their face value), I give an hypothetical account of my afternoon
+engagements, interlarding it so thickly with countesses and
+marchionesses and lords and honourables that though Dawson has passed
+soup to duchesses, and scarcely ever handed a plate to anything less
+than a baroness, he dilutes the customary scorn of his glance, and
+makes it two parts condescending approval as it rests on me, Penelope
+Hamilton, of the great American working class (unlimited).
+
+Apropos of the servants, it seems to me that the British footman has
+relaxed a trifle since we were last here; or is it possible that he
+reaches the height of his immobility at the height of the London season,
+and as it declines does he decline and become flesh? At all events, I
+have twice seen a footman change his weight from one leg to the other,
+as he stood at a shop entrance with his lady's mantle over his arm;
+twice have I seen one stroke his chin, and several times have I observed
+others, during the month of July, conduct themselves in many respects
+like animate objects with vital organs. Lest this incendiary statement
+be challenged, levelled as it is at an institution whose stability and
+order are but feebly represented by the eternal march of the stars in
+their courses, I hasten to explain that in none of these cases cited was
+it a powdered footman who (to use a Delsartean expression) withdrew will
+from his body and devitalised it before the public eye. I have observed
+that the powdered personage has much greater control over his muscles
+than the ordinary footman with human hair, and is infinitely his
+superior in rigidity. Dawson tells me confidentially that if a footman
+smiles there is little chance of his rising in the world. He says a
+sense of humour is absolutely fatal in that calling, and that he has
+discharged many a good footman because of an intelligent and expressive
+face.
+
+I tremble to think of what the powdered footman may become when he
+unbends in the bosom of the family. When, in the privacy of his own
+apartments, the powder is washed off, the canary-seed pads removed from
+his aristocratic calves, and his scarlet and buff magnificence exchanged
+for a simple neglige, I should think he might be guilty of almost any
+indiscretion or violence. I for one would never consent to be the wife
+and children of a powdered footman, and receive him in his moments of
+reaction.
+
+
+
+Chapter III. Eggs a la coque.
+
+
+
+Is it to my credit, or to my eternal dishonour that I once made a
+powdered footman smile, and that, too, when he was handing a buttered
+muffin to an earl's daughter?
+
+It was while we were paying a visit at Marjorimallow Hall, Sir Owen
+and Lady Marjorimallow's place in Surrey. This was to be our first
+appearance in an English country house, and we made elaborate
+preparations. Only our freshest toilettes were packed, and these were
+arranged in our trunks with the sole view of impressing the lady's-maid
+who should unpack them. We each purchased dressing-cases and new
+fittings, Francesca's being of sterling silver, Salemina's of triple
+plate, and mine of celluloid, as befitted our several fortunes. Salemina
+read up on English politics; Francesca practised a new way of dressing
+her hair; and I made up a portfolio of sketches. We counted, therefore,
+on representing American letters, beauty, and art to that portion of the
+great English public staying at Marjorimallow Hall. (I must interject a
+parenthesis here to the effect that matters did not move precisely as we
+expected; for at table, where most of our time was passed, Francesca had
+for a neighbour a scientist, who asked her plump whether the religion
+of the American Indian was or was not a pure theism; Salemina's partner
+objected to the word 'politics' in the mouth of a woman; while my
+attendant squire adored a good bright-coloured chromo. But this is
+anticipating.)
+
+Three days before our departure, I remarked at the breakfast-table,
+Dawson being absent: “My dear girls, you are aware that we have ordered
+fried eggs, scrambled eggs, buttered eggs, and poached eggs ever since
+we came to Dovermarle Street, simply because we do not know how to eat
+boiled eggs prettily from the shell, English fashion, and cannot break
+them into a cup or a glass, American fashion, on account of the effect
+upon Dawson. Now there will certainly be boiled eggs at Marjorimallow
+Hall, and we cannot refuse them morning after morning; it will be
+cowardly (which is unpleasant), and it will be remarked (which is
+worse). Eating them minced in an egg-cup, in a baronial hall, with the
+remains of a drawbridge in the grounds, is equally impossible; if we do
+that, Lady Marjorimallow will be having our luggage examined, to see
+if we carry wigwams and war-whoops about with us. No, it is clearly
+necessary that we master the gentle art of eating eggs tidily and
+daintily from the shell. I have seen English women--very dull ones,
+too--do it without apparent effort; I have even seen an English infant
+do it, and that without soiling her apron, or, as Salemina would say,
+'messing her pinafore.' I propose, therefore, that we order soft-boiled
+eggs daily; that we send Dawson from the room directly breakfast is
+served; and that then and there we have a class for opening eggs, lowest
+grade, object method. Any person who cuts the shell badly, or permits
+the egg to leak over the rim, or allows yellow dabs on the plate, or
+upsets the cup, or stains her fingers, shall be fined 'tuppence' and
+locked into her bedroom for five minutes.”
+
+The first morning we were all in the bedroom together, and, there
+being no blameless person to collect fines, the wildest civil disorder
+prevailed.
+
+On the second day Salemina and I improved slightly, but Francesca had
+passed a sleepless night, and her hand trembled (the love-letter mail
+had come in from America). We were obliged to tell her, as we collected
+'tuppence' twice on the same egg, that she must either remain at home,
+or take an oilcloth pinafore to Marjorimallow Hall.
+
+But 'ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil,' and it is only a
+question of time and desire with Americans, we are so clever. Other
+nations have to be trained from birth; but as we need only an ounce
+of training where they need a pound, we can afford to procrastinate.
+Sometimes we procrastinate too long, but that is a trifle. On the third
+morning success crowned our efforts. Salemina smiled, and I told an
+anecdote, during the operation, although my egg was cracked in the
+boiling, and I question if the Queen's favourite maid-of-honour could
+have managed it prettily. Accordingly, when eggs were brought to the
+breakfast-table at Marjorimallow Hall, we were only slightly nervous.
+Francesca was at the far end of the long table, and I do not know how
+she fared, but from various Anglicisms that Salemina dropped, as she
+chatted with the Queen's Counsel on her left, I could see that her nerve
+was steady and circulation free. We exchanged glances (there was the
+mistake!), and with an embarrassed laugh she struck her egg a hasty
+blow.
+
+Her egg-cup slipped and lurched; a top fraction of the egg flew in
+the direction of the Q.C., and the remaining portion oozed, in yellow
+confusion, rapidly into her plate. Alas for that past mistress of
+elegant dignity, Salemina! If I had been at Her Majesty's table, I
+should have smiled, even if I had gone to the Tower the next moment;
+but as it was, I became hysterical. My neighbour, a portly member of
+Parliament, looked amazed, Salemina grew scarlet, the situation was
+charged with danger; and, rapidly viewing the various exits, I chose the
+humorous one, and told as picturesquely as possible the whole story of
+our school of egg-opening in Dovermarle Street, the highly arduous
+and encouraging rehearsals conducted there, and the stupendous failure
+incident to our first public appearance. Sir Owen led the good-natured
+laughter and applause; lords and ladies, Q.C.'s and M.P.'s joined in
+with a will; poor Salemina raised her drooping head, opened and ate a
+second egg with the repose of a Vere de Vere--and the footman smiled!
+
+
+
+Chapter IV. The English sense of humour.
+
+
+
+I do not see why we hear that the Englishman is deficient in a sense of
+humour. His jokes may not be a matter of daily food to him, as they are
+to the American; he may not love whimsicality with the same passion, nor
+inhale the aroma of a witticism with as keen a relish; but he likes fun
+whenever he sees it, and he sees it as often as most people. It may
+be that we find the Englishman more receptive to our bits of feminine
+nonsense just now, simply because this is the day of the American
+woman in London, and, having been assured that she is an entertaining
+personage, young John Bull is willing to take it for granted so long as
+she does not try to marry him, and even this pleasure he will allow her
+on occasion,--if well paid for it.
+
+The longer I live, the more I feel it an absurdity to label nations with
+national traits, and then endeavour to make individuals conform to the
+required standard. It is possible, I suppose, to draw certain broad
+distinctions, though even these are subject to change; but the habit of
+generalising from one particular, that mainstay of the cheap and obvious
+essayist, has rooted many fictions in the public mind. Nothing,
+for instance, can blot from my memory the profound, searching, and
+exhaustive analysis of a great nation which I learned in my small
+geography when I was a child, namely, 'The French are a gay and polite
+people, fond of dancing and light wines.'
+
+One young Englishman whom I have met lately errs on the side of
+over-appreciation. He laughs before, during, and after every remark
+I make, unless it be a simple request for food or drink. This is an
+acquaintance of Willie Beresford, the Honourable Arthur Ponsonby,
+who was the 'whip' on our coach drive to Dorking,--dear, delightful,
+adorable Dorking, of hen celebrity.
+
+Salemina insisted on my taking the box seat, in the hope that the
+Honourable Arthur would amuse me. She little knew him! He sapped me
+of all my ideas, and gave me none in exchange. Anything so unspeakably
+heavy I never encountered. It is very difficult for a woman who doesn't
+know a nigh horse from an off one, nor the wheelers from the headers (or
+is it the fronters?), to find subjects of conversation with a gentleman
+who spends three-fourths of his existence on a coach. It was the more
+difficult for me because I could not decide whether Willie Beresford was
+cross because I was devoting myself to the whip, or because Francesca
+had remained at home with a headache. This state of affairs continued
+for about fifteen miles, when it suddenly dawned upon the Honourable
+Arthur that, however mistaken my speech and manner, I was trying to be
+agreeable. This conception acted on the honest and amiable soul like
+magic. I gradually became comprehensible, and finally he gave himself up
+to the theory that, though eccentric, I was harmless and amusing, so we
+got on famously,--so famously that Willie Beresford grew ridiculously
+gloomy, and I decided that it could not be Francesca's headache.
+
+The names of these English streets are a never-failing source of delight
+to me. In that one morning we drove past Pie, Pudding, and Petticoat
+Lanes, and later on we found ourselves in a 'Prudent Passage,' which
+opened, very inappropriately, into 'Huggin Lane.' Willie Beresford said
+it was the first time he had ever heard of anything so disagreeable as
+prudence terminating in anything so agreeable as huggin'. When he had
+been severely reprimanded by his mother for this shocking speech, I said
+to the Honourable Arthur:--
+
+“I don't understand your business signs in England,--this 'Company,
+Limited,' and that 'Company, Limited.' That one, of course, is quite
+plain” (pointing to the front of a building on the village street),
+“'Goat's Milk Company, Limited'; I suppose they have but one or two
+goats, and necessarily the milk must be Limited.”
+
+Salemina says that this was not in the least funny, that it was
+absolutely flat; but it had quite the opposite effect upon the
+Honourable Arthur. He had no command over himself or his horses for some
+minutes; and at intervals during the afternoon the full felicity of
+the idea would steal upon him, and the smile of reminiscence would flit
+across his ruddy face.
+
+The next day, at the Eton and Harrow games at Lord's cricket-ground, he
+presented three flowers of British aristocracy to our party, and asked
+me each time to tell the goat-story, which he had previously told
+himself, and probably murdered in the telling. Not content with
+this arrant flattery, he begged to be allowed to recount some of my
+international episodes to a literary friend who writes for Punch. I
+demurred decidedly, but Salemina said that perhaps I ought to be
+willing to lower myself a trifle for the sake of elevating Punch! This
+home-thrust so delighted the Honourable Arthur that it remained his
+favourite joke for days, and the overworked goat was permitted to enjoy
+that oblivion from which Salemina insists it should never have emerged.
+
+
+
+Chapter V. A Hyde Park Sunday.
+
+
+
+The Honourable Arthur, Salemina, and I took a stroll in Hyde Park one
+Sunday afternoon, not for the purpose of joining the fashionable throng
+of 'pretty people' at Stanhope Gate, but to mingle with the common herd
+in its special precincts,--precincts not set apart, indeed, by any
+legal formula, but by a natural law of classification which seems to be
+inherent in the universe. It was a curious and motley crowd--a little
+dull, perhaps, but orderly, well-behaved, and self-respecting, with
+here and there part of the flotsam and jetsam of a great city, a ragged,
+sodden, hopeless wretch wending his way about with the rest, thankful
+for any diversion.
+
+Under the trees, each in the centre of his group, large or small
+according to his magnetism and eloquence, stood the park 'shouter,'
+airing his special grievance, playing his special part, preaching his
+special creed, pleading his special cause,--anything, probably, for
+the sake of shouting. We were plainly dressed, and did not attract
+observation as we joined the outside circle of one of these groups after
+another. It was as interesting to watch the listeners as the speakers.
+I wished I might paint the sea of faces, eager, anxious, stolid,
+attentive, happy, and unhappy: histories written on many of them; others
+blank, unmarked by any thought or aspiration. I stole a sidelong look at
+the Honourable Arthur. He is an Englishman first, and a man afterwards
+(I prefer it the other way), but he does not realise it; he thinks he is
+just like all other good fellows, although he is mistaken. He and Willie
+Beresford speak the same language, but they are as different as Malay
+and Eskimo. He is an extreme type, but he is very likeable and very
+well worth looking at, with his long coat, his silk hat, and the white
+Malmaison in his buttonhole. He is always so radiantly, fascinatingly
+clean, the Honourable Arthur, simple, frank, direct, sensible, and he
+bores me almost to tears.
+
+The first orator was edifying his hearers with an explanation of the
+drama of The Corsican Brothers, and his eloquence, unlike that of the
+other speakers, was largely inspired by the hope of pennies. It was a
+novel idea, and his interpretation was rendered very amusing to us
+by the wholly original Yorkshire accent which he gave to the French
+personages and places in the play.
+
+An Irishman in black clerical garb held the next group together. He was
+in some trouble, owing to a pig-headed and quarrelsome Scotchman in the
+front rank, who objected to each statement that fell from his lips, thus
+interfering seriously with the effect of his peroration. If the Irishman
+had been more convincing, I suppose the crowd would have silenced the
+scoffer, for these little matters of discipline are always attended to
+by the audience; but the Scotchman's points were too well taken; he
+was so trenchant, in fact, at times, that a voice would cry, 'Coom up,
+Sandy, an' 'ave it all your own w'y, boy!' The discussion continued
+as long as we were within hearing distance, for the Irishman, though
+amiable and ignorant, was firm, the 'unconquered Scot' was on his native
+heath of argument, and the listeners were willing to give them both a
+hearing.
+
+Under the next tree a fluent Cockney lad of sixteen or eighteen years
+was declaiming his bitter experiences with the Salvation Army. He had
+been sheltered in one of its beds which was not to his taste, and it had
+found employment for him which he had to walk twenty-two miles to get,
+and which was not to his liking when he did get it. A meeting of
+the Salvation Army at a little distance rendered his speech more
+interesting, as its points were repeated and denied as fast as made.
+
+Of course there were religious groups and temperance groups, and groups
+devoted to the tearing down or raising up of most things except the
+Government; for on that day there were no Anarchist or Socialist
+shouters, as is ordinarily the case.
+
+As we strolled down one of the broad roads under the shade of the noble
+trees, we saw the sun setting in a red-gold haze; a glory of vivid
+colour made indescribably tender and opalescent by the kind of luminous
+mist that veils it; a wholly English sunset, and an altogether lovely
+one. And quite away from the other knots of people, there leaned against
+a bit of wire fence a poor old man surrounded by half a dozen children
+and one tired woman with a nursing baby. He had a tattered book, which
+seemed to be the story of the Gospels, and his little flock sat on the
+greensward at his feet as he read. It may be that he, too, had been a
+shouter in his lustier manhood, and had held a larger audience together
+by the power of his belief; but now he was helpless to attract any but
+the children. Whether it was the pathos of his white hairs, his garb of
+shreds and patches, or the mild benignity of his eye that moved me, I
+know not, but among all the Sunday shouters in Hyde Park it seemed to me
+that that quavering voice of the past spoke with the truest note.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI. The English Park Lover.
+
+
+
+The English Park Lover, loving his love on a green bench in Kensington
+Gardens or Regent's Park, or indeed in any spot where there is a green
+bench, so long as it is within full view of the passer-by,--this English
+public lover, male or female, is a most interesting study, for we have
+not his exact counterpart in America. He is thoroughly respectable, I
+should think, my urban Colin. He does not have the air of a gay deceiver
+roving from flower to flower, stealing honey as he goes; he looks, on
+the contrary, as if it were his intention to lead Phoebe to the altar
+on the next bank holiday; there is a dead calm in his actions which
+bespeaks no other course. If Colin were a Don Juan, surely he would be
+a trifle more ardent, for there is no tropical fervour in his
+matter-of-fact caresses. He does not embrace Phoebe in the park,
+apparently, because he adores her to madness; because her smile is
+like fire in his veins, melting down all his defences; because the
+intoxication of her nearness is irresistible; because, in fine, he
+cannot wait until he finds a more secluded spot: nay, verily, he
+embraces her because--tell me, infatuated fruiterers, poulterers,
+soldiers, haberdashers (limited), what is your reason? For it does not
+appear to the casual eye. Stormy weather does not vex the calm of the
+Park Lover, for 'the rains of Marly do not wet' when one is in love.
+By a clever manipulation of four arms and four hands they can manage
+an umbrella and enfold each other at the same time, though a feminine
+macintosh is well known to be ill adapted to the purpose, and a
+continuous drizzle would dampen almost any other lover in the universe.
+
+The park embrace, as nearly as I can analyse it, seems to be one part
+instinct, one part duty, one part custom, and one part reflex action. I
+have purposely omitted pleasure (which, in the analysis of the ordinary
+embrace, reduces all the other ingredients to an almost invisible
+faction), because I fail to find it; but I am willing to believe that
+in some rudimentary form it does exist, because man attends to no
+purely unpleasant matter with such praiseworthy assiduity. Anything
+more fixedly stolid than the Park Lover when he passes his arm round his
+chosen one and takes her crimson hand in his, I have never seen; unless,
+indeed, it be the fixed stolidity of the chosen one herself. I had not
+at first the assurance even to glance at them as I passed by, blushing
+myself to the roots of my hair, though the offenders themselves never
+changed colour. Many a time have I walked out of my way or lowered my
+parasol, for fear of invading their Sunday Eden; but a spirit of inquiry
+awoke in me at last, and I began to make psychological investigations,
+with a view to finding out at what point embarrassment would appear in
+the Park Lover. I experimented (it was a most arduous and unpleasant
+task) with upwards of two hundred couples, and it is interesting to
+record that self-consciousness was not apparent in a single instance.
+It was not merely that they failed to resent my stopping in the path
+directly opposite them, or my glaring most offensively at them, nor that
+they even allowed me to sit upon their green bench and witness their
+chaste salutes, but it was that they did fail to perceive me at
+all! There is a kind of superb finish and completeness about their
+indifference to the public gaze which removes it from ordinary
+immodesty, and gives it a certain scientific value.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII. A ducal tea-party.
+
+
+
+Among all my English experiences, none occupies so important a place as
+my forced meeting with the Duke of Cimicifugas. (There can be no harm in
+my telling the incident, so long as I do not give the right names,
+which are very well known to fame.) The Duchess of Cimicifugas, who is
+charming, unaffected, and lovable, so report says, has among her chosen
+friends an untitled woman whom we will call Mrs. Apis Mellifica. I met
+her only daughter, Hilda, in America, and we became quite intimate. It
+seems that Mrs. Apis Mellifica, who has an income of 20,000 pounds a
+year, often exchanges presents with the duchess, and at this time she
+had brought with her from the Continent some rare old tapestries with
+which to adorn a new morning-room at Cimicifugas House. These tapestries
+were to be hung during the absence of the duchess in Homburg, and were
+to greet her as a birthday surprise on her return. Hilda Mellifica,
+who is one of the most talented amateur artists in London, and who has
+exquisite taste in all matters of decoration, was to go down to the
+ducal residence to inspect the work, and she obtained permission from
+Lady Veratrum (the confidential companion of the duchess) to bring me
+with her. I started on this journey to the country with all possible
+delight, little surmising the agonies that lay in store for me in the
+mercifully hidden future.
+
+The tapestries were perfect, and Lady Veratrum was most amiable and
+affable, though the blue blood of the Belladonnas courses in her veins,
+and her great-grandfather was the celebrated Earl of Rhus Tox, who
+rendered such notable service to his sovereign. We roamed through the
+splendid apartments, inspected the superb picture-gallery, where scores
+of dead-and-gone Cimicifugases (most of them very plain) were glorified
+by the art of Van Dyck, Sir Joshua, or Gainsborough, and admired the
+priceless collections of marbles and cameos and bronzes. It was about
+four o'clock when we were conducted to a magnificent apartment for a
+brief rest, as we were to return to London at half-past six. As Lady
+Veratrum left us, she remarked casually, 'His Grace will join us at
+tea.'
+
+The door closed, and at the same moment I fell upon the brocaded satin
+state bed and tore off my hat and gloves like one distraught.
+
+“Hilda,” I gasped, “you brought me here, and you must rescue me, for I
+absolutely decline to drink tea with a duke.”
+
+“Nonsense, Penelope, don't be absurd,” she replied. “I have never
+happened to see him myself, and I am a trifle nervous, but it cannot be
+very terrible, I should think.”
+
+“Not to you, perhaps, but to me impossible,” I said. “I thought he was
+in Homburg, or I would never have entered this place. It is not that I
+fear nobility. I could meet Her Majesty the Queen at the Court of St.
+James without the slightest flutter of embarrassment, because I know
+I could trust her not to presume on my defencelessness to enter into
+conversation with me. But this duke, whose dukedom very likely dates
+back to the hour of the Norman Conquest, is a very different person,
+and is to be met under very different circumstances. He may ask me my
+politics. Of course I can tell him that I am a Mugwump, but what if he
+asks me why I am a Mugwump?”
+
+“He will not,” Hilda answered. “Englishmen are not wholly devoid of
+feeling!”
+
+“And how shall I address him?” I went on. “Does one call him 'your
+Grace,' or 'your Royal Highness'? Oh for a thousandth-part of the
+unblushing impertinence of that countrywoman of mine who called your
+future king 'Tummy'! but she was a beauty, and I am not pretty enough to
+be anything but discreetly well-mannered. Shall you sit in his presence,
+or stand and grovel alternately? Does one have to curtsy? Very well,
+then, make any excuses you like for me, Hilda: say I'm eccentric, say
+I'm deranged, say I'm a Nihilist. I will hide under the scullery table,
+fling myself in the moat, lock myself in the keep, let the portcullis
+fall on me, die any appropriate early English death,--anything rather
+than curtsy in a tailor-made gown; I can kneel beautifully, Hilda, if
+that will do: you remember my ancestors were brought up on kneeling, and
+yours on curtsying, and it makes a great difference in the muscles.”
+
+Hilda smiled benignantly as she wound the coil of russet hair round her
+shapely head. “He will think whatever you do charming, and whatever you
+say brilliant,” she said; “that is the advantage in being an American
+woman.”
+
+Just at this moment Lady Veratrum sent a haughty maid to ask us if we
+would meet her under the trees in the park which surrounds the house.
+I hailed this as a welcome reprieve to the dreaded function of tea with
+the duke, and made up my mind, while descending the marble staircase,
+that I would slip away and lose myself accidentally in the grounds,
+appearing only in time for the London train. This happy mode of issue
+from my difficulties lent a springiness to my step, as we followed a
+waxwork footman over the velvet sward to a nook under a group of copper
+beeches. But there, to my dismay, stood a charmingly appointed tea-table
+glittering with silver and Royal Worcester, with several liveried
+servants bringing cakes and muffins and berries to Lady Veratrum, who
+sat behind the steaming urn. I started to retreat, when there
+appeared, walking towards us, a simple man, with nothing in the least
+extraordinary about him.
+
+“That cannot be the Duke of Cimicifugas,” thought I, “a man in a
+corduroy jacket, without a sign of a suite; probably it is a Banished
+Duke come from the Forest of Arden for a buttered muffin.”
+
+But it was the Duke of Cimicifugas, and no other. Hilda was presented
+first, while I tried to fire my courage by thinking of the Puritan
+Fathers, and Plymouth Rock, and the Boston Tea-Party, and the battle of
+Bunker Hill. Then my turn came. I murmured some words which might have
+been anything, and curtsied in a stiff-necked self-respecting sort of
+way. Then we talked,--at least the duke and Lady Veratrum talked. Hilda
+said a few blameless words, such as befitted an untitled English virgin
+in the presence of the nobility; while I maintained the probationary
+silence required by Pythagoras of his first year's pupils. My idea was
+to observe this first duke without uttering a word, to talk with the
+second (if I should ever meet a second), to chat with the third, and to
+secure the fourth for Francesca to take home to America with her.
+
+Of course I know that dukes are very dear, but she could afford any
+reasonable sum, if she found one whom she fancied; the principal
+obstacle in the path is that tiresome American lawyer with whom
+she considers herself in love. I have never gone beyond that first
+experience, however, for dukes in England are as rare as snakes in
+Ireland. I can't think why they allow them to die out so,--the dukes,
+not the snakes. If a country is to have an aristocracy, let there be
+enough of it, say I, and make it imposing at the top, where it shows
+most, especially since, as I understand it, all that Victoria has to do
+is to say, 'Let there be dukes,' and there are dukes.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII. Tuppenny travels in London.
+
+
+
+If one really wants to know London, one must live there for years and
+years.
+
+This sounds like a reasonable and sensible statement, yet the moment it
+is made I retract it, as quite misleading and altogether too general.
+
+We have a charming English friend who has not been to the Tower since
+he was a small boy, and begs us to conduct him there on the very next
+Saturday. Another has not seen Westminster Abbey for fifteen years,
+because he attends church at St. Dunstan's-in-the-East. Another says
+that he should like to have us 'read up' London in the red-covered
+Baedeker, and then show it to him, properly and systematically. Another,
+a flower of the nobility, confesses that he never mounted the top of
+an omnibus in the evening for the sake of seeing London after dark, but
+that he thinks it would be rather jolly, and that he will join us in
+such a democratic journey at any time we like.
+
+We think we get a kind of vague apprehension of what London means from
+the top of a 'bus better than anywhere else, and this vague apprehension
+is as much as the thoughtful or imaginative observer will ever arrive
+at in a lifetime. It is too stupendous to be comprehended. The mind
+is dazed by its distances, confused by its contrasts; tossed from
+the spectacle of its wealth to the contemplation of its poverty, the
+brilliancy of its extravagances to the stolidity of its miseries,
+the luxuries that blossom in Mayfair to the brutalities that lurk in
+Whitechapel.
+
+We often set out on a fine morning, Salemina and I, and travel twenty
+miles in the day, though we have to double our twopenny fee several
+times to accomplish that distance.
+
+We never know whither we are going, and indeed it is not a matter of
+great moment (I mean to a woman) where everything is new and strange,
+and where the driver, if one is fortunate enough to be on a front
+seat, tells one everything of interest along the way, and instructs one
+regarding a different route back to town.
+
+We have our favourite 'buses, of course; but when one appears, and we
+jump on while it is still in motion, as the conductor seems to prefer,
+and pull ourselves up the cork-screw stairway,--not a simple matter in
+the garments of sophistication,--we have little time to observe more
+than the colour of the lumbering vehicle.
+
+We like the Cadbury's Cocoa 'bus very much; it takes you by St.
+Mary-le-Strand, Bow-Bells, the Temple, Mansion House, St, Paul's, and
+the Bank.
+
+If you want to go and lunch, or dine frugally, at the Cheshire Cheese,
+eat black pudding and drink pale ale, sit in Dr. Johnson's old seat,
+and put your head against the exact spot on the wall where his
+rested,--although the traces of this form of worship are all too
+apparent,--then you jump on a Lipton's Tea 'bus, and are deposited
+at the very door. All is novel, and all is interesting, whether it be
+crowded streets of the East End traversed by the Davies' Pea-Fed Bacon
+'buses, or whether you ride to the very outskirts of London, through
+green fields and hedgerows, by the Ridge's Food or Nestle's Milk route.
+
+There are trams, too, which take one to delightful places, though the
+seats on top extend lengthwise, after the old 'knifeboard pattern,'
+and one does not get so good a view of the country as from the 'garden
+seats' on the roof of the omnibus; still there is nothing we like better
+on a warm morning than a good outing on the Vinolia tram that we pick up
+in Shaftesbury Avenue. There is a street running from Shaftesbury Avenue
+into Oxford Street, which was once the village of St. Giles, one of the
+dozens of hamlets swallowed up by the great maw of London, and it still
+looks like a hamlet, although it has been absorbed for many years. We
+constantly happen on these absorbed villages, from which, not a century
+ago, people drove up to town in their coaches.
+
+If you wish to see another phase of life, go out on a Saturday evening,
+from nine o'clock on to eleven, starting on a Beecham's Pill 'bus, and
+keep to the poorer districts, alighting occasionally to stand with the
+crowd in the narrower thoroughfares.
+
+It is a market night, and the streets will be a moving mass of men and
+women buying at the hucksters' stalls. Everything that can be sold at
+a stall is there: fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, crockery, tin-ware,
+children's clothing, cheap toys, boots, shoes, and sun-bonnets, all in
+reckless confusion. The vendors cry their wares in stentorian tones,
+vying with one another to produce excitement and induce patronage, while
+gas-jets are streaming into the air from the roofs and flaring from the
+sides of the stalls; children crying, children dancing to the strains of
+an accordion, children quarrelling, children scrambling for the refuse
+fruit. In the midst of this spectacle, this din and uproar, the women
+are chaffering and bargaining quite calmly, watching the scales to see
+that they get their full pennyworth or sixpennyworth of this or that. To
+the student of faces, of manners, of voices, of gestures; to the person
+who sees unwritten and unwritable stories in all these groups of men,
+women, and children, the scene reveals many things: some comedies, many
+tragedies, a few plain narratives (thank God!) and now and then--only
+now and then--a romance. As to the dark alleys and tenements on the
+fringe of this glare and brilliant confusion, this Babel of sound and
+ant-bed of moving life, one can only surmise and pity and shudder;
+close one's eyes and ears to it a little, or one could never sleep for
+thinking of it, yet not too tightly lest one sleep too soundly, and
+forget altogether the seamy side of things. One can hardly believe that
+there is a seamy side when one descends from his travelling observatory
+a little later, and stands on Westminster Bridge, or walks along the
+Thames Embankment. The lights of Parliament House gleam from a hundred
+windows, and in the dark shadows by the banks thousands of coloured
+discs of light twinkle and dance and glow like fairy lamps, and are
+reflected in the silver surface of the river. That river, as full of
+mystery and contrast in its course as London itself--where is such
+another? It has ever been a river of pageants, a river of sighs; a river
+into whose placid depths kings and queens, princes and cardinals, have
+whispered state secrets, and poets have breathed immortal lines; a
+stream of pleasure, bearing daily on its bosom such a freight of youth
+and mirth and colour and music as no other river in the world can boast.
+
+Sometimes we sally forth in search of adventures in the thick of a
+'London particular,' Mr. Guppy's phrase for a fog. When you are once
+ensconced in your garden seat by the driver, you go lumbering through
+a world of bobbing shadows, where all is weird, vague, grey, dense; and
+where great objects loom up suddenly in the mist and then disappear;
+where the sky, heavy and leaden, seems to descend bodily upon your head,
+and the air is full of a kind of luminous yellow smoke.
+
+A Lipton's Tea 'bus is the only one we can see plainly in this sort
+of weather, and so we always take it. I do not wish, however, to be
+followed literally in these modest suggestions for omnibus rides,
+because I am well aware that they are not sufficiently specific for the
+ordinary tourist who wishes to see London systematically and without any
+loss of time. If you care to go to any particular place, or reach that
+place by any particular time, you must not, of course, look at the most
+conspicuous signs on the tops and ends of the chariots as we do; you
+must stand quietly at one of the regular points of departure and try to
+decipher, in a narrow horizontal space along the side, certain little
+words that show the route and destination of the vehicle. They say
+that it can be done, and I do not feel like denying it on my own
+responsibility. Old Londoners assert that they are not blinded or
+confused by Pears' Soap in letters two feet high, scarlet on a gold
+ground, but can see below in fine print, and with the naked eye,
+such legends as Tottenham Court Road, Westbourne Grove, St. Pancras,
+Paddington, or Victoria. It is certainly reasonable that the omnibuses
+should be decorated to suit the inhabitants of the place rather than
+foreigners, and it is perhaps better to carry a few hundred stupid souls
+to the wrong station daily than to allow them to cleanse their hands
+with the wrong soap, or quench their thirst with the wrong (which is to
+say the unadvertised) beverage.
+
+The conductors do all in their power to mitigate the lot of unhappy
+strangers, and it is only now and again that you hear an absent-minded
+or logical one call out, 'Castoria! all the w'y for a penny.'
+
+We claim for our method of travelling, not that it is authoritative, but
+that it is simple--suitable to persons whose desires are flexible and
+whose plans are not fixed. It has its disadvantages, which may indeed
+be said of almost anything. For instance, we had gone for two successive
+mornings on a Cadbury's Cocoa 'bus to Francesca's dressmaker in
+Kensington. On the third morning, deceived by the ambitious and
+unscrupulous Cadbury, we mounted it and journeyed along comfortably
+three miles to the east of Kensington before we discovered our mistake.
+It was a pleasant and attractive neighbourhood where we found ourselves,
+but unfortunately Francesca's dressmaker did not reside there.
+
+If you have determined to take a certain train from a certain station,
+and do not care for any other, no matter if it should turn out to be
+just as interesting, then never take a Lipton's Tea 'bus, for it is the
+most unreliable of all. If it did not sound so learned, and if I did not
+feel that it must have been said before, it is so apt, I should quote
+Horace, and say, 'Omnibus hoc vitium est.' There is no 'bus unseized by
+the Napoleonic Lipton. Do not ascend one of them supposing for a moment
+that by paying fourpence and going to the very end of the route you will
+come to a neat tea station, where you will be served with the cheering
+cup. Never; nor with a draught of Cadbury's cocoa or Nestle's milk,
+although you have jostled along for nine weary miles in company with
+their blatant recommendations to drink nothing else, and though you may
+have passed other 'buses with the same highly-coloured names glaring at
+you until they are burned into the grey matter of your brain, to remain
+there as long as the copy-book maxims you penned when you were a child.
+
+These pictorial methods doubtless prove a source of great financial
+gain; of course it must be so, or they would never be prosecuted; but
+although they may allure millions of customers, they will lose two in
+our modest persons. When Salemina and I go into a cafe for tea we ask
+the young woman if they serve Lipton's, and if they say yes, we take
+coffee. This is self-punishment indeed (in London!), yet we feel that
+it may have a moral effect; perhaps not commensurate with the physical
+effect of the coffee upon us, but these delicate matters can never be
+adjusted with absolute exactitude.
+
+Sometimes when we are to travel on a Pears' Soap 'bus we buy beforehand
+a bit of pure white Castile, cut from a shrinking, reserved, exclusive
+bar with no name upon it, and present it to some poor woman when we
+arrive at our journey's end. We do not suppose that so insignificant a
+protest does much good, but at least it preserves one's individuality
+and self-respect.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX. A Table of Kindred and Affinity.
+
+
+
+On one of our excursions Hilda Mellifica accompanied us, and we alighted
+to see the place where the Smithfield martyrs were executed, and to
+visit some of the very old churches in that vicinity. We found hanging
+in the vestibule of one of them something quite familiar to Hilda, but
+very strange to our American eyes: 'A Table of Kindred and Affinity,
+wherein whosoever are related are forbidden in Scripture and our Laws to
+Marry Together.'
+
+Salemina was very quiet that afternoon, and we accused her afterwards of
+being depressed because she had discovered that, added to the battalions
+of men in England who had not thus far urged her to marry them, there
+were thirty persons whom she could not legally espouse even if they did
+ask her!
+
+I cannot explain it, but it really seemed in some way that our chances
+of a 'sweet, safe corner of the household fire' had materially decreased
+when we had read the table.
+
+“It only goes to prove what Salemina remarked yesterday,” I said: “that
+we can go on doing a thing quite properly until we have seen the rule
+for it printed in black and white. The moment we read the formula we
+fail to see how we could ever have followed it; we are confused by its
+complexities, and we do not feel the slightest confidence in our ability
+to do consciously the thing we have done all our lives unconsciously.”
+
+“Like the centipede,” quoted Salemina:--
+
+     “'The centipede was happy quite
+       Until the toad, for fun,
+       Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”
+        Which wrought his mind to such a pitch,
+       He lay distracted in a ditch
+       Considering how to run!'”
+
+“The Table of Kindred and Affinity is all too familiar to me,” sighed
+Hilda, “because we had a governess who made us learn it as a punishment.
+I suppose I could recite it now, although I haven't looked at it for ten
+years. We used to chant it in the nursery schoolroom on wet afternoons.
+I well remember that the vicar called one day to see us, and the
+governess, hearing our voices uplifted in a pious measure, drew him
+under the window to listen. This is what he heard--you will see how
+admirably it goes! And do not imagine it is wicked: it is merely the
+Law, not the Gospel, and we framed our own musical settings, so that we
+had no associations with the Prayer Book.”
+
+Here Hilda chanted softly, there being no one in the old churchyard:--
+
+“A woman may not marry with her Grandfather. Grandmother's Husband,
+Husband's Grandfather.. Father's Brother. Mother's Brother. Father's
+Sister's Husband.. Mother's Sister's Husband. Husband's Father's
+Brother. Husband's Mother's Brother.. Father. Step-Father. Husband's
+Father.. Son. Husband's Son. Daughter's Husband.. Brother. Husband's
+Brother. Sister's Husband.. Son's Son. Daughter's Son. Son's Daughter's
+Husband.. Daughter's Daughter's Husband. Husband's Son's Son. Husband's
+Daughter's Son .. Brother's Son. Sister's Son. Brother's Daughter's
+Husband.. Sister's Daughter's Husband. Husband's Brother's Son.
+Husband's Sister's Son.”
+
+“It seems as if there were nobody left,” I said disconsolately, “save
+perhaps your Second Cousin's Uncle, or your Enemy's Dearest Friend.”
+
+“That's just the effect it has on one,” answered Hilda. “We always used
+to conclude our chant with the advice:--
+
+“And if there is anybody, after this, in the universe. left to. marry..
+marry him as expeditiously. as you. possibly. can.. Because there are
+very few husbands omitted from this table of. Kindred and. Affinity..
+And it behoveth a maiden to snap them up without any delay. willing or
+unwilling. whenever and. wherever found.”
+
+“We were also required to learn by heart the form of Prayer with
+Thanksgiving to be used Yearly upon the Fifth Day of November for the
+happy deliverance of King James I. and the Three Estates of England from
+the most traitorous and bloody-intended Massacre by Gunpowder; also the
+prayers for Charles the Martyr and the Thanksgiving for having put an
+end to the Great Rebellion by the Restitution of the King and Royal
+Family after many Years' interruption which unspeakable Mercies were
+wonderfully completed upon the 29th of May in the year 1660!”
+
+“1660! We had been forty years in America then,” soliloquised Francesca;
+“and isn't it odd that the long thanksgivings in our country must all
+have been for having successfully run away from the Gunpowder Treason,
+King Charles the Martyr, and the Restituted Royal Family; yet here we
+are, you and I, the best of friends, talking it all over.”
+
+As we jog along, or walk, by turns, we come to Buckingham Street,
+and looking up at Alfred Jingle's lodgings say a grateful word of Mr.
+Pickwick. We tell each other that much of what we know of London and
+England seems to have been learned from Dickens.
+
+Deny him the right to sit among the elect, if you will; talk of his
+tendency to farce and caricature; call his humour low comedy, and
+his pathos bathos--although you shall say none of these things in my
+presence unchallenged; the fact remains that every child, in America
+at least, knows more of England--its almshouses, debtors' prisons, and
+law-courts, its villages and villagers, its beadles and cheap-jacks and
+hostlers and coachmen and boots, its streets and lanes, its lodgings and
+inns and landladies and roastbeef and plum-pudding, its ways, manners,
+and customs,--knows more of these things and a thousand others from
+Dickens's novels than from all the histories, geographies, biographies,
+and essays in the language. Where is there another novelist who has so
+peopled a great city with his imaginary characters that there is hardly
+room for the living population, as one walks along the ways?
+
+O these streets of London! There are other more splendid shades in
+them,--shades that have been there for centuries, and will walk beside
+us so long as the streets exist. One can never see these shades, save
+as one goes on foot, or takes that chariot of the humble, the omnibus. I
+should like to make a map of literary London somewhat after Leigh
+Hunt's plan, as projected in his essay on the World of Books; for to the
+book-lover 'the poet's hand is always on the place, blessing it.' One
+can no more separate the association from the particular spot than one
+can take away from it any other beauty.
+
+'Fleet Street is always Johnson's Fleet Street' (so Leigh Hunt says);
+'the Tower belongs to Julius Caesar, and Blackfriars to Suckling,
+Vandyke, and the Dunciad...I can no more pass through Westminster
+without thinking of Milton, or the Borough without thinking of Chaucer
+and Shakespeare, or Gray's Inn without calling Bacon to mind, or
+Bloomsbury Square without Steele and Akenside, than I can prefer
+brick and mortar to wit and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond
+architecture in the splendour of the recollection.'
+
+
+
+Chapter X. Apropos of advertisements.
+
+
+
+Francesca wishes to get some old hall-marked silver for her home
+tea-tray, and she is absorbed at present in answering advertisements of
+people who have second-hand pieces for sale, and who offer to bring them
+on approval. The other day, when Willie Beresford and I came in from
+Westminster Abbey (where we had been choosing the best locations for
+our memorial tablets), we thought Francesca must be giving a 'small and
+early'; but it transpired that all the silver-sellers had called at the
+same hour, and it took the united strength of Dawson and Mr. Beresford,
+together with my diplomacy, to rescue the poor child from their
+clutches. She came out alive, but her safety was purchased at the cost
+of a George IV. cream-jug, an Elizabethan sugar-bowl, and a Boadicea
+tea-caddy, which were, I doubt not, manufactured in Wardour Street
+towards the close of the nineteenth century.
+
+Salemina came in just then, cold and tired. (Tower and National Gallery
+the same day. It's so much more work to go to the Tower nowadays than
+it used to be!) We had intended to take a sail to Richmond on a penny
+steamboat, but it was drizzling, so we had a cosy fire instead, slipped
+into our tea-gowns, and ordered tea and thin bread-and-butter, a basket
+of strawberries with their frills on, and a jug of Devonshire cream.
+Willie Beresford asked if he might stay; otherwise, he said, he should
+have to sit at a cold marble table on the corner of Bond Street and
+Piccadilly, and take his tea in bachelor solitude.
+
+“Yes,” I said severely, “we will allow you to stay; though, as you are
+coming to dinner, I should think you would have to go away some time,
+if only in order that you might get ready to come back. You've been here
+since breakfast-time.”
+
+“I know,” he answered calmly, “and my only error in judgment was that I
+didn't take an earlier breakfast, in order to begin my day here sooner.
+One has to snatch a moment when he can, nowadays; for these rooms are
+so infested with British swells that a base-born American stands very
+little chance!”
+
+Now I should like to know if Willie Beresford is in love with Francesca.
+What shall I do--that is what shall we do--if he is, when she is in love
+with somebody else? To be sure, she may want one lover for foreign and
+another for domestic service. He is too old for her, but that is always
+the way. When Alcides, having gone through all the fatigues of life,
+took a bride in Olympus, he ought to have selected Minerva, but he chose
+Hebe.
+
+I wonder why so many people call him 'Willie' Beresford, at his age.
+Perhaps it is because his mother sets the example; but from her lips
+it does not seem amiss. I suppose when she looks at him she recalls
+the past, and is ever seeing the little child in the strong man, mother
+fashion. It is very beautiful, that feeling; and when a girl surprises
+it in any mother's eyes it makes her heart beat faster, as in the
+presence of something sacred, which she can understand only because she
+is a woman, and experience is foreshadowed in intuition.
+
+The Honourable Arthur had sent us a dozen London dailies and weeklies,
+and we fell into an idle discussion of their contents over the teacups.
+I had found an 'exchange column' which was as interesting as it was
+novel, and I told Francesca it seemed to me that if we managed wisely we
+could rid ourselves of all our useless belongings, and gradually amass
+a collection of the English articles we most desired. “Here is an
+opportunity, for instance,” I said, and I read aloud--“'S.G., of
+Kensington, will post “Woman” three days old regularly for a box of cut
+flowers.'”
+
+“Rather young,” said Mr. Beresford, “or I'd answer that advertisement
+myself.”
+
+I wanted to tell him I didn't suppose that he could find anything too
+young for his taste, but I didn't dare.
+
+“Salemina adores cats,” I went on. “How is this, Sally, dear?--
+'A handsome orange male Persian cat, also a tabby, immense coat,
+brushes and frills, is offered in exchange for an electro-plated
+revolving covered dish or an Allen's Vapour Bath.'”
+
+“I should like the cat, but alas! I have no covered dish,” sighed
+Salemina.
+
+“Buy one,” suggested Mr. Beresford. “Even then you'd be getting a
+bargain. Do you understand that you receive the male orange cat for the
+dish, and the frilled tabby for the bath, or do you get both in exchange
+for either of these articles? Read on, Miss Hamilton.”
+
+“Very well, here is one for Francesca--“'A harmonium with seven stops
+is offered in exchange for a really good Plymouth cockerel hatched in
+May.'”
+
+“I should want to know when the harmonium was hatched,” said Francesca
+prudently. “Now you cannot usurp the platform entirely, my dear Pen.
+Listen to an English marriage notice from the Times. It chances to be
+the longest one to-day, but there were others just as remarkable in
+yesterday's issue.
+
+“'On the 17th instant, at Emmanuel Church (Countess of Padelford's
+connection), Weston-super-Mare, by the Rev. Canon Vernon, B.D., Rector
+of St. Edmund the King and Martyr, Suffolk Street, uncle of bride,
+assisted by the Rev. Otho Pelham, M.A., Vicar of All Saints, Upper
+Norwood, Dr. Philosophial Konrad Rasch, of Koetzsenbroda, Saxony,
+to Evelyn Whitaker Rake, widow of the late Richard Balaclava Rake,
+Barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple and Bombay, and third surviving
+daughter of George Frederic Goldspink, C.B., of Sydenham House, Craig
+Hill, Commissioner of Her Majesty's Customs, and formerly of the War
+Office.'”
+
+By the time this was finished we were all quite exhausted, but we
+revived like magic when Salemina read us her contribution:--
+
+“'A NAME ENSHRINED IN LITERATURE AND RENOWNED IN COMMERCE,--Miss
+Willard, Waddington, Essex. Deal with her whenever you possibly can.
+When you want to purchase, ask her for anything under the canopy of
+heaven, from jewels, bijouterie, and curios to rare books and high-class
+articles of utility. When you want to sell, consign only to her, from
+choice gems to mundane objects. All transactions embodying the germs
+of small profits are welcome. As a sample of her stock please note:
+A superlatively exquisite, essentially beautiful, and important lace
+flounce for sale, at a reasonable price. Also a bargain of peerlessly
+choice character.--Six grandly glittering paste cluster buttons, of
+important size, emitting dazzling rays of incomparable splendour and
+lustre. Don't readily forget this or her name and address,--Clara (Miss)
+Willard (the Lady Trader), Waddington, Essex. Immaculate promptitude and
+scrupulous liberality observed: therefore, on these credentials, ye must
+deal with her; it is the duty of intellect to be reciprocal.'”
+
+Just here Dawson entered, evidently to lay the dinner-cloth, but, seeing
+that we had a visitor, he took the tea-tray and retired discreetly.
+
+“It is five-and-thirty minutes past six, Mr. Beresford,” I said. “Do you
+think you can get to the Metropole and array yourself and return in less
+than an hour? Because, even if you can, remember that we ladies have
+elaborate toilets in prospect,--toilets intended for the complete
+prostration of the British gentry. Francesca has a yellow gown which
+will drive Bertie Godolphin to madness. Salemina has laid out a soft,
+dovelike grey and steel combination, directed towards the Church of
+England; for you may not know that Sally has a vicar in her train, Mr.
+Beresford, and he will probably speak to-night. As for me-”
+
+Before these shocking personalities were finished Salemina and Francesca
+had fled to their rooms, and Mr. Beresford took up my broken sentence
+and said, “As for you, Miss Hamilton, whatever gown you wear, you are
+sure to make one man speak, if you care about it; but, I suppose, you
+would not listen to him unless he were English”; and with that shot he
+departed.
+
+I really think I shall have to give up the Francesca hypothesis, and,
+alas! I am not quite ready to adopt any other.
+
+We discussed international marriages while we were at our toilets,
+Salemina and I prinking by the light of one small candle-end, while
+Francesca, as the youngest and prettiest, illuminated her charms with
+the six sitting-room candles and three filched from the little table in
+the hall.
+
+I gave it as my humble opinion that for an American woman an English
+husband was at least an experiment; Salemina declared that for that
+matter a husband of any nationality was an experiment. Francesca ended
+the conversation flippantly by saying that in her judgment no husband at
+all was a much more hazardous experiment.
+
+
+
+Chapter XI. The ball on the opposite side.
+
+
+
+We are all three rather tired this morning,--Salemina, Francesca, and
+I,--for we went to one of the smartest balls of the London season last
+night, and were robbed of half our customary allowance of sleep in
+consequence.
+
+It may be difficult for you to understand our weariness, when I confess
+that the ball was not quite of the usual sort; that we did not dance
+at all; and, what is worse, that we were not asked, either to tread a
+measure, or sit out a polka, or take 'one last turn.'
+
+To begin at the beginning, there is a large vacant house directly
+opposite Smith's Private Hotel, and there has been hanging from its
+balcony, until very lately, a sign bearing the following notice:--
+
+
+                THESE COMMANDING PREMISES
+                WITH A SUPERFICIAL AREA OF
+                   10,000 FT. AND 50 FT.
+                 FRONTAGE TO DOVERMARLE ST.
+                  WILL BE SOLD BY AUCTION
+                 ON TUESDAY, JUNE 28TH, BY
+           MESSRS. SKIDDY, YADDLETHORPE AND SKIDDY
+                 LAND AGENTS AND SURVEYORS
+               27 HASTINGS PLACE, PALL MALL.
+
+A few days ago, just as we were finishing a late breakfast, an elderly
+gentleman drove up in a private hansom, and alighted at this vacant
+house on the opposite side. Behind him, in a cab, came two men, who
+unlocked the front door, went in, came out on the balcony, cut the wires
+supporting the sign, took it down, opened all the inside shutters,
+and disappeared through some rear entrance. The elderly gentleman went
+upstairs for a moment, came down again, and drove away.
+
+“The house has been sold, I suppose,” said Salemina; “and for my part I
+envy the new owner his bargain. He is close to Piccadilly, has that bit
+of side lawn with the superb oak-tree, and the duke's beautiful gardens
+so near that they will seem virtually his own when he looks from his
+upper windows.”
+
+At tea-time the same elderly gentleman drove up in a victoria, with a
+very pretty young lady.
+
+“The plot thickens,” said Francesca, who was nearest the window. “Do you
+suppose she is his bride-elect, and is he showing her their future home,
+or is she already his wife? If so, I fear me she married him for his
+title and estates, for he is more than a shade too old for her.”
+
+“Don't be censorious, child,” I remonstrated, taking my cup idly across
+the room, to be nearer the scene of action. “Oh, dear! there is a slight
+discrepancy, I confess, but I can explain it. This is how it happened:
+The girl had never really loved, and did not know what the feeling was.
+She did know that the aged suitor was a good and worthy man, and her
+mother and nine small brothers and sisters (very much out at the toes)
+urged the marriage. The father, too, had speculated heavily in consorts
+or consuls, or whatever-you-call-'ems, and besought his child not to
+expose his defalcations and losses. She, dutiful girl, did as she was
+bid, especially as her youngest sister came to her in tears and said,
+'Unless you consent we shall have to sell the cow!' So she went to the
+altar with a heart full of palpitating respect, but no love to speak of;
+that always comes in time to heroines who sacrifice themselves and spare
+the cows.”
+
+“It sounds strangely familiar,” remarked Mr. Beresford, who was with us,
+as usual. “Didn't a fellow turn up in the next chapter, a young nephew
+of the old husband, who fell in love with the bride, unconsciously and
+against his will? Wasn't she obliged to take him into the conservatory,
+at the end of a week, and say, 'G-go! I beseech you! for b-both our
+sakes!'? Didn't the noble fellow wring her hand silently, and leave her
+looking like a broken lily on the-”
+
+“How can you be so cynical, Mr. Beresford? It isn't like you!” exclaimed
+Salemina. “For my part, I don't think the girl is either his bride or
+his fiancee. Probably the mother of the family is dead, and the father
+is bringing his eldest daughter to look at the house: that's my idea of
+it.”
+
+This theory being just as plausible as ours, we did not discuss it,
+hoping that something would happen to decide the matter in one way or
+another.
+
+“She is not married, I am sure,” went on Salemina, leaning over the back
+of my chair. “You notice that she hasn't given a glance at the kitchen
+or the range, although they are the most important features of the
+house. I think she may have just put her head inside the dining-room
+door, but she certainly didn't give a moment to the butler's pantry or
+the china closet. You will find that she won't mount to the fifth floor
+to see how the servants are housed,--not she, careless, pretty creature;
+she will go straight to the drawing-room.”
+
+And so she did; and at the same instant a still younger and prettier
+creature drove up in a hansom, and was out of it almost before the
+admiring cabby could stop his horse or reach down for his fare. She flew
+up the stairway and danced into the drawing-room like a young whirlwind;
+flung open doors, pulled up blinds with a jerk, letting in the sunlight
+everywhere, and tiptoed to and fro over the dusty floors, holding up her
+muslin flounces daintily.
+
+“This must be the daughter of his first marriage,” I remarked.
+
+“Who will not get on with the young stepmother,” finished Mr. Beresford.
+
+“It is his youngest daughter,” corrected Salemina,--“the youngest
+daughter of his only wife, and the image of her deceased mother, who
+was, in her time, the belle of Dublin.”
+
+She might well have been that, we all agreed; for this young beauty was
+quite the Irish type, such black hair, grey-blue eyes, and wonderful
+lashes, and such a merry, arch, winsome face, that one loved her on the
+instant.
+
+She was delighted with the place, and we did not wonder, for the
+sunshine, streaming in at the back and side windows, showed us rooms
+of noble proportions opening into one another. She admired the balcony,
+although we thought it too public to be of any use save for flowering
+plants; she was pleased with a huge French mirror over the marble
+mantle; she liked the chandeliers, which were in the worst possible
+taste; all this we could tell by her expressive gestures; and she
+finally seized the old gentleman by the lapels of his coat and danced
+him breathlessly from the fireplace to the windows and back again, while
+the elder girl clapped her hands and laughed.
+
+“Isn't she lovely?” sighed Francesca, a little covetously, although she
+is something of a beauty herself.
+
+“I am sorry that her name is Bridget,” said Mr. Beresford.
+
+“For shame!” I cried indignantly. “It is Norah, or Veronica, or
+Geraldine, or Patricia; yes, it is Patricia,--I know it as well as if I
+had been at the christening.--Dawson, take the tea-things, please; and
+do you know the name of the gentleman who has bought the house on the
+opposite side?”
+
+“It is Lord Brighton, miss.” (You would never believe it, but we find
+the name is spelled Brighthelmston.) “He hasn't bought the 'ouse; he has
+taken it for a week, and is giving a ball there on the Tuesday evening.
+He has four daughters, miss, and two h'orphan nieces that generally
+spends the season with 'im. It's the youngest daughter he is bringing
+out, that lively one you saw cutting about just now. They 'ave no
+ballroom, I expect, in their town 'ouse, which accounts for their
+renting one for this occasion. They stopped a month in this 'otel last
+year, so I have the honour of m'luds acquaintance.”
+
+“Lady Brighthelmston is not living, I should judge,” remarked Salemina,
+in the tone of one who thinks it hardly worth while to ask.
+
+“Oh, yes, miss, she's alive and 'earty; but the daughters manages
+everythink, and what they down't manage the h'orphan nieces does. The
+'ouse is run for the young ladies, but m'ludanlady seems to enjoy it.”
+
+Dovermarle Street was so interesting during the next few days that we
+could scarcely bear to leave it, lest something exciting should happen
+in our absence.
+
+“A ball is so confining!” said Francesca, who had come back from the
+corner of Piccadilly to watch the unloading of a huge van, and found
+that it had no intention of stopping at Number Nine on the opposite
+side.
+
+First came a small army of charwomen, who scrubbed the house from top
+to bottom. Then came men with canvas for floors, bronzes and jardinieres
+and somebody's family portraits from an auction-room, chairs and sofas
+and draperies from an upholsterer's.
+
+The night before the event itself I announced my intention of staying in
+our own drawing-room the whole of the next day. “I am more interested in
+Patricia's debut,” I said, “than anything else that can possibly happen
+in London. What if it should be wet, and won't it be annoying if it is a
+cold night and they draw the heavy curtains close together?”
+
+But it was beautiful day, almost too warm for a ball, and the heavy
+curtains were not drawn. The family did not court observation; it was
+serenely unconscious of such a thing. As to our side of the street, I
+think we may have been the only people at all interested in the affair
+now so imminent. The others had something more sensible to do, I fancy,
+than patching up romances about their neighbours.
+
+At noon the florists decorated the entrance with palms, covered the
+balcony with a gay awning, and hung the railing with brilliant masses
+of scarlet and yellow flowers. At two the caterers sent silver, tables,
+linen, and dishes, and a Broadwood grand piano was installed; but at
+half-past seven, when we sat down to dinner, we were a trifle anxious,
+because so many things seemed yet to do before the party could be a
+complete success.
+
+Mr. Beresford and his mother were dining with us, and we had sent
+invitations to our London friends, the Hon. Arthur Ponsonby and Bertie
+Godolphin, to come later in the evening. These read as follows:--
+
+                     Private View
+        The pleasure of your company is requested
+                at the coming-out party of
+            The Hon. Patricia Brighthelmston
+                     July ---  189-
+             On the opposite side of the street.
+     Dancing about 10-30.            9 Dovermarle Street.
+
+At eight o'clock, as we were finishing our fish course, which chanced
+to be fried sole, the ball began literally to roll, and it required the
+greatest ingenuity on Francesca's part and mine to be always down in our
+seats when Dawson entered with the dishes, and always at the window when
+he was absent.
+
+An enormous van had appeared, with half a dozen men walking behind it.
+In a trice, two of them had stretched a wire trellis across one wall
+of the drawing-room, and two more were trailing roses from floor to
+ceiling. Others tied the dark wood of the stair railing with tall
+Madonna lilies; then they hung garlands of flowers from corner to corner
+and, alas! could not refrain from framing the mirror in smilax, nor
+from hanging the chandeliers with that same ugly, funereal, and
+artificial-looking vine,--this idea being the principal stock-in-trade
+of every florist in the universe.
+
+We could not catch even a glimpse of the supper-rooms, but we saw a man
+in the fourth story front room filling dozens of little glass vases,
+each with its single malmaison, rose, or camellia, and despatching them
+by an assistant to another part of the house; so we could imagine from
+this the scheme of decoration at the tables.--No, not new, perhaps, but
+simple and effective.
+
+By the time we had finished our entree, which happened to be lamb
+cutlets and green peas, and had begun our roast, which was chicken and
+ham, I remember, they had put wreaths at all the windows, hung Japanese
+lanterns on the balcony and in the oak-tree, and transformed the house
+into a blossoming bower.
+
+At this exciting juncture Dawson entered unexpectedly with our sweet,
+and for the first and only time caught us literally 'red-handed.' Let
+British subjects be interested in their neighbours, if they will (and
+when they refrain I am convinced that it is as much indifference as good
+breeding), but let us never bring our country into disrepute with an
+English butler! As there was not a single person at the table when
+Dawson came in, we were obliged to say that we had finished dinner,
+thank you, and would take coffee; no sweet to-night, thank you.
+
+Willie Beresford was the only one who minded, but he rather likes cherry
+tart. It simply chanced to be cherry tart, for our cook at Smith's
+Private Hotel is a person of unbridled fancy and endless repertory. She
+sometimes, for example, substitutes rhubarb for cherry tart quite out
+of her own head; and when balked of both these dainties, and thrown
+absolutely on her own boundless resources, will create a dish of stewed
+green gooseberries and a companion piece of liquid custard. These
+unrelated concoctions, when eaten at the same moment, as is her
+intention, always remind me of the lying down together of the lion and
+the lamb, and the scheme is well-nigh as dangerous, under any other
+circumstances than those of the digestive millennium. I tremble to think
+what would ensue if all the rhubarb and gooseberry bushes in England
+should be uprooted in a single night. I believe that thousands of cooks,
+those not possessed of families or Christian principles, would drown
+themselves in the Thames forthwith, but that is neither here nor there,
+and the Honourable Arthur denies it. He says, “Why commit suicide? Ain't
+there currants?”
+
+I had forgotten to say that we ourselves were all en grande toilette,
+down to satin slippers, feeling somehow that it was the only proper
+thing to do; and when Dawson had cleared the table and ushered in the
+other visitors, we ladies took our coffee and the men their cigarettes
+to the three front windows, which were open as usual to our balcony.
+
+We seated ourselves there quite casually, as is our custom, somewhat
+hidden by the lace draperies and potted hydrangeas, and whatever we saw
+was to be seen by any passer-by, save that we held the key to the whole
+story, and had made it our own by right of conquest.
+
+Just at this moment--it was quarter-past nine, although it was still
+bright daylight--came a little procession of servants who disappeared
+within the doors, and, as they donned caps and aprons, would now and
+then reappear at the windows. Presently the supper arrived. We did
+not know the number of invited guests (there are some things not even
+revealed to the Wise Woman), but although we were a trifle nervous about
+the amount of eatables, we were quite certain that there would be no
+dearth of liquid refreshment.
+
+Contemporaneously with the supper came a four-wheeler with a man and a
+woman in it.
+
+Sal. “I wonder if that is Lord and Lady Brighthelmston?”
+
+Mrs. B. “Nonsense, my dear; look at the woman's dress.”
+
+W.B. “It is probably the butler, and I have a premonition that that is
+good old Nurse with him. She has been with family ever since the birth
+of the first daughter twenty-four years ago. Look at her cap ribbons;
+note the fit of the stiff black silk over her comfortable shoulders; you
+can almost hear her creak in it!”
+
+B.G. “My eye! but she's one to keep the goody-pot open for the
+youngsters! She'll be the belle of the ball so far as I'm concerned.”
+
+Fran. “It's impossible to tell whether it's the butler or paterfamilias.
+Yes, it's the butler, for he has taken off his coat and is looking at
+the flowers with the florist's assistant.”
+
+B.G. “And the florist's assistant is getting slated like one o'clock!
+The butler doesn't like the rum design over the piano; no more do I.
+Whatever is the matter with them now?”
+
+They were standing with their faces towards us, gesticulating wildly
+about something on the front wall of the drawing-room; a place quite
+hidden from our view. They could not decide the matter, although the
+butler intimated that it would quite ruin the ball, while the assistant
+mopped his brow and threw all the blame on somebody else. Nurse came in,
+and hated whatever it was the moment her eye fell on it. She couldn't
+think how anybody could abide it, and was of the opinion that his
+ludship would have it down as soon as he arrived.
+
+Our attention was now distracted by the fact that his ludship did
+arrive. It was ten o'clock, but barely dark enough yet to make the
+lanterns effective, although they had just been lighted.
+
+There were two private carriages and two four-wheelers, from which
+paterfamilias and one other gentleman alighted, followed by a small
+feminine delegation.
+
+“One young chap to brace up the gov'nor,” said Bertie Godolphin. “Then
+the eldest daughter is engaged to be married; that's right; only three
+daughters and two h'orphan nieces to work off now!”
+
+As the girls scampered in, hidden by their long cloaks, we could
+not even discover the two we already knew. While they were divesting
+themselves of their wraps in an upper chamber, Nurse hovering over them
+with maternal solicitude, we were anxiously awaiting their criticisms of
+our preparations.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII. Patricia makes her debut.
+
+
+
+For three days we had been overseeing the details. Would they approve
+the result? Would they think the grand piano in the proper corner? Were
+the garlands hung too low? Was the balcony scheme effective? Was our
+menu for the supper satisfactory? Were there too many lanterns? Lord and
+Lady Brighthelmston had superintended so little, and we so much, that we
+felt personally responsible.
+
+Now came musicians with their instruments. The butler sent four
+melancholy Spanish students to the balcony, where they began to tune
+mandolins and guitars, while an Hungarian band took up its position, we
+conjectured, on some extension or balcony in the rear, the existence of
+which we had not guessed until we heard the music later. Then the
+butler turned on the electric light, and the family came into the
+drawing-rooms.
+
+They did admire them as much as we could wish, and we, on our part,
+thoroughly approved of the family. We had feared it might prove dull,
+plain, dowdy, though wellborn, with only dear Patricia to enliven it;
+but it was well-dressed, merry, and had not a thought of glancing at the
+windows or pulling down the blinds, bless its simple heart!
+
+The mother entered first, wearing a grey satin gown and a diamond crown
+that quite established her position in the great world. Then girls, and
+more girls: a rose-pink girl, a pale green, a lavender, a yellow,
+and our Patricia, in a cloud of white with a sparkle of silver, and a
+diamond arrow in her lustrous hair.
+
+What an English nosegay they made, to be sure, as they stood in the back
+of the room while paterfamilias approached, and calling each in turn,
+gave her a lovely bouquet from a huge basket held by the butler.
+
+Everybody's flowers matched everybody's frock to perfection; those of
+the h'orphan nieces were just as beautiful as those of the daughters,
+and it is no wonder that the English nosegay descended upon
+paterfamilias, bore him into the passage, and if they did not kiss
+him soundly, why did he come back all rosy and crumpled, smoothing his
+dishevelled hair, and smiling at Lady Brighthelmston? We speedily named
+the girls Rose, Mignonette, Violet, and Celandine, each after the colour
+of her frock.
+
+“But there are only five, and there ought to be six,” whispered
+Salemina, as if she expected to be heard across the street.
+
+“One--two--three--four--five, you are right,” said Mr. Beresford. “The
+plainest of the lot must be staying in Wales with a maiden aunt who has
+a lot of money to leave. The old lady isn't so ill that they can't give
+the ball, but just ill enough so that she may make her will wrong if
+left alone; poor girl, to be plain, and then to miss such a ball as
+this,--hello! the first guest! He is on time to be sure; I hate to be
+first, don't you?”
+
+The first guest was a strikingly handsome fellow, irreproachably dressed
+and unmistakably nervous.
+
+“He is afraid he is too early!”
+
+“He is afraid that if he waits he'll be too late!”
+
+“He doesn't want the driver to stop directly in front of the door.”
+
+“He has something beside him on the seat of the hansom.”
+
+“The tissue paper has blown off: it is flowers.”
+
+“It is a piece! Jove, this IS a rum ball!”
+
+“What IS the thing? No wonder he doesn't drive up to the door and go in
+with it!”
+
+“It is a HARP, as sure as I am alive!”
+
+Then electrically from Francesca, “It is Patricia's Irish lover! I
+forget his name.”
+
+“Rory!”
+
+“Shamus!”
+
+“Michael!”
+
+“Patrick!”
+
+“Terence!”
+
+“Hush!” she exclaimed at this chorus of Hibernian Christian names, “it
+is Patricia's undeclared impecunious lover. He is afraid that she won't
+know his gift is a harp, and afraid that the other girls will. He feared
+to send it, lest one of the sisters or h'orphan nieces should get it; it
+is frightful to love one of six, and the cards are always slipping off,
+and the wrong girl is always receiving your love-token or your offer of
+marriage.”
+
+“And if it is an offer, and the wrong woman gets it, she always accepts,
+somehow,” said Mr. Beresford; “It's only the right one who declines!”
+ and here he certainly looked at me pointedly.
+
+“He hoped to arrive before any one else,” Francesca went on, “and put
+the harp in a nice place, and lead Patricia up to it, and make her
+wonder who sent it. Now poor dear (yes, his name is sure to be Terence),
+he is too late, and I am sure he will leave it in the hansom, he will be
+so embarrassed.”
+
+And so he did, but alas! the driver came back with it in an instant,
+the butler ran down the long path of crimson carpet that covered the
+sidewalk, the first footman assisted, the second footman pursued Terence
+and caught him on the staircase, and he descended reluctantly, only
+to receive the harp in his arms and send a tip to the cabman, whom of
+course he was cursing in his heart.
+
+“I can't think why he should give her a harp,” mused Bertie Godolphin.
+“Such a rum thing, a harp, isn't it? It's too heavy for her to 'tote,'
+as you say in the States.”
+
+“Yes, we always say 'tote,' particularly in the North,” I replied; “but
+perhaps it is Patricia's favourite instrument. Perhaps Terence first
+saw her at the harp, and loved her from the moment he heard her sing the
+'Minstrel Boy' and the 'Meeting of the Waters.'”
+
+“Perhaps he merely brought it as a sort of symbol,” suggested Mr.
+Beresford; “a kind of flowery metaphor signifying that all Ireland, in
+his person, is at her disposal, only waiting to be played upon.”
+
+“If that is what he means, he must be a jolly muff,” remarked the
+Honourable Arthur. “I should think he'd have to send a guidebook with
+the bloomin' thing.”
+
+We never knew how Terence arranged about the incubus; we only saw that
+he did not enter the drawing room with it in his arms. He was well
+received, although there was no special enthusiasm over his arrival; but
+the first guest is always at a disadvantage.
+
+He greeted the young ladies as if he were in the habit of meeting them
+often, but when he came to Patricia, well, he greeted her as if he could
+never meet her often enough; there was a distinct difference, and even
+Mrs. Beresford, who had been incredulous, succumbed to our view of the
+case.
+
+Patricia took him over to the piano to see the arrangement of some
+lilies. He said they were delicious, but looked at her.
+
+She asked him if he did not think the garlands lovely.
+
+He said, “Perfectly charming,” but never lifted his eyes higher than her
+face.
+
+“Do you like my dress?” her glance seemed to ask.
+
+“Wonderful!” his seemed to reply, as he stealthily put out his hand and
+touched a soft fold of its white fluffiness.
+
+I could hear him think, as she leaned into the curve of the Broadwood
+and bent over the flowers--
+
+     'Have you seen but a bright lily grow
+       Before rude hands have touched it?
+      Have you marked but the fall of the snow
+       Before the soil hath smutched it?
+      Have you felt the wool of beaver?
+          Or swan's down ever?
+      Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier?
+          Or the nard i' the fire?
+      Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
+      Oh, so white! oh, so soft! oh, so sweet is she!'
+
+A footman entered, bearing the harp, which he placed on a table in the
+corner. He disclaimed all knowledge of it, having probably been well
+paid to do so, and the unoccupied girls gathered about it like bees
+about a honeysuckle, while Patricia and Terence stayed by the piano.
+
+“To think it may never be a match!” sighed Francesca, “and they are such
+an ideal pair! But it is easy to see that the mother will oppose it, and
+although Patricia is her father's darling, he cannot allow her to marry
+a handsome young pauper like Terence.”
+
+“Cheer up!” said Bertie Godolphin reassuringly. “Perhaps some
+unrelenting beggar of an uncle will die of old age next and leave him
+the title and estates.”
+
+“I hope she will accept him to-night, if she loves him, estates or
+no estates,” said Salemina, who, like many ladies who have elected
+to remain single, is distinctly sentimental, and has not an ounce of
+worldly wisdom.
+
+“Well, I think a fellow deserves some reward,” remarked Mr. Beresford,
+“when he has the courage to drive up in a hansom bearing a green harp
+with yellow strings in his arms. It shows that his passion has quite
+eclipsed his sense of humour. By the way, I am not sure but I should
+choose Rose, after all; there's something very attractive about Rose.”
+
+“It is the fact that she is promised to another,” laughed Francesca
+somewhat pertly.
+
+“She would make an admirable wife,” Mrs. Beresford
+interjected--absent-mindedly; “and so of course Terence will not choose
+her, and similarly neither would you, if you had the chance.”
+
+At this Mrs. Beresford's son glances up at me with twinkling eyes, and
+I can hardly forbear smiling, so unconscious is she that his choice is
+already made. However, he replies: “Who ever loved a woman for her solid
+virtues, mother? Who ever fell a victim to punctuality, patience,
+or frugality? It is other and different qualities which colour the
+personality and ensnare the heart; though the stodgy and reliable traits
+hold it, I dare say, when once captured. Don't you know Berkeley says,
+'D--n it, madam, who falls in love with attributes?'”
+
+Meantime Violet and Celandine have come out on the balcony, and seeing
+the tinkling musicians there, have straightway banished them to another
+part of the house.
+
+“A good thing, too!” murmured Bertie Godolphin, “making a beastly row in
+that 'nailing' little corner, collecting a crowd sooner or later, don't
+you know, and putting a dead stop to the jolly little flirtations.”
+
+The Honourable Arthur glanced critically at Celandine. “I should make up
+to her,” he said thoughtfully. “She's the best groomed one of the whole
+stud, though why you call her Celandine I can't think.”
+
+“It's a flower, and her dress is yellow, can't you see, man? You've got
+no sense of colour,” said the candid Bertie. “I believe you'd just as
+soon be a green parrot with a red head as not.”
+
+And now the guests began to arrive; so many of them and so near together
+that we hardly had time to label them as they said good evening, and
+told dear Lady Brighthelmston how pretty the decorations were, and how
+prevalent the influenza had been, and how very sultry the weather, and
+how clever it was of her to give her party in a vacant house, and what a
+delightful marriage Rose was making, and how well dear Patricia looked.
+
+The sound of the music drifted into the usually quiet street, and by
+half-past eleven the ball was in full splendour. Lady Brighthelmston
+stood alone now, greeting all the late arrivals; and we could catch a
+glimpse now and then of Violet dancing with a beautiful being in a white
+uniform, and of Rose followed about by her accepted lover, both of them
+content with their lot, but with feet quite on the solid earth.
+
+Celandine was a bit of a flirt, no doubt. She had many partners, walked
+in the garden with them impartially, divided her dances, sat on the
+stairs. Wherever her yellow draperies moved, nonsense, merriment, and
+chatter followed in her wake.
+
+Patricia danced often with Terence. We could see the dark head, darker
+and a bit taller than the others, move through the throng, the diamond
+arrow gleaming in its lustrous coils. She danced like a flower blown by
+the wind. Nothing could have been more graceful, more stately. The bend
+of her slender body at the waist, the pose of her head, the line of
+her shoulder, the suggestion of dimple in her elbow--all were so many
+separate allurements to the kindling eye of love.
+
+Terence certainly added little to the general brilliancy and gaiety of
+the occasion, for he stood in a corner and looked at Patricia whenever
+he was not dancing with her, 'all eye when one was present, all memory
+when one was gone.'
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII. A Penelope secret.
+
+
+
+Shortly after midnight our own little company broke up, loath to
+leave the charming spectacle. The guests departed with the greatest
+reluctance, having given Dawson a half-sovereign for waiting up to
+lock the door. Mrs. Beresford said that it seemed unendurable to leave
+matters in such an unfinished condition, and her son promised to come
+very early next morning for the latest bulletins.
+
+“I leave all the romances in your hands,” he whispered to me; “do let
+them turn out happily, do!”
+
+Salemina also retired to her virtuous couch, remembering that she was to
+visit infant schools with a great educational dignitary on the morrow.
+
+Francesca and I turned the gas entirely out, although we had been
+sitting all the evening in a kind of twilight, and slipping on our
+dressing-gowns sat again at the window for a farewell peep into the
+past, present, and future of the 'Brighthelmston set.'
+
+At midnight the dowager duchess arrived. She must at least have been a
+dowager duchess, and if there is anything greater, within the bounds of
+a reasonable imagination, she was that. Long streamers of black tulle
+floated from a diamond soup-tureen which surmounted her hair. Narrow
+puffings of white traversed her black velvet gown in all directions,
+making her look somewhat like a railway map, and a diamond fan-chain
+defined, or attempted to define, what was in its nature neither
+definable nor confinable, to wit, her waist, or what had been, in early
+youth, her waist.
+
+The entire company was stirred by the arrival of the dowager duchess,
+and it undoubtedly added new eclat to what was already a fashionable
+event; for we counted three gentlemen who wore orders glittering on
+ribbons that crossed the white of their immaculate linen, and there was
+an Indian potentate with a jewelled turban who divided attention with
+the dowager duchess's diamond soup-tureen.
+
+At twelve-thirty Lord Brighthelmston chided Celandine for flirting too
+much.
+
+At twelve-forty Lady Brighthelmston reminded Violet (who was a h'orphan
+niece) that the beautiful being in the white uniform was not the eldest
+son.
+
+At twelve-fifty there arrived an elderly gentleman, before whom the
+servants bowed low. Lord Brighthelmston went to fetch Patricia, who
+chanced to be sitting out a dance with Terence. The three came out on
+the balcony, which was deserted, in the near prospect of supper, and the
+personage--whom we suspected to be Patricia's godfather--took from his
+waistcoat pocket a string of pearls, and, clasping it round her white
+throat, stooped gently and kissed her forehead.
+
+Then at one o'clock came supper. Francesca and I had secretly provided
+for that contingency, and curling up on a sofa we drew toward us a
+little table which Dawson had spread with a galantine of chicken, some
+cress sandwiches, and a jug of milk.
+
+At one-thirty we were quite overcome with sleep, and retired to our
+beds, where of course we speedily grew wakeful.
+
+“It is giving a ball, not going to one, that is so exhausting!” yawned
+Francesca. “How many times have I danced all night with half the fatigue
+that I am feeling now!”
+
+The sound of music came across the street through the closed door of our
+sitting-room. Waltz after waltz, a polka, a galop, then waltzes again,
+until our brains reeled with the rhythm. As if this were not enough,
+when our windows at the back were opened wide we were quite within reach
+of Lady Durden's small dance, where another Hungarian band discoursed
+more waltzes and galops.
+
+“Dancing, dancing everywhere, and not a turn for us!” grumbled
+Francesca. “I simply cannot sleep, can you?”
+
+“We must make a determined effort,” I advised; “don't speak again, and
+perhaps drowsiness will overtake us.”
+
+It finally did overtake Francesca, but I had too much to think about--my
+own problems as well as Patricia's. After what seemed to be hours of
+tossing I was helplessly drawn back into the sitting-room, just to see
+if anything had happened, and if the affair was ever likely to come to
+an end.
+
+It was half-past two, and yes, the ball was decidedly 'thinning out.'
+
+The attendants in the lower hall, when they were not calling carriages,
+yawned behind their hands, and stood first on one foot, and then on the
+other.
+
+Women in beautiful wraps, their heads flashing with jewels, descended
+the staircase, and drove, or even walked, away into the summer night.
+
+Lady Brighthelmston began to look tired, although all the world, as it
+said good night, was telling her that it was one of the most delightful
+balls of the season.
+
+The English nosegay had lost its white flower, for Patricia was not
+in the family group. I looked everywhere for the gleam of her silvery
+scarf, everywhere for Terence, while, the waltz music having ceased, the
+Spanish students played 'Love's Young Dream.'
+
+I hummed the words as the sweet old tune, strummed by the tinkling
+mandolins, vibrated clearly in the maze of other sounds:--
+
+     'Oh! the days have gone when Beauty bright
+        My heart's chain wove;
+      When my dream of life from morn till night
+        Was Love, still Love.
+      New hope may bloom and days may come,
+        Of milder, calmer beam,
+      But there's nothing half so sweet in life
+        As Love's Young Dream.'
+
+At last, in a quiet spot under the oak-tree, the lately risen moon found
+Patricia's diamond arrow and discovered her to me. The Japanese lanterns
+had burned out; she was wrapped like a young nun, in a cloud of white
+that made her eyelashes seem darker.
+
+I looked once, because the moonbeam led me into it before I realised;
+then I stole away from the window and into my own room, closing the door
+softly behind me.
+
+We had so far been looking only at conventionalities, preliminaries,
+things that all (who had eyes to see) might see; but this was
+different--quite, quite different.
+
+They were as beautiful under the friendly shadow of their urban oak-tree
+as were ever Romeo and Juliet on the balcony of the Capulets. I may not
+tell you what I saw in my one quickly repented-of glance. That would be
+vulgarising something that was already a little profaned by my innocent
+participation.
+
+I do not know whether Terence was heir, even ever so far removed, to any
+title or estates, and I am sure Patricia did not care: he may have been
+vulgarly rich or aristocratically poor. I only know that they loved each
+other in the old yet ever new way, without any ifs or ands or buts; that
+he worshipped, she honoured; he asked humbly, she gave gladly.
+
+How do I know? Ah! that's a 'Penelope secret,' as Francesca says.
+
+Perhaps you doubt my intuitions altogether. Perhaps you believe in
+your heart that it was an ordinary ball, where a lot of stupid people
+arrived, danced, supped, and departed. Perhaps you do not think his name
+was Terence or hers Patricia, and if you go so far as that in blindness
+and incredulity I should not expect you to translate properly what I
+saw last night under the oak-tree, the night of the ball on the opposite
+side, when Patricia made her debut.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV. Love and lavender.
+
+
+
+How well I remember our last evening in Dovermarle Street!
+
+At one of our open windows behind the potted ferns and blossoming
+hydrangeas sat Salemina, Bertie Godolphin, Mrs. Beresford, the
+Honourable Arthur, and Francesca; at another, as far off as
+possible, sat Willie Beresford and I. Mrs. Beresford had sanctioned a
+post-prandial cigar, for we were not going out till ten, to see, for the
+second time, an act of John Hare's Pair of Spectacles.
+
+They were talking and laughing at the other end of the room; Mr.
+Beresford and I were rather quiet. (Why is it that the people with whom
+one loves to be silent are also the very ones with whom one loves to
+talk?)
+
+The room was dim with the light of a single lamp; the rain had ceased;
+the roar of Piccadilly came to us softened by distance. A belated vendor
+of lavender came along the sidewalk, and as he stopped under the windows
+the pungent fragrance of the flowers was wafted up to us with his song.
+
+     'Who'll buy my pretty lavender?
+        Sweet lavender,
+      Who'll buy my pretty lavender?
+        Sweet bloomin' lavender.'
+
+The tune comes to me laden with odours. Is it not strange that the
+fragrances of other days steal in upon the senses together with the
+sights and sounds that gave them birth?
+
+Presently a horse and cart drew up before an hotel, a little further
+along, on the opposite side of the way. By the light of the street lamp
+under which it stopped we could see that it held a piano and two persons
+beside the driver. The man was masked, and wore a soft felt hat and a
+velvet coat. He seated himself at the piano and played a Chopin waltz
+with decided sentiment and brilliancy; then, touching the keys idly for
+a moment or two, he struck a few chords of prelude and turned towards
+the woman who sat beside him. She rose, and, laying one hand on the
+corner of the instrument, began to sing one of the season's favourites,
+'The Song that reached my Heart.' She also was masked, and even her
+figure was hidden by a long dark cloak the hood of which was drawn over
+her head to meet the mask. She sang so beautifully, with such style and
+such feeling, it seemed incredible to hear her under circumstances like
+these. She followed the ballad with Handel's 'Lascia ch'io pianga,'
+which rang out into the quiet street with almost hopeless pathos. When
+she descended from the cart to undertake the more prosaic occupation
+of passing the hat beneath the windows, I could see that she limped
+slightly, and that the hand with which she pushed back the heavy dark
+hair under the hood was beautifully moulded. They were all mystery that
+couple; not to be confounded for an instant with the common herd of
+London street musicians. With what an air of the drawing-room did he
+of the velvet coat help the singer into the cart, and with what elegant
+abandon and ultra-dilettantism did he light a cigarette, reseat himself
+at the piano, and weave Scots ballads into a charming impromptu! I
+confess I wrapped my shilling in a bit of paper and dropped it over the
+balcony with the wish that I knew the tragedy behind this little street
+drama.
+
+Willie Beresford was in a royal mood that night. You know the mood, in
+which the heart is so full, so full, it overruns the brim. He bought
+the entire stock of the lavender seller, and threw a shilling to
+the mysterious singer for every song she sung. He even offered to
+give--himself--to me! And oh! I would have taken him as gladly as ever
+the lavender boy took the half-crown, had I been quite, quite sure of
+myself! A woman with a vocation ought to be still surer than other women
+that it is the very jewel of love she is setting in her heart, and not
+a sparkling imitation. I gave myself wholly, or believed that I gave
+myself wholly, to art, or what I believed to be art. And is there
+anything more sacred than art?--Yes, one thing!
+
+It happened something in this wise.
+
+The singing had put us in a gentle mood, and after a long peroration
+from Mr. Beresford, which I do not care to repeat, I said very softly
+(blessing the Honourable Arthur's vociferous laughter at one of
+Salemina's American jokes), “But I thought perhaps it was Francesca. Are
+you quite sure?”
+
+He intimated that if there were any fact in his repertory of which he
+was particularly and absolutely sure it was this special fact.
+
+“It is too sudden,” I objected. “Plants that blossom on shipboard-”
+
+“This plant was rooted in American earth, and you know it, Penelope. If
+it chanced to blossom on the ship, it was because it had already budded
+on the shore; it has borne transplanting to a foreign soil, and it
+grows in beauty and strength every day: so no slurs, please, concerning
+ocean-steamer hothouses.”
+
+“I cannot say yes, yet I dare not say no; it is too soon. I must go off
+into the country quite by myself and think it over.”
+
+“But,” urged Mr. Beresford, “you cannot think over a matter of this
+kind by yourself. You'll continually be needing to refer to me for data,
+don't you know, on which to base your conclusions. How can you tell
+whether you're in love with me or not if-- (No, I am not shouting at
+all; it's your guilty conscience; I'm whispering.) How can you tell
+whether you're in love with me, I repeat, unless you keep me under
+constant examination?”
+
+“That seems sensible, though I dare say it is full of sophistry; but I
+have made up my mind to go into the country and paint while Salemina and
+Francesca are on the Continent. One cannot think in this whirl. A winter
+season in Washington followed by a summer season in London,--one wants
+a breath of fresh air before beginning another winter season somewhere
+else. Be a little patient, please. I long for the calm that steals over
+me when I am absorbed in my brushes and my oils.”
+
+“Work is all very well,” said Mr. Beresford with determination, “but I
+know your habits. You have a little way of taking your brush, and with
+one savage sweep painting out a figure from your canvas. Now if I am
+on the canvas of your heart,--I say 'if' tentatively and modestly,
+as becomes me,--I've no intention of allowing you to paint me out;
+therefore I wish to remain in the foreground, where I can say 'Strike,
+but hear me,' if I discover any hostile tendencies in your eye. But I
+am thankful for small favours (the 'no' you do not quite dare say, for
+instance), and I'll talk it over with you to-morrow, if the British
+gentry will give me an opportunity, and if you'll deign to give me a
+moment alone in any other place than the Royal Academy.”
+
+“I was alone with you to-day for a whole hour at least.”
+
+“Yes, first at the London and Westminster Bank, second in Trafalgar
+Square, and third on the top of a 'bus, none of them congenial spots to
+a man in my humour. Penelope, you are not dull, but you don't seem to
+understand that I am head over-”
+
+“What are you two people quarrelling about?” cried Salemina. “Come,
+Penelope, get your wrap. Mrs. Beresford, isn't she charming in her new
+Liberty gown? If that New York wit had seen her, he couldn't have said,
+'If that is Liberty, give me Death!' Yes, Francesca, you must wear
+something over your shoulders. Whistle for two four-wheelers, Dawson,
+please.”
+
+
+
+
+Part Second--In the country.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV. Penelope dreams.
+
+
+
+                                  West Belvern, Holly House
+                                          August 189-.
+
+I am here alone. Salemina has taken her little cloth bag and her
+notebook and gone to inspect the educational and industrial methods of
+Germany. If she can discover anything that they are not already doing
+better in Boston, she will take it back with her, but her state of
+mind regarding the outcome of the trip might be described as one of
+incredulity tinged with hope. Francesca has accompanied Salemina. Not
+that the inspection of systems is much in her line, but she prefers
+it to a solitude a deux with me when I am in a working mood, and she
+comforts herself with the anticipation that the German army is very
+attractive. Willie Beresford has gone with his mother to Aix-les-Bains,
+like the dutiful son that he is. They say that a good son makes a good--
+But that subject is dismissed to the background for the present, for
+we are in a state of armed neutrality. He has agreed to wait until the
+autumn for a final answer, and I have promised to furnish one by that
+time. Meanwhile, we are to continue our acquaintance by post, which is a
+concession I would never have allowed if I had had my wits about me.
+
+After paying my last week's bill in Dovermarle Street, including fees
+to several servants whom I knew by sight, and several others whose
+acquaintance I made for the first time at the moment of departure,
+I glanced at my ebbing letter of credit and felt a season of economy
+setting in upon me with unusual severity; accordingly, I made an
+experiment of coming third-class to Belvern. I handed the guard a
+shilling, and he gave me a seat riding backwards in a carriage with
+seven other women, all very frumpish, but highly respectable. As
+he could not possibly have done any worse for me, I take it that he
+considered the shilling a graceful tribute to his personal charms,
+but as having no other bearing whatever. The seven women stared at me
+throughout the journey. When one is really of the same blood, and
+when one does not open one's lips or wave the stars and stripes in any
+possible manner, how do they detect the American? These women looked
+at me as if I were a highly interesting anthropoidal ape. It was not
+because of my attire, for I was carefully dressed down to a third-class
+level; yet when I removed my plain Knox hat and leaned my head
+back against my travelling-pillow, an electrical shudder of intense
+excitement ran through the entire compartment. When I stooped to tie my
+shoe another current was set in motion, and when I took Charles Reade's
+White Lies from my portmanteau they glanced at one another as if to say,
+'Would that we could see in what language the book is written!' As a
+travelling mystery I reached my highest point at Oxford, for there I
+purchased a small basket of plums from a boy who handed them in at the
+window of the carriage. After eating a few, I offered the rest to a
+dowdy elderly woman on my left who was munching dry biscuits from a
+paper bag. 'What next?' was the facial expression of the entire company.
+My neighbour accepted the plums, but hid them in her bag; plainly
+thinking them poisoned, and believing me to be a foreign conspirator,
+conspiring against England through the medium of her inoffensive person.
+In the course of the four-hours' journey, I could account for the
+strange impression I was making only upon the theory that it is unusual
+to comport oneself in a first-class manner in a third-class carriage.
+All my companions chanced to be third-class by birth as well as by
+ticket, and the Englishwoman who is born third-class is sometimes
+deficient in imagination.
+
+Upon arriving at Great Belvern (which must be pronounced 'Bevern') I
+took a trap, had my luggage put on in front, and start on my quest for
+lodgings in West Belvern, five miles distant. Several addresses had been
+given me by Hilda Mellifica, who has spent much time in this region, and
+who begged me to use her name. I told the driver that I wished to find
+a clean, comfortable lodging, with the view mentioned in the guide-book,
+and with a purple clematis over the door, if possible. The last point
+astounded him to such a degree that he had, I think, a serious idea of
+giving me into custody. (I should not be so eccentrically spontaneous
+with these people, if they did not feed my sense of humour by their
+amazement.)
+
+We visited Holly House, Osborne, St. James, Victoria, and Albert houses,
+Tank Villa, Poplar Villa, Rose, Brake, and Thorn Villas, as well as
+Hawthorn, Gorse, Fern, Shrubbery, and Providence Cottages. All had
+apartments, but many were taken, and many more had rooms either dark
+and stuffy or without view. Holly House was my first stopping-place. Why
+will a woman voluntarily call her place by a name which she can never
+pronounce? It is my landlady's misfortune that she is named 'Obbs, and
+mine that I am called 'Amilton, but Mrs. 'Obbs must have rushed with
+eyes wide open on 'Olly 'Ouse. I found sitting-room and bedroom at Holly
+House for two guineas a week; everything, except roof, extra. This
+was more than, in my new spirit of economy I desired to pay, but after
+exhausting my list I was obliged to go back rather than sleep in the
+highroad. Mrs. Hobbs offered to deduct two shillings a week if I stayed
+until Christmas, and said she should not charge me a penny for the
+linen. Thanking her with tears of gratitude, I requested dinner. There
+was no meat in the house, so I supped frugally off two boiled eggs,
+a stodgy household loaf, and a mug of ale, after which I climbed the
+stairs, and retired to my feather-bed in a rather depressed frame of
+mind.
+
+Visions of Salemina and Francesca driving under the linden-trees in
+Berlin flitted across my troubled reveries, with glimpses of Willie
+Beresford and his mother at Aix-les-Bains. At this distance, and in the
+dead of night, my sacrifice in coming here seemed fruitless. Why did I
+not allow myself to drift for ever on that pleasant sea which has been
+lapping me in sweet and indolent content these many weeks? Of what use
+to labour, to struggle, to deny myself, for an art to which I can never
+be more than the humblest handmaiden? I felt like crying out, as did
+once a braver woman's soul than mine, 'Let me be weak! I have been
+seeming to be strong so many years!' The woman and the artist in me have
+always struggled for the mastery. So far the artist has triumphed, and
+now all at once the woman is uppermost. I should think the two ought
+to be able to live peaceably in the same tenement; they do manage it in
+some cases; but it seems a law of my being that I shall either be all
+one or all the other.
+
+The question for me to ask myself now is, “Am I in love with loving and
+with being loved, or am I in love with Willie Beresford?” How many women
+have confounded the two, I wonder?
+
+In this mood I fell asleep, and on a sudden I found myself in a dear New
+England garden. The pillow slipped away, and my cheek pressed a fragrant
+mound of mignonette, the self-same one on which I hid my tear-stained
+face and sobbed my heart out in childish grief and longing for the
+mother who would never hold me again. The moon came up over the
+Belvern Hills and shone on my half-closed lids; but to me it was a very
+different moon, the far-away moon of my childhood, with a river rippling
+beneath its silver rays. And the wind that rustled among the poplar
+branches outside my window was, in my dream, stirring the pink petals of
+a blossoming apple-tree that used to grow beside the bank of mignonette,
+wafting down sweet odours and drinking in sweeter ones. And presently
+there stole in upon this harmony of enchanting sounds and delicate
+fragrances, in which childhood and womanhood, pleasure and pain, memory
+and anticipation, seemed strangely intermingled, the faint music of a
+voice, growing clearer and clearer as my ear became familiar with its
+cadences. And what the dream voice said to me was something like this:--
+
+'If thou wouldst have happiness, choose neither fame, which doth not
+long abide, nor power, which stings the hand that wields it, nor gold,
+which glitters but never glorifies; but choose thou Love, and hold
+it for ever in thy heart of hearts; for Love is the purest and the
+mightiest force in the universe, and once it is thine all other gifts
+shall be added unto thee. Love that is passionate yet reverent, tender
+yet strong, selfish in desiring all yet generous in giving all; love
+of man for woman and woman for man, of parent for child and friend for
+friend--when this is born in the soul, the desert blossoms as the rose.
+Straightway new hopes and wishes, sweet longings and pure ambitions,
+spring into being, like green shoots that lift their tender heads in
+sunny places; and if the soil be kind, they grow stronger and more
+beautiful as each glad day laughs in the rosy skies. And by and by
+singing-birds come and build their nests in the branches; and these
+are the pleasures of life. And the birds sing not often, because of
+a serpent that lurketh in the garden. And the name of the serpent is
+Satiety. He maketh the heart to grow weary of what it once danced and
+leaped to think upon, and the ear to wax dull to the melody of sounds
+that once were sweet, and the eye blind to the beauty that once led
+enchantment captive. And sometimes--we know not why, but we shall know
+hereafter, for life is not completely happy since it is not heaven, nor
+completely unhappy since it is the road thither--sometimes the light of
+the sun is withdrawn for a moment, and that which is fairest vanishes
+from the place that was enriched by its presence. Yet the garden is
+never quite deserted. Modest flowers, whose charms we had not noted
+when youth was bright and the world seemed ours, now lift their heads
+in sheltered places and whisper peace. The morning song of the birds
+is hushed, for the dawn breaks less rosily in the eastern skies, but at
+twilight they still come and nestle in the branches that were sunned in
+the smile of love and watered with its happy tears. And over the grave
+of each buried hope or joy stands an angel with strong comforting hands
+and patient smile; and the name of the garden is Life, and the angel is
+Memory.'
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI. The decay of Romance.
+
+
+
+I have changed my Belvern, and there are so many others left to choose
+from that I might live in a different Belvern each week. North, South,
+East, and West Belvern, New Belvern, Old Belvern, Great Belvern, Little
+Belvern, Belvern Link, Belvern Common, and Belvern Wells. They are all
+nestled together in the velvet hollows or on the wooded crowns of the
+matchless Belvern Hills, from which they look down upon the fairest
+plains that ever blessed the eye. One can see from their heights a
+score of market towns and villages, three splendid cathedrals, each in a
+different county, the queenly Severn winding like a silver thread among
+the trees, with soft-flowing Avon and gentle Teme watering the verdant
+meadows through which they pass. All these hills and dales were once
+the Royal Forest, and afterwards the Royal Chase, of Belvern, covering
+nearly seven thousand acres in three counties; and from the lonely
+height of the Beacon no less than
+
+     'Twelve fair counties saw the blaze'
+
+of signals, when the country was threatened by a Spanish invasion. As
+for me, I mourn the decay of Romance with a great R; we have it still
+among us, but we spell it with a smaller letter. It must be so much
+more interesting to be threatened with an invasion, especially a Spanish
+invasion, than with a strike, for instance. The clashing of swords and
+the flashing of spears in the sunshine are so much more dazzling and
+inspiring than a line of policemen with clubs! Yes, I wish it were the
+age of chivalry again, and that I were looking down from these hills
+into the Royal Chase. Of course I know that there were wicked and
+selfish tyrants in those days, before the free press, the jury system,
+and the folding-bed had wrought their beneficent influences upon the
+common mind and heart. Of course they would have sneered at Browning
+Societies and improved tenements, and of course they did not care
+a penny whether woman had the ballot or not, so long as man had the
+bottle; but I would that the other moderns were enjoying the modern
+improvements, and that I were gazing into the cool depths of those deep
+forests where there were once good lairs for the wolf and wild boar. I
+should like to hear the baying of the hounds and the mellow horns of the
+huntsman. I should like to see the royal cavalcade emerging from one of
+those wooded glades: monarch and baron bold, proud prelate, abbot and
+prior, belted knight and ladye fair, sweeping in gorgeous array under
+the arcades of the overshadowing trees, silver spurs and jewelled
+trappings glittering in the sunlight, princely forms bending low over
+the saddles of the court beauties. Why, oh why, is it not possible to
+be picturesque and pious in the same epoch? Why may not chivalry and
+charity go hand in hand? It amuses me to imagine the amazement of
+the barons, bold and belted knights, could they be resuscitated for a
+sufficient length of time to gaze upon the hydropathic establishments
+which dot their ancient hunting-grounds. It would have been very
+difficult to interest the age of chivalry in hydropathy.
+
+Such is the fascination of historic association that I am sure, if
+I could drag my beloved but conscientious Salemina from some foreign
+soup-kitchen which she is doubtless inspecting, I could make even her
+mourn the vanished past with me this morning, on the Beacon's towering
+head. For Salemina wearies of the age of charity sometimes, as every one
+does who is trying to make it a beautiful possibility.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII. Short stops and long bills.
+
+
+
+The manner of my changing from West to North Belvern was this. When I
+had been two days at Holly House, I reflected that my sitting-room faced
+the wrong way for the view, and that my bedroom was dark and not large
+enough to swing a cat in. Not that there was the remotest necessity
+of my swinging cats in it, but the figure of speech is always useful.
+Neither did I care to occupy myself with the perennial inspection and
+purchase of raw edibles, when I wished to live in an ideal world and
+paint a great picture. Mrs. Hobbs would come to my bedside in the
+morning and ask me if I would like to buy a fowl. When I looked upon the
+fowl, limp in death, with its headless neck hanging dejectedly over the
+edge of the plate, its giblets and kidneys lying in immodest confusion
+on the outside of itself, and its liver 'tucked under its wing, poor
+thing,' I never wanted to buy it. But one morning, in taking my walk,
+I chanced upon an idyllic spot: the front of the whitewashed cottage
+embowered in flowers, bird-cages built into these bowers, a little
+notice saying 'Canaries for Sale,' and an English rose of a baby sitting
+in the path stringing hollyhock buds. There was no apartment sign, but
+I walked in, ostensibly to buy some flowers. I met Mrs. Bobby, loved
+her at first sight, the passion was reciprocal, and I wheedled her
+into giving me her own sitting-room and the bedroom above it. It only
+remained now for me to break my projected change of residence to my
+present landlady, and this I distinctly dreaded. Of course Mrs. Hobbs
+said, when I timidly mentioned the subject, that she wished she had
+known I was leaving an hour before, for she had just refused a lady
+and her husband, most desirable persons, who looked as if they would be
+permanent. Can it be that lodgers radiate the permanent or transitory
+quality, quite unknown to themselves?
+
+I was very much embarrassed, as she threatened to become tearful; and
+as I was determined never to give up Mrs. Bobby, I said desperately, “I
+must leave you, Mrs. Hobbs, I must indeed; but as you seem to feel so
+badly about it, I'll go out and find you another lodger in my place.”
+
+The fact is, I had seen, not long before, a lady going in and out of
+houses, as I had done on the night of my arrival, and it occurred to
+me that I might pursue her, and persuade her to take my place in Holly
+House and buy the headless fowl. I walked for nearly an hour before I
+was rewarded with a glimpse of my victim's grey dress whisking round the
+corner of Pump Street. I approached, and, with a smile that was intended
+to be a justification in itself, I explained my somewhat unusual
+mission. She was rather unreceptive at first; she thought evidently that
+I was to have a percentage on her, if I succeeded in capturing her
+alive and delivering her to Mrs. Hobbs; but she was very weary and
+discouraged, and finally fell in with my plans. She accompanied me home,
+was introduced to Mrs. Hobbs, and engaged my rooms from the following
+day. As she had a sister, she promised to be a more lucrative incumbent
+than I; she enjoyed ordering food in a raw state, did not care for
+views, and thought purple clematis vines only a shelter for insects:
+so every one was satisfied, and I most of all when I wrestled with Mrs.
+Hobb's itemised bill for two nights and one day. Her weekly account must
+be rolled on a cylinder, I should think, like the list of Don Juan's
+amours, for the bill of my brief residence beneath her roof was quite
+three feet in length, each of the following items being set down every
+twenty-four hours:--
+
+     Apartments.
+     Ale.
+     Bath.
+     Kidney beans.
+     Candles.
+     Vegetable marrow.
+     Tea.
+     Eggs.
+     Butter.
+     Bread.
+     Cut off joint.
+     Plums.
+     Potatoes.
+     Chops.
+     Kipper.
+     Rasher.
+     Salt.
+     Pepper.
+     Vinegar.
+     Sugar.
+     Washing towels.
+     Lights.
+     Kitchen fire.
+     Sitting-room fire.
+     Attendance.
+     Boots.
+
+The total was seventeen shillings and sixpence, and as Mrs. Hobbs wrote
+upon it, in her neat English hand, 'Received payment, with respectful
+thanks,' she carefully blotted the wet ink, and remarked casually that
+service was not included in 'attendance,' but that she would leave the
+amount to me.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII. I meet Mrs. Bobby.
+
+
+
+Mrs. Bobby and I were born for each other, though we have been a long
+time in coming together. She is the pink of neatness and cheeriness, and
+she has a broad, comfortable bosom on which one might lay a motherless
+head, if one felt lonely in a stranger land. I never look at her without
+remembering what the poet Samuel Rogers said of Lady Parke: 'She is so
+good that when she goes to heaven she will find no difference save that
+her ankles will be thinner and her head better dressed.'
+
+No raw fowls visit my bedside here; food comes as I wish it to come when
+I am painting, like manna from heaven. Mrs. Bobby brings me three times
+a day something to eat, and though it is always whatever she likes, I
+always agree in her choice, and send the blue dishes away empty. She
+asked me this morning if I enjoyed my 'h'egg,' and remarked that she had
+only one fowl, but it laid an egg for me every morning, so I might know
+it was 'fresh as fresh.' It is certainly convenient: the fowl lays the
+egg from seven to seven-thirty, I eat it from eight to eight-thirty; no
+haste, no waste. Never before have I seen such heavenly harmony between
+supply and demand. Never before have I been in such visible and unbroken
+connection with the source of my food. If I should ever desire two eggs,
+or if the fowl should turn sulky or indolent, I suppose Mrs. Bobby would
+have to go half a mile to the nearest shop, but as yet everything has
+worked to a charm. The cow is milked into my pitcher in the morning, and
+the fowl lays her egg almost literally in my egg-cup. One of the little
+Bobbies pulls a kidney bean or a tomato or digs a potato for my dinner,
+about half an hour before it is served. There is a sheep in the garden,
+but I hardly think it supplies the chops; those, at least, are not
+raised on the premises.
+
+One grievance I did have at first, but Mrs. Bobby removed the thorn
+from the princess' pillow as soon as it was mentioned. Our next-door
+neighbour had a kennel of homesick, discontented, and sleepless puppies
+of various breeds, that were in the habit of howling all night until
+Mrs. Bobby expostulated with Mrs. Gooch in my behalf. She told me that
+she found Mrs. Gooch very snorty, very snorty indeed, because the pups
+were an 'obby of her 'usbants; whereupon Mrs. Bobby responded that if
+Mrs. Gooch's 'usbant 'ad to 'ave an 'obby, it was a shame it 'ad to be
+'owling pups to keep h'innocent people awake o' nights. The puppies were
+removed, but I almost felt guilty at finding fault with a dog in this
+country. It is a matter of constant surprise to me, and it always give
+me a warm glow in the region of the heart, to see the supremacy of the
+dog in England. He is respected, admired, loved, and considered, as he
+deserves to be everywhere, but as he frequently is not. He is admitted
+on all excursions; he is taken into the country for his health; he is a
+factor in all the master' plans; in short, the English dog is a member
+of the family, in good and regular standing.
+
+My interior surroundings are all charming. My little sitting-room, out
+of which I turned Mrs. Bobby, is bright with potted ferns and flowering
+plants, and on its walls, besides the photographs of a large and
+unusually plain family, I have two works of art which inspire me anew
+every time I gaze at them: the first a scriptural subject, treated by an
+enthusiastic but inexperienced hand, 'Susanne dans le Bain, surprise par
+les Deux Vieillards'; the second, 'The White Witch of Worcester on her
+Way to the Stake at High Cross.' The unfortunate lady in the latter
+picture is attired in a white lawn wrapper with angel sleeves, and is
+followed by an abbess with prayer-book, and eight surpliced choir-boys
+with candles. I have been long enough in England to understand the
+significance of the candles. Doubtless the White Witch had paid four
+shillings a week for each of them in her prison lodging, and she
+naturally wished to burn them to the end.
+
+One has no need, though, of pictures on the walls here, for the universe
+seems unrolled at one's very feet. As I look out of my window the last
+thing before I go to sleep, I see the lights of Great Belvern, the
+dim shadows of the distant cathedral towers, the quaint priory seven
+centuries old, and just the outline of Holly Bush Hill, a sacred seat of
+magic science when the Druids investigated the secrets of the stars,
+and sought, by auspices and sacrifices, to forecast the future and to
+penetrate the designs of the gods.
+
+It makes me feel very new, very undeveloped, to look out of that window.
+If I were an Englishwoman, say the fifty-fifth duchess of something, I
+could easily glow with pride to think that I was part and parcel of such
+antiquity; the fortunate heiress not only of land and titles, but
+of historic associations. But as I am an American with a very recent
+background, I blow out my candle with the feeling that it is rather
+grand to be making history for somebody else to inherit.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX. The heart of the artist.
+
+
+
+I am almost too comfortable with Mrs. Bobby. In fact I wished to be
+just a little miserable in Belvern, so that I could paint with a frenzy.
+Sometimes, when I have been in a state of almost despairing loneliness
+and gloom, the colours have glowed on my canvas and the lines have
+shaped themselves under my hand independent of my own volition. Now,
+tucked away in a corner of my consciousness is the knowledge that I need
+never be lonely again unless I choose. When I yield myself fully to the
+sweet enchantment of this thought, I feel myself in the mood to paint
+sunshine, flowers, and happy children's faces; yet I am sadly lacking
+in concentration, all the same. The fact is, I am no artist in the true
+sense of the word. My hope flies ever in front of my best success, and
+that momentary success does not deceive me in the very least. I know
+exactly how much, or rather how little, I am worth; that I lack the
+imagination, the industry, the training, the ambition, to achieve any
+lasting results. I have the artistic temperament in so far that it is
+impossible for me to work merely for money or popularity, or indeed for
+anything less than the desire to express the best that is in me without
+fear or favour. It would never occur to me to trade on present approval
+and dash off unworthy stuff while I have command of the market. I am
+quite above all that, but I am distinctly below that other mental and
+spiritual level where art is enough; where pleasure does not signify;
+where one shuts oneself up and produces from sheer necessity; where one
+is compelled by relentless law; where sacrifice does not count; where
+ideas throng the brain and plead for release in expression; where effort
+is joy, and the prospect of doing something enduring lures the soul on
+to new and ever new endeavour: so I shall never be rich or famous.
+
+What shall I paint to-day? Shall it be the bit of garden underneath my
+window, with the tangle of pinks and roses, and the cabbages growing
+appetisingly beside the sweet-williams, the woodbine climbing over the
+brown stone wall, the wicket-gate, and the cherry-tree with its fruit
+hanging red against the whitewashed cottage? Ah, if I could only paint
+it so truly that you could hear the drowsy hum of the bees among the
+thyme, and smell the scented hay-meadows in the distance, and feel that
+it is midsummer in England! That would indeed be truth, and that would
+be art. Shall I paint the Bobby baby as he stoops to pick the cowslips
+and the flax, his head as yellow and his eyes as blue as the flowers
+themselves; or that bank opposite the gate, with its gorse bushes in
+golden bloom, its mountain-ash hung with scarlet berries, its tufts
+of harebells blossoming in the crevices of rock, and the quaint low
+clock-tower at the foot? Can I not paint all these in the full glow of
+summer-time in my secret heart whenever I open the door a bit and admit
+its life-giving warmth and beauty? I think I can, if I can only quit
+dreaming.
+
+I wonder how the great artists worked, and under what circumstances
+they threw aside the implements of their craft, impatient of all but
+the throb of life itself? Could Raphael paint Madonnas the week of his
+betrothal? Did Thackeray write a chapter the day his daughter was
+born? Did Plato philosophise freely when he was in love? Were there
+interruptions in the world's great revolutions, histories, dramas,
+reforms, poems, and marbles when their creators fell for a brief moment
+under the spell of the little blind tyrant who makes slaves of us all?
+It must have been so. Your chronometer heart, on whose pulsations you
+can reckon as on the procession of the equinoxes, never gave anything to
+the world unless it were a system of diet, or something quite uncoloured
+and unglorified by the imagination.
+
+
+
+Chapter XX. A canticle to Jane.
+
+
+
+There are many donkeys owned in these nooks among the hills, and some
+of the thriftier families keep donkey-chairs (or 'cheers,' as they call
+them) to let to the casual summer visitor. This vehicle is a regular
+Bath chair, into which the donkey is harnessed. Some of them have a tiny
+driver's seat, where a small lad sits beating and berating the donkey
+for the incumbent, generally a decrepit dowager from London. Other
+chairs are minus this absurd coachman's perch, and in this sort I take
+my daily drives. I hire the miniature chariot from an old woman who
+dwells at the top of Gorse Hill, and who charges one and fourpence the
+hour, It is a little more when she fetches the donkey to the door, or
+when the weather is wet or the day is very warm, or there is an unusual
+breeze blowing, or I wish to go round the hills; but under ordinary
+circumstances, which may at any time occur, but which never do, one and
+four the hour. It is only a shilling, if you have the boy to drive
+you; but, of course, if you drive yourself, you throw the boy out of
+employment, and have to pay extra.
+
+It was in this fashion and on these elastic terms that I first met you,
+Jane, and this chapter shall be sacred to you! Jane the long-eared, Jane
+the iron-jawed, Jane the stubborn, Jane donkeyer than other donkeys,--in
+a word, MULIER! It may be that Jane has made her bow to the public
+before this. If she has ever come into close relation with man or woman
+possessed of the instinct of self-expression, then this is certainly not
+her first appearance in print, for no human being could know Jane and
+fail to mention her.
+
+Pause, Jane,--this you will do gladly, I am sure, since pausing is
+the one accomplishment to which you lend yourself with special
+energy,--pause, Jane, while I sing a canticle to your character. Jane
+is a tiny--person, I was about to say, for she has so strong an
+individuality that I can scarcely think of her as less than human--Jane
+is a tiny, solemn creature, looking all docility and decorum, with long
+hair of a subdued tan colour, very much worn off in patches, I fear, by
+the offending toe of man.
+
+I am a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
+and I hope that I am as tender-hearted as most women; nevertheless, I
+can understand how a man of weak principle and violent temper, or a man
+possessed of a desire to get to a particular spot not favoured by Jane,
+or by a wish to reach any spot by a certain hour,--I can understand how
+such a man, carried away by helpless wrath, might possibly ruffle Jane's
+sad-coloured hair with the toe of his boot.
+
+Jane is small, yet mighty. She is multum in parvo; she is the rock of
+Gibraltar in animate form; she is cosmic obstinacy on four legs. When
+following out the devices and desires of her own heart, or resisting
+the devices and desires of yours, she can put a pressure of five hundred
+tons on the bit. She is further fortified by the possession of legs
+which have iron rods concealed in them, these iron rods terminating
+in stout grip-hooks, with which she takes hold on mother earth with an
+expression that seems to say,--
+
+     'This rock shall fly
+      From its firm base as soon as I.'
+
+When I start out in the afternoon, Mrs. Bobby frequently asks me where I
+am going. I always answer that I have not made up my mind, though what
+I really mean to say is that Jane has not made up her mind. She never
+makes up her mind until after I have made up mine, lest by some unhappy
+accident she might choose the very excursion that I desire myself.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI. I remember, I remember.
+
+
+
+For example, I wish to visit St. Bridget's Well, concerning which there
+are some quaint old verses in a village history:--
+
+     'Out of thy famous hille,
+      There daylie springyeth,
+      A water passynge stille,
+      That alwayes bringyeth
+      Grete comfort to all them
+      That are diseased men,
+      And makes them well again
+          To prayse the Lord.
+
+     'Hast thou a wound to heale,
+      The wyche doth greve thee;
+      Come thenn unto this welle;
+      It will relieve thee;
+      Nolie me tangeries,
+      And other maladies,
+      Have there theyr remedies,
+          Prays'd be the Lord.'
+
+St. Bridget's Well is a beautiful spot, and my desire to see it is a
+perfectly laudable one. In strict justice, it is really no concern of
+Jane whether my wishes are laudable or not; but it only makes the
+case more flagrant when she interferes with the reasonable plans of a
+reasonable being. Never since the day we first met have I harboured a
+thought that I wished to conceal from Jane (would that she could say as
+much!); nevertheless she treats me as if I were a monster of caprice. As
+I said before, I wish to visit St. Bridget's Well, but Jane absolutely
+refuses to take me there. After we pass Belvern churchyard we approach
+two roads: the one to the right leads to the Holy Well; the one to the
+left leads to Shady Dell Farm, where Jane lived when she was a girl. At
+the critical moment I pull the right rein with all my force. In vain:
+Jane is always overcome by sentiment when she sees that left-hand road.
+She bears to the left like a whirlwind, and nothing can stop her mad
+career until she is again amid the scenes so dear to her recollection,
+the beloved pastures where the mother still lives at whose feet she
+brayed in early youth!
+
+Now this is all very pretty and touching. Her action has, in truth, its
+springs in a most commendable sentiment that I should be the last to
+underrate. Shady Dell Farm is interesting, too, for once, if one can
+swallow one's wrath and dudgeon at being taken there against one's will;
+and one feels that Jane's parents and Jane's early surroundings must
+be worth a single visit, if they could produce a donkey of such unusual
+capacity. Still, she must know, if she knows anything, that a person
+does not come from America and pay one and fourpence the hour (or
+thereabouts) merely in order to visit the home of her girlhood, which is
+neither mentioned in Baedeker nor set down in the local guide-books as a
+feature of interest.
+
+Whether, in addition to her affection for Shady Dell Farm, she has an
+objection to St. Bridget's Well, and thus is strengthened by a
+double motive, I do not know. She may consider it a relic of
+popish superstition; she may be a Protestant donkey; she is a
+Dissenter,--there's no doubt about that.
+
+But, you ask, have you tried various methods of bringing her to terms
+and gaining your own desires? Certainly. I have coaxed, beaten, prodded,
+prayed. I have tried leading her past the Shady Dell turn; she walks
+all over my feet, and then starts for home, I running behind until I
+can catch up with her. I have offered her one and tenpence the hour; she
+remained firm. One morning I had a happy inspiration; I determined on
+conquering Jane by a subterfuge. I said to myself: “I am going to start
+for St. Bridget's Well, as usual; several yards before we reach the two
+roads, I shall begin pulling, not the right, but the left rein. Jane
+will lift her ears suddenly, and say to herself: 'What! has this girl
+fallen in love with my birthplace at last, and does she now prefer it
+to St. Bridget's Well? Then she shall not have it!' Whereupon Jane
+will race madly down the right-hand road for the first time, I pulling
+steadily at the left rein to keep up appearances, and I shall at last
+realise my wishes.”
+
+This was my inspiration. Would you believe that it failed utterly? It
+should have succeeded, and would with an ordinary donkey, but Jane saw
+through it. She obeyed my pull on the left rein, and went to Shady Dell
+Farm as usual.
+
+Another of Jane's eccentricities is a violent aversion to perambulators.
+As Belvern is a fine, healthy, growing country, with steadily increasing
+population, the roads are naturally alive with perambulators; or at
+least alive with the babies inside the perambulators. These are the more
+alarming to the timid eye in that many of them are double-barrelled,
+so to speak, and are loaded to the muzzle with babies; for not only
+do Belvern babies frequently appear as twins, but there are often two
+youngsters of a perambulator age in the same family at the same time.
+To weave that donkey and that Bath 'cheer' through the narrow streets
+of the various Belverns without putting to death any babies, and without
+engendering the outspoken condemnation of the screaming mothers and
+nurserymaids, is a task for a Jehu. Of course Jane makes it more
+difficult by lunging into one perambulator in avoiding another, but she
+prefers even that risk to the degradation of treading the path I wish
+her to tread.
+
+I often wish that for one brief moment I might remove the lid of Jane's
+brain and examine her mental processes. She would not exasperate me so
+deeply if I could be certain of her springs of action. Is she old, is
+she rheumatic, is she lazy, is she hungry? Sometimes I think she means
+well, and is only ignorant and dull; but this hypothesis grows less and
+less tenable as I know her better. Sometimes I conclude that she does
+not understand me; that the difference in nationality may trouble her.
+If an Englishman cannot understand an American woman all at once,
+why should an English donkey? Perhaps it takes an American donkey to
+comprehend an American woman. Yet I cannot bring myself to drive any
+other donkey; I am always hoping to impress myself on her imagination,
+and conquer her will through her fancy. Meanwhile, I like to feel myself
+in the grasp of a nature stronger than my own, and so I hold to Jane,
+and buy a photograph of St. Bridget's Well!
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII. Comfort Cottage.
+
+
+
+It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, and I suddenly heard
+a strange sound, that of our fowl cackling. Yesterday I heard her
+tell-tale note about noon, and the day before just as I was eating my
+breakfast. I knew that it would be so! The serpent has entered Eden.
+That fowl has laid before eight in the morning for three weeks without
+interruption, and she has now entered upon a career of wild and reckless
+uncertainty which compels me to eat eggs from twelve to twenty-four
+hours old, just as if I were in London.
+
+     Alas for the rarity
+     Of regularity
+     Under the sun!
+
+A hen, being of the feminine gender, underestimates the majesty of order
+and system; she resents any approach to the unimaginative monotony of
+the machine. Probably the Confederated Fowl Union has been meddling
+with our little paradise where Labour and Capital have dwelt in heavenly
+unity until now. Nothing can be done about it, of course; even if it
+were possible to communicate with the fowl, she would say, I suppose,
+that she would lay when she was ready, and not before; at least, that is
+what an American hen would say.
+
+Just as I was brooding over these mysteries and trying to hatch out some
+conclusions, Mrs. Bobby knocked at the door, and, coming in, curtsied
+very low before saying, “It's about namin' the 'ouse, miss.”
+
+“Oh yes. Pray don't stand, Mrs. Bobby; take a chair. I am not very
+busy; I am only painting prickles on my gorse bushes, so we will talk it
+over.”
+
+I shall not attempt to give you Mrs. Bobby's dialect in reporting my
+various interviews with her, for the spelling of it is quite beyond my
+powers. Pray remove all the h's wherever they occur, and insert
+them where they do not; but there will be, over and beyond this, an
+intonation quite impossible to render.
+
+Mrs. Bobby bought her place only a few months ago, for she lived in
+Cheltenham before Mr. Bobby died. The last incumbent had probably been
+of Welsh extraction, for the cottage had been named 'Dan-y-cefn.' Mrs.
+Bobby declared, however, that she wouldn't have a heathenish name posted
+on her house, and expect her friends to pronounce it when she couldn't
+pronounce it herself. She seemed grieved when at first I could not see
+the absolute necessity of naming the cottage at all, telling her that in
+America we named only grand places. She was struck dumb with amazement
+at this piece of information, and failed to conceive of the confusion
+that must ensue in villages where streets were scarcely named or houses
+numbered. I confess it had never occurred to me that our manner of doing
+was highly inconvenient, if not impossible, and I approached the subject
+of the name with more interest and more modesty.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Bobby,” I began, “it is to be Cottage; we've decided that,
+have we not? It is to be Cottage, not House, Lodge, Mansion, or Villa.
+We cannot name it after any flower that blows, because they are all
+taken. Have all the trees been used?”
+
+“Thank you, miss, yes, miss, all but h'ash-tree, and we 'ave no h'ash.”
+
+“Very good, we must follow another plan. Family names seem to be chosen,
+such as Gower House, Marston Villa, and the like. 'Bobby Cottage' is not
+pretty. What was your maiden name, Mrs. Bobby?”
+
+“Buggins, thank you, miss. 'Elizabeth Buggins, Licensed to sell
+Poultry,' was my name and title when I met Mr. Bobby.”
+
+“I'm sorry, but 'Buggins Cottage' is still more impossible than 'Bobby
+Cottage.' Now here's another idea: where were you born, Mrs. Bobby?”
+
+“In Snitterfield, thank you, miss.”
+
+“Dear, dear! how unserviceable!”
+
+“Thank you, miss.”
+
+“Where was Mr. Bobby born?”
+
+“He never mentioned, miss.”
+
+(Mr. Bobby must have been expansive, for they were married twenty
+years.)
+
+“There is always Victoria or Albert,” I said tentatively, as I wiped my
+brushes.
+
+“Yes, miss, but with all respect to her Majesty, them names give me a
+turn when I see them on the gates, I am that sick of them.”
+
+“True. Can we call it anything that will suggest its situation? Is there
+a Hill Crest?”
+
+“Yes, miss, there is 'Ill Crest, 'Ill Top, 'Ill View, 'Ill Side, 'Ill
+End, H'under 'Ill, 'Ill Bank, and 'Ill Terrace.”
+
+“I should think that would do for Hill.”
+
+“Thank you, miss. 'Ow would 'The 'Edge' do, miss?”
+
+“But we have no hedge.” (She shall not have anything with an h in it, if
+I can help it.)
+
+“No, miss, but I thought I might set out a bit, if worst come to worst.”
+
+“And wait three or four years before people would know why the cottage
+was named? Oh no, Mrs. Bobby.”
+
+“Thank you, miss.”
+
+“We might have something quite out of the common, like 'Providence
+Cottage,' down the bank. I don't know why Mrs. Jones calls it Providence
+Cottage, unless she thinks it's a providence that she has one at all;
+or because, as it's just on the edge of the hill, she thinks it's a
+providence that it hasn't blown off. How would you like 'Peace' or
+'Rest' Cottage?”
+
+“Begging your pardon, miss, it's neither peace nor rest I gets in it
+these days, with a twenty-five pound debt 'anging over me, and three
+children to feed and clothe.”
+
+“I fear we are not very clever, Mrs. Bobby, or we should hit upon the
+right thing with less trouble. I know what I will do: I will go down in
+the road and look at the place for a long time from the outside, and try
+to think what it suggests to me.”
+
+“Thank you, miss; and I'm sure I'm grateful for all the trouble you are
+taking with my small affairs.”
+
+Down I went, and leaned over the wicket-gate, gazing at the unnamed
+cottage. The brick pathway was scrubbed as clean as a penny, and the
+stone step and the floor of the little kitchen as well. The garden was
+a maze of fragrant bloom, with never a weed in sight. The fowl cackled
+cheerily still, adding insult to injury, the pet sheep munched grass
+contentedly, and the canaries sang in their cages under the vines.
+Mrs. Bobby settled herself on the porch with a pan of peas in her neat
+gingham lap, and all at once I cried:--
+
+“'Comfort Cottage'! It is the very essence of comfort, Mrs. Bobby, even
+if there is not absolute peace or rest. Let me paint the signboard for
+you this very day.”
+
+Mrs. Bobby was most complacent over the name. She had the greatest
+confidence in my judgment, and the characterisation pleased her
+housewifely pride, so much so that she flushed with pleasure as she said
+that if she 'ad 'er 'ealth she thought she could keep the place looking
+so that the passers-by would easily h'understand the name.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII. Tea served here.
+
+
+
+It was some days after the naming of the cottage that Mrs. Bobby
+admitted me into her financial secrets, and explained the difficulties
+that threatened her peace of mind. She still has twenty-five pounds
+to pay before Comfort Cottage is really her own. With her cow and
+her vegetable garden, to say nothing of her procrastinating fowl, she
+manages to eke out a frugal existence, now that her eldest son is in a
+blacksmith's shop at Worcester, and is sending her part of his weekly
+savings. But it has been a poor season for canaries, and a still poorer
+one for lodgers; for people in these degenerate days prefer to be nearer
+the hotels and the mild gaieties of the larger settlements. It is all
+very well so long as I remain with her, and she wishes fervently that
+that may be for ever; for never, she says, eloquently, never in all her
+Cheltenham and Belvern experience, has she encountered such a jewel of a
+lodger as her dear Miss 'Amilton, so little trouble, and always a bit of
+praise for her plain cooking, and a pleasant word for the children, to
+whom most lodgers object, and such an interest in the cow and the fowl
+and the garden and the canaries, and such kindness in painting the
+name of the cottage, so that it is the finest thing in the village, and
+nobody can get past the 'ouse without stopping to gape at it! But when
+her American lodger leaves her, she asks,--and who is she that can
+expect to keep a beautiful young lady who will be naming her own cottage
+and painting signboards for herself before long, likely?--but when
+her American lodger is gone, how is she, Mrs. Bobby, to put by a few
+shillings a month towards the debt on the cottage? These are some of the
+problems she presents to me. I have turned them over and over in my mind
+as I have worked, and even asked Willie Beresford in my weekly letter
+what he could suggest. Of course he could not suggest anything: men
+never can; although he offered to come there and lodge for a month at
+twenty-five pounds a week. All at once, one morning, a happy idea struck
+me, and I ran down to Mrs. Bobby, who was weeding the onion-bed in the
+back garden.
+
+“Mrs. Bobby,” I said, sitting down comfortably on the edge of the
+lettuce-frame, “I am sure I know how you can earn many a shilling during
+the summer and autumn months, and you must begin the experiment while
+I am here to advise you. I want you to serve five-o'clock tea in your
+garden.”
+
+“But, miss, thanking you kindly, nobody would think of stoppin' 'ere for
+a cup of tea once in a twelvemonth.”
+
+“You never know what people will do until you try them. People will do
+almost anything, Mrs. Bobby, if you only put it into their heads, and
+this is the way we shall make our suggestion to the public. I will paint
+a second signboard to hang below 'Comfort Cottage.' It will be much more
+beautiful than the other, for it shall have a steaming kettle on it,
+and a cup and saucer, and the words 'Tea Served Here' underneath, the
+letters all intertwined with tea-plants. I don't know how tea-plants
+look, but then neither does the public. You will set one round table on
+the porch, so that if it threatens rain, as it sometimes does, you know,
+in England, people will not be afraid to sit down; and the other
+you will put under the yew-tree near the gate. The tables must be
+immaculate; no spotted, rumpled cloths and chipped cups at Comfort
+Cottage, which is to be a strictly first-class tea station. You will
+put vases of flowers on the tables, and you will not mix red, yellow,
+purple, and blue ones in the same vase-”
+
+“It's the way the good Lord mixes 'em in the fields,” interjected Mrs.
+Bobby piously.
+
+“Very likely; but you will permit me to remark that the good Lord can
+manage things successfully which we poor humans cannot. You will set out
+your cream-jug that was presented to Mrs. Martha Buggins by her friends
+and neighbours as a token of respect in 1823, and the bowl that was
+presented to Mr. Bobby as a sword and shooting prize in 1860, and all
+your pretty little odds and ends. You will get everything ready in the
+kitchen, so that customers won't have to wait long; but you will not
+prepare much in advance, so that there'll be nothing wasted.”
+
+“It sounds beautiful in your mouth, miss, and it surely wouldn't be any
+'arm to make a trial of it.”
+
+“Of course it won't. There is no inn here where nice people will stop
+(who would ever think of asking for tea at the Retired Soldier?), and
+the moment they see our sign, in walking or driving past, that moment
+they will be consumed with thirst. You do not begin to appreciate
+our advantages as a tea station. In the first place, there is a
+watering-trough not far from the gate, and drivers very often stop
+to water their horses; then we have the lovely garden which everybody
+admires; and if everything else fails, there is the baby. Put that faded
+pink flannel slip on Jem, showing his tanned arms and legs as usual,
+tie up his sleeves with blue bows as you did last Sunday, put my white
+tennis-cap on the back of his yellow curls, turn him loose in the
+hollyhocks, and await results. Did I not open the gate the moment I saw
+him, though there was no apartment sign in the window?”
+
+Mrs. Bobby was overcome by the magic of my arguments, and as there were
+positively no attendant risks, we decided on an early opening. The
+very next day after the hanging of the second sign, I superintended the
+arrangements myself. It was a nice thirsty afternoon, and as I filled
+the flower-vases I felt such a desire for custom and such a love of
+trade animating me that I was positively ashamed. At three o'clock I
+went upstairs and threw myself on the bed for a nap, for I had been
+sketching on the hills since early morning. It may have been an hour
+later when I heard the sound of voices and the stopping of a heavy
+vehicle before the house. I stole to the front window, and, peeping
+under the shelter of the vines, saw a char-a-bancs, on the way from
+Great Belvern to the Beacon. It held three gentlemen, two ladies, and
+four children, and everything had worked precisely as I intended.
+The driver had seen the watering-trough, the gentlemen had seen the
+tea-sign, the children had seen the flowers and the canaries, and
+the ladies had seen the baby. I went to the back window to call an
+encouraging word to Mrs. Bobby, but to my horror I saw that worthy woman
+disappearing at the extreme end of the lane in full chase of our cow,
+that had broken down the fence, and was now at large with some of our
+neighbour's turnip-tops hanging from her mouth.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV. An unlicensed victualler.
+
+
+
+Ruin stared us in the face. Were our cherished plans to be frustrated
+by a marauding cow, who little realised that she was imperilling her
+own means of existence? Were we to turn away three, five, nine thirsty
+customers at one fell swoop? Never! None of these people ever saw me
+before, nor would ever see me again. What was to prevent my serving them
+with tea? I had on a pink cotton gown,--that was well enough; I hastily
+buttoned on a clean painting apron, and seizing a freshly laundered
+cushion cover lying on the bureau, a square of lace and embroidery, I
+pinned it on my hair for a cap while descending the stairs. Everything
+was right in the kitchen, for Mrs. Bobby had flown in the midst of her
+preparations. The loaf, the bread-knife, the butter, the marmalade, all
+stood on the table, and the kettle was boiling. I set the tea to draw,
+and then dashed to the door, bowed appetisingly to the visitors, showed
+them to the tables with a winning smile (which was to be extra), seated
+the children maternally on the steps and laid napkins before them,
+dashed back to the kitchen, cut the thin bread-and-butter, and brought
+it with the marmalade, asked my customers if they desired cream, and
+told them it was extra, went back and brought a tray with tea, boiling
+water, milk, and cream. Lowering my voice to an English sweetness, and
+dropping a few h's ostentatiously as I answered questions, I poured
+five cups of tea, and four mugs for the children, and cut more
+bread-and-butter, for they were all eating like wolves. They praised
+the butter. I told them it was a specialty of the house. They requested
+muffins. With a smile of heavenly sweetness tinged with regret, I
+replied that Saturday was our muffin day; Saturday, muffins; Tuesday,
+crumpets; Thursday, scones; and Friday, tea-cakes. This inspiration
+sprang into being full grown, like Pallas from the brain of Zeus. While
+they were regretting that they had come on a plain bread-and-butter day,
+I retired to the kitchen and made out a bill for presentation to the
+oldest man of the party.
+
+                                  s.  d.
+     Nine teas.   .   .   .       3   6
+     Cream    .   .   .   .           3
+     Bread-and-butter   .   .     1   0
+     Marmalade.   .   .   .           6
+                                  -----
+                                  5   3
+
+Feeling five and threepence to be an absurdly small charge for five
+adult and four infant teas, I destroyed this immediately, and made out
+another, putting each item fourpence more, and the bread-and-butter
+at one-and-six. I also introduced ninepence for extra teas for the
+children, who had had two mugs apiece, very weak. This brought the total
+to six shillings and tenpence, and I was beset by a horrible temptation
+to add a shilling or two for candles; there was one young man among the
+three who looked as if he would have understood the joke.
+
+The father of the family looked at the bill, and remarked quizzically,
+“Bond Street prices, eh?”
+
+“Bond Street service,” said I, curtsying demurely.
+
+He paid it without flinching, and gave me sixpence for myself. I was
+very much afraid he would chuck me under the chin; they are always
+chucking barmaids under the chin in old English novels, but I have never
+seen it done in real life. As they strolled down to the gate, the second
+gentleman gave me another sixpence, and the nice young fellow gave me
+a shilling; he certainly had read the old English novels and remembered
+them, so I kept with the children. One of the ladies then asked if we
+sold flowers.
+
+“Certainly,” I replied.
+
+“What do you ask for roses?”
+
+“Fourpence apiece for the fine ones,” I answered glibly, hoping it was
+enough, “thrippence for the small ones; sixpence for a bunch of sweet
+peas, tuppence apiece for buttonhole carnations.”
+
+Each of the ladies took some roses and mignonette, and the gentlemen,
+who did not care for carnations in the least, weakened when I approached
+modestly to pin them in their coats, a la barmaid.
+
+At this moment one of the children began to tease for a canary.
+
+“Have you one for sale?” inquired the fond mother.
+
+“Certainly, madam.” (I was prepared to sell the cottage by this time.)
+
+“What do you ask for them?”
+
+Rapid calculation on my part, excessively difficult without pencil and
+paper. A canary is three to five dollars in America,--that is, from
+twelve shilling to a pound; then at a venture, “From ten shillings to a
+guinea, madam, according to the quality of the bird.”
+
+“Would you like one for your birthday, Margaret, and do you think you
+can feed it and take quite good care of it?”
+
+“Oh yes, mamma!”
+
+“Have you a cage?” to me inquiringly.
+
+“Certainly, madam; it is not a new one, but I shall only charge you a
+shilling for it.” (Impromptu plan: not knowing whether Mrs. Bobby had
+any cages, or if so where she kept them, to remove the canary in Mrs.
+Bobby's chamber from the small wooden cage it inhabited, close the
+windows, and leave it at large in the room; then bring out the cage and
+sell it to the lady.)
+
+“Very well, then, please select me a good singer for about twelve
+shillings; a very yellow one, please.”
+
+I did so. I had no difficulty about the colour; but as the birds all
+stopped singing when I put my hand into the cages, I was somewhat at a
+loss to choose a really fine performer. I did my best, with the result
+that it turned out to be the mother of several fine families, but no
+vocalist, and the generous young man brought it back for an exchange
+some days afterwards; not only that, but he came three times during the
+next week and nearly ruined his nervous system with tea.
+
+The party finally mounted the char-a-bancs, just as I was about to offer
+the baby for twenty-five pounds, and dirt cheap at that. Meanwhile I
+gave the driver a cup of lukewarm tea, for which I refused absolutely to
+accept any remuneration.
+
+I had cleared the tables before Mrs. Bobby returned, flushed and
+panting, with the guilty cow. Never shall I forget that good dame's
+astonishment, her mild deprecations, her smiles--nay, her tears--as she
+inspected my truly English account and received the silver.
+
+                                  s.  d.
+     Nine teas.   .   .   .       3   6
+     Cream    .   .   .   .           7
+     Bread-and-butter   .   .     1   6
+     Extra teas.   .   .   .          9
+     Marmalade.   .   .   .           6
+     Three tips.   .   .   .      2   0
+     Four roses and mignonette.   1   8
+     Three carnations   .   .         6
+     Canary   .   .   .   .      12   0
+     Cage     .   .   .   .       1   0
+                                 ------
+                                 24   0
+
+I told her I regretted deeply putting down the marmalade so low as
+sixpence; but as they had not touched it, it did not matter so much, as
+the entire outlay for the entertainment had been only about a shilling.
+On that modest investment, I considered one pound three shillings a very
+fair sum to be earned by an inexperienced 'licensed victualler' like
+myself, particularly as I am English only by adoption, and not by birth.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV. Et ego in Arcadia vixit.
+
+
+
+I essayed another nap after this exciting episode. I heard the gate open
+once or twice, but a single stray customer, after my hungry and generous
+horde, did not stir my curiosity, and I sank into a refreshing slumber,
+dreaming that Willie Beresford and I kept an English inn, and that I
+was the barmaid. This blissful vision had been of all too short duration
+when I was awakened by Mrs. Bobby's apologetic voice.
+
+“It is too bad to disturb you, miss, but I've got to go and patch up the
+fence, and smooth over the matter of the turnips with Mrs. Gooch, who is
+that snorty I don't know 'ow ever I can pacify her. There is nothing for
+you to do, miss, only if you'll kindly keep an eye on the customer at
+the yew-tree table. He's been here for 'alf an hour, miss, and I think
+more than likely he's a foreigner, by his actions, or may be he's not
+quite right in his 'ead, though 'armless. He has taken four cups of tea,
+miss, and Billy saw him turn two of them into the 'olly'ocks. He has
+been feeding bread-and-butter to the dog, and now the baby is on his
+knee, playing with his fine gold watch. He gave me a 'alf-a-crown and
+refused to take a penny change; but why does he stop so long, miss? I
+can't help worriting over the silver cream-jug that was my mother's.”
+
+Mrs. Bobby disappeared. I rose lazily, and approached the window to keep
+my promised eye on the mysterious customer. I lifted back the purple
+clematis to get a better view.
+
+It was Willie Beresford! He looked up at my ejaculation of surprise,
+and, dropping the baby as if it had been a parcel, strode under the
+window.
+
+I (gasping). “How did you come here?”
+
+He. “By the usual methods, dear.”
+
+I. “You shouldn't have come without asking. Where are all your fine
+promises? What shall I do with you? Do you know there isn't an hotel
+within four miles?”
+
+He. “That is nothing; it was four hundred miles that I couldn't endure.
+But give me a less grudging welcome than this, though I am like a
+starving dog that will snatch any morsel thrown to him! It is really
+autumn, Penelope, or it will be in a few days. Say you are a little glad
+to see me.”
+
+(The sight of him so near, after my weeks of loneliness, gave me a
+feeling so sudden, so sweet, and so vivid that it seemed to smite me
+first on the eyes, and then in the heart; and at the first note of his
+convincing voice Doubt picked up her trailing skirts and fled for ever.)
+
+I. “Yes, if you must know it, I am glad to see you; so glad, indeed,
+that nothing in the world seems to matter so long as you are here.”
+
+He (striding a little nearer, and looking about involuntarily for a
+ladder). “Penelope, do you know the penalty of saying such sweet things
+to me?”
+
+I. “Perhaps it is because I know the penalty that I'm committing the
+offence. Besides, I feel safe in saying anything in this second-story
+window.”
+
+He. “Don't pride yourself on your safety unless you wish to see me
+transformed into a nineteenth-century Romeo, to the detriment of Mrs.
+Bobby's creepers. I can look at you for ever, dear, in your pink gown
+and your purple frame, unless I can do better. Won't you come down?”
+
+I. “I like it very much up here.”
+
+He. “You would like it very much down here, after a little. So you
+didn't 'paint me out,' after all?”
+
+I. “No; on the contrary, I painted you in, to every twig and flower,
+every hill and meadow, every sunrise and every sunset.”
+
+He. “You MUST come down! The distance between Belvern and Aix when I
+was not sure that you loved me was nothing compared to having you in a
+second story when I know that you do. Come down, Pen! Pretty Pen!”
+
+I. “Suppose we compromise. My sitting-room is just below; will you walk
+in and look at my sketches until I come? You needn't ring; the bell is
+overgrown with honeysuckle and there is no one to answer it; it might
+almost be an American hotel, but it is Arcadia!”
+
+He. “It is Paradise; and alas! here comes the serpent!”
+
+I. “It isn't a serpent; it is the kindest landlady in England.--Mrs.
+Bobby, this gentleman is a dear friend of mine from America. Mr.
+Beresford, this is Mrs. Bobby, the most comfortable hostess in the
+world, and the owner of the cottage, the canaries, the tea-tables, and
+the baby.--The reason Mr. Beresford was so thirsty, Mrs. Bobby, was that
+he has walked here from Great Belvern, so we must give him some supper
+before he returns.”
+
+Mrs. B. “Certainly, miss, he shall have the best in the 'ouse, you can
+depend upon that.”
+
+He. “Don't let me interfere with your usual arrangements. I am not
+hungry--for food; I shall do very well until I get back to the hotel.”
+
+I. “Indeed you will not, sir! Billy shall pull some tomatoes and
+lettuce, Tommy shall milk the cow, and Mrs. Bobby shall make you
+a savory omelet that Delmonico might envy. Hark! Is that our fowl
+cackling? It is,--at half-past six! She heard me mention omelet and she
+must be calling, 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'”
+
+         .         .          .         .
+
+But all that is many days ago, and there are no more experiences to
+relate at present. We are making history very fast, Willie Beresford and
+I, but much of it is sacred history, and so I cannot chronicle it for
+any one's amusement.
+
+Mrs. Beresford is here, or at least she is in Great Belvern, a few miles
+distant. I am not painting, these latter days. I have turned the artist
+side of my nature to the wall just for a bit, and the woman side is
+having full play. I do not know what the world will think about it, if
+it stops to think at all, but I feel as if I were 'right side out' for
+the first time in my life; and when I take up my brushes again, I shall
+have a new world within from which to paint,--yes, and a new world
+without.
+
+Good-bye, dear Belvern! Autumn and winter may come into my life, but
+whenever I think of you it will be summer-time in my heart. I shall hear
+the tinkle of the belled sheep on the hillsides; inhale the fragrance
+of the flowering vine that climbed in at my cottage window; relive in
+memory the days when Love and I first walked together, hand in hand.
+Dear days of happy idleness; of dreaming dreams and seeing visions; of
+morning walks over the hills; of 'bread-and-cheese and kisses' at noon,
+with kind Mrs. Bobby hovering like a plump guardian angel over the
+simple feast; afternoon tea under the friendly shades of the yew-tree,
+and parting at the wicket-gate. I can see him pass the clock-tower, the
+little greengrocer shop, the old stocks, the green pump; then he is at
+the turn of the road where the stone wall and the hawthorn hedge will
+presently hide him from my view. I fly up to my window, push back the
+vines, catch his last wave of the hand. I would call him back, if I
+dared; but it would be no easier to let him go the second time, and
+there is always to-morrow. Thank God for to-morrow! And if there should
+be no to-morrow? Then thank God for to-day! And so good-bye again, dear
+Belvern! It was in the lap of your lovely hills that Penelope first knew
+das irdische Gluck; that she first loved, first lived; forgot how to be
+artist, in remembering how to be woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Penelope's English Experiences, by
+Kate Douglas Wiggin
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