Part 34 (1/2)

”It will be unpleasant--this period of mourning that we shall have to affect--for his sake,” she went on, ”but it is out of respect for the neighborly proprieties, after all.”

Mrs. Montgomery was looking at us all in turn, in some little perplexity, when a sudden recollection came to me of how difficult it is sometimes to amalgamate guests--no matter how many rooms there are to one's house.

”And I'll defer my visit until later?” I suggested.

She instantly smiled across at me.

”Just a few days--if you don't mind, dear,” she said. ”I had planned so many delightful things for _your_ stay--and I know that you wouldn't enjoy the period of mourning.”

”Not so much as you would if you had known Lord Erskine!” her husband put in wickedly. ”And I'm determined to mourn only the briefest time possible.”

”Not an hour later than Sat.u.r.day!” his wife promised generously--and a few hours afterward when they put me down at Charing Cross and sent me whirling away to a lady-like hotel in Bloomsbury, it was with spoken, written and pantomime directions as to which trains, and what-timed trains--and _how many_ trains I was to take toward the end of the week to get to Bannerley.

In the meanwhile I knuckled down devotedly to London--and sent my deductions home across seas, in neatly typed packets, to _The Oldburgh Herald_.

CHAPTER XVI

LONDON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The s.h.i.+lling guide-books speak of London as the ”gray old grandmother of cities,” meaning thereby to call attention to her upstart progeny across the seas, but to my mind the t.i.tle of grandmother is much more applicable on account of the joyous surprises she has shut away in dark closets.

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

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

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

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

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

It's something congenial--or prenatal--who knows?

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