instead of to the left, was a mistake Jone made two or three times when he began to drive me in England, but he got over it, and since my grazing the cart it’s not likely I shall forget it. As I breathed a sigh of relief after escaping this danger I took in a breath full of the scent of wild roses that nearly covered a bit of hedge, and my spirits rose again.
I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn’t to do. There is nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that although they could not be far ahead, I couldn’t see them, on account of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to somebody’s house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on and down and on and down, with no end to it.
I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I didn’t fancy going fast down a slope like that. I put on the brake, but I don’t believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and faster; and then, as the machine didn’t need any working, I took my feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can’t now remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill. In an instant that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing down hill. I never was so much frightened in all my life. I tried to get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn’t do it, and all I could do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road. As far as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope that it made me fairly dizzy. Just as I was having a little bit of comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there barking. My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken. If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train, and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters. If I didn’t turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle. I felt a little bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.
I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill I should soon be whirling through space like a comet. The only way I could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of the road at all.
“Now,” thought I to myself, “if the gate of that house is open I’ll turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that must be on the other side of it.” As I swooped down to the little house and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but not much. However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.
I was going so fast, and my mind was so wound up on account of the necessity of steering straight, that I could not pay much attention to things I passed. But the scene that showed itself in front of me as I went through that little garden gate I could not help seeing and remembering. From the gate to the door of the house was a path paved with flagstones; the door was open, and there must have been a low step before it; back of the door was a hall which ran through the house, and this was paved with flagstones; the back door of the hall was open, and outside of it was a sort of arbor with vines, and on one side of this arbor was a bench, with a young man and a young woman sitting on it, holding each other by the hand, and looking into each other’s eyes; the arbor opened out on to a piece of green grass, with flowers of mixed colors on the edges of it, and at the back of this bit of lawn was a lot of clothes hung out on clothes-lines. Of course, I could not have seen all those things at once, but they came upon me like a single picture, for in one tick of a watch I went over that flagstone path and into that front door and through that house and out of that back door, and past that young man and that young woman, and head and heels both foremost at once, dashed slam-bang into the midst of all that linen hanging out on the lines.
[Illustration: “AT LAST I DID GET ON MY FEET”]
I heard the minglement of a groan and a scream, and in an instant I was enveloped in a white, wet cloud of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths, and underwear. Some of the things stuck so close to me, and others I grabbed with such a wild clutch, that nearly all the week’s wash, lines and all, came down on me, wrapping me up like an apple in a dumpling–but I stopped. There was not anything in this world that would have been better for me to run into than those lines full of wet clothes.
Where the tricycle went to I didn’t know, but I was lying on the grass kicking, and trying to get up and to get my head free, so that I could see and breathe. At last I did get on my feet, and throwing out my arms so as to shake off the sheets and pillowcases that were clinging all over me I shook some of the things partly off my face, and with one eye I saw that couple on the bench, but only for a second. With a yell of horror, and with a face whiter than the linen I was wrapped in, that young man bounced from the bench, dashed past the house, made one clean jump over the hedge into the road, and disappeared. As for the young woman, she just flopped over and went down in a faint on the floor.
As soon as I could do it I got myself free from the clothes-line and staggered out on the grass. I was trembling so much I could scarcely walk, but when I saw that young woman looking as if she was dead on the ground I felt I must do something, and seeing a pail of water standing near by, I held it over her face and poured it down on her a little at a time, and it wasn’t long before she began to squirm, and then she opened her eyes and her mouth just at the same time, so that she must have swallowed about as much water as she would have taken at a meal. This brought her to, and she began to cough and splutter and look around wildly, and then I took her by the arm and helped her up on the bench.
“Don’t you want a little something to drink?” I said. “Tell me where I can get you something.”
She didn’t answer, but began looking from one side to the other. “Is he swallowed?” said she in a whisper, with her eyes starting out of her head.
“Swallowed?” said I. “Who?”
“Davy,” said she.
“Oh, your young man,” said I. “He is all right, unless he hurt himself jumping over the hedge. I saw him run away just as fast as he could.”
“And the spirit?” said she. I looked hard at her.
“What has happened to you?” said I. “How did you come to faint?”
She was getting quieter, but she still looked wildly out of her eyes, and kept her back turned toward the bit of grass, as if she was afraid to look in that direction.
“What happened to you?” said I again, for I wanted to know what she thought about my sudden appearance. It took some little time for her to get ready to answer, and then she said:
“Was you frightened, lady? Did you have to come in here? I’m sorry you found me swooned. I don’t know how long I was swooned. Davy and me was sitting here talking about having the banns called, and it was a sorry talk, lady, for the vicar, he’s told me four times I should not marry Davy, because he says he is a Radical; but for all that Davy and me wants the banns called all the same, but not knowing how we was to have it done, for the vicar, he’s so set against Davy, and Davy, he had just got done saying to me that he was going to marry me, vicar or no vicar, banns or no banns, come what might, when that very minute, with an awful hiss, something flashed in front of us, dazzling my eyes so that I shut them and screamed, and then when I opened them again, there, in the yard back of us, was a great white spirit twice as high as the cow stable, with one eye in the middle of its forehead, turning around like a firework. I don’t remember anything after that, and I don’t know how long I was lying here when you came and found me, lady, but I know what it means. There is a curse on our marriage, and Davy and me will never be man and wife.” And then she fell to groaning and moaning.
I felt like laughing when I thought how much like a church ghost I must have looked, standing there in solid white with my arms stretched out; but the poor girl was in such a dreadful state of mind that I sat down beside her and began to comfort her by telling her just what had happened, and that she ought to be very glad that I had found a place to turn into, and had not gone on down the hill and dashed myself into little pieces at the bottom. But it wasn’t easy to cheer her up.
“Oh, Davy’s gone,” said she. “He’ll never come back for fear of the curse. He’ll be off with his uncle to sea. I’ll never lay eyes on Davy again.”
Just at that moment I heard somebody calling my name, and looking through the house I saw Jone at the front door and two men behind him. As I ran through the hall I saw that the two men with Jone was Mr. Poplington and a young fellow with a pale face and trembling legs.
“Is this Davy?” said I.
“Yes,” said he.
“Then go back to your young woman and comfort her,” I said, which he did, and when he had gone, not madly rushing into his loved one’s arms, but shuffling along in a timid way, as if he was afraid the ghost hadn’t gone yet, I asked Jone how he happened to think I was here, and he told me that he and Mr. Poplington had taken the road to the left when they reached the fork, because that was the proper one, but they had not gone far before he thought I might not know which way to turn, so they came back to the fork to wait for me. But I had been closer behind them than they thought, and I must have come to the fork before they turned back, so, after waiting a while and going back along the road without seeing me, they thought that I must have taken the right-hand road, and they came that way, going down the hill very carefully. After a while Jone found my hat in the road, which up to that moment I had not missed, and then he began to be frightened and they went on faster.
They passed the little house, and as they was going down the hill they saw ahead of them a man running as if something had happened, so they let out their bicycles and soon caught up to him. This was Davy; and when they stopped him and asked if anything was the matter he told them that a dreadful thing had come to pass. He had been working in the garden of a house about half a mile back when suddenly there came an awful crash, and a white animal sprang out of the house with a bit of a cotton mill fastened to its tail, and then, with a great peal of thunder, it vanished, and a white ghost rose up out of the ground with its arms stretching out longer and longer, reaching to clutch him by the hair. He was not afraid of anything living, but he couldn’t abide spirits, so he laid down his spade and left the garden, thinking he would go and see the sexton and have him come and lay the ghost.
Then Jone went on to say that of course he could not make head or tail out of such a story as that, but when he heard that an awful row had been kicked up in a garden he immediately thought that as like as not I was in it, and so he and Mr. Poplington ran back, leaving their bicycles against the hedge, and bringing the young man with them.
Then I told my story, and Mr. Poplington said it was a mercy I was not killed, and Jone didn’t say much, but I could see that his teeth was grinding.
We all went into the back yard, and there, on the other side of the clothes, which was scattered all over the ground, we found my tricycle, jammed into a lot of gooseberry bushes, and when it was dragged out we found it was not hurt a bit. Davy and his young woman was standing in the arbor looking very sheepish, especially Davy, for she had told him what it was that had scared him. As we was going through the house, Jone taking my tricycle, I stopped to say good-by to the girl.
“Now that you see there has been no curse and no ghost,” said I, “I hope that you will soon have your banns called, and that you and your young man will be married all right.”
“Thank you very much, ma’am,” said she, “but I’m awful fearful about it. Davy may say what he pleases, but my mother never will let me marry him if the vicar’s agen it; and Davy wouldn’t have been here to-day if she hadn’t gone to town; and the vicar’s a hard man and a strong Tory, and he’ll always be agen it, I fear.”
When I went out into the front yard I found Mr. Poplington and Jone sitting on a little stone bench, for they was tired, and I told them about that young woman and Davy.
“Humph,” said Mr. Poplington, “I know the vicar of the parish. He is the Rev. Osmun Green. He’s a good Conservative, and is perfectly right in trying to keep that poor girl from marrying a wretched Radical.”
I looked straight at him and said:
“Do you mean, sir, to put politics before matrimonial happiness?”
“No, I don’t,” said he, “but a girl can’t expect matrimonial happiness with a Radical.”
I saw that Jone was about to say something here, but I got in ahead of him.
“I will tell you what it is, sir,” said I, “if you think it is wrong to be a Radical the best thing you can do is to write to your friend, that vicar, and advise him to get those two young people married as soon as possible, for it is easy to see that she is going to rule the roost, and if anybody can get his Radicalistics out of him she will be the one to do it.”
Mr. Poplington laughed, and said that as the man looked as if he was a fit subject to be henpecked it might be a good way of getting another Tory vote.
“But,” said he, “I should think it would go against your conscience, being naturally opposed to the Conservatives, to help even by one vote.”
“Oh, my conscience is all right,” said I. “When politics runs against the matrimonial altar I stand up for the altar.”
“Well,” said he, “I’ll think of it.” And we started off, walking down the hill, Jone holding on to my tricycle.
When we got to level ground, with about two miles to go before we would stop for luncheon, Jone took a piece of thin rope out of his pocket–he always carries some sort of cord in case of accidents–and he tied it to the back part of my machine.
“Now,” said he, “I’m going to keep hold of the other end of this, and perhaps your tricycle won’t run away with you.”
I didn’t much like going along this way, as if I was a cow being taken to market, but I could see that Jone had been so troubled and frightened about me that I didn’t make any objection, and, in fact, after I got started it was a comfort to think there was a tie between Jone and me that was stronger, when hilly roads came into the question, than even the matrimonial tie.
_Letter Number Ten_
CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
The place we stopped at on the first night of our cycle trip is named Porlock, and after the walking and the pushing, and the strain on my mind when going down even the smallest hill for fear Jone’s rope would give way, I was glad to get there.
The road into Porlock goes down a hill, the steepest I have seen yet, and we all walked down, holding our machines as if they had been fiery coursers. This hill road twists and winds so you can only see part of it at a time, and when we was about half-way down we heard a horn blowing behind us, and looking around there came the mail-coach at full speed, with four horses, with a lot of people on top. As this raging coach passed by it nearly took my breath away, and as soon as I could speak I said to Jone: “Don’t you ever say anything in America about having the roads made narrower so that it won’t cost so much to keep them in order, for in my opinion it’s often the narrow road that leadeth to destruction.”
When we got into the town, and my mind really began to grapple with old Porlock, I felt as if I was sliding backward down the slope of the centuries, and liked it. As we went along Mr. Poplington told us about everything, and said that this queer little town was a fishing village and seaport in the days of the Saxons, and that King Harold was once obliged to stop there for a while, and that he passed his time making war on the neighbors.
Mr. Poplington took us to a tavern called the Ship Inn, and I simply went wild over it. It is two hundred years old and two stories high, and everything I ever read about the hostelries of the past I saw there. The queer little door led into a queer little passage paved with stone. A pair of little stairs led out of this into another little room, higher up, and on the other side of the passage was a long, mysterious hallway. We had our dinner in a tiny parlor, which reminded me of a chapter in one of those old books where they use f instead of s, and where the first word of the next page is at the bottom of the one you are reading.
There was a fireplace in the room with a window one side of it, through which you could look into the street. It was not cold, but it had begun to rain hard, and so I made the dampness an excuse for a fire.
“This is antique, indeed,” I said, when we were at the table.
“You are right there,” said Mr. Poplington, who was doing his best to carve a duck, and was a little cross about it.
When I sat before the fire that evening, and Jone was asleep on a settee of the days of yore, and Mr. Poplington had gone to bed, being tired, my soul went back to the olden time, and, looking out through the little window in the fireplace, I fancied I could see William the Conqueror and the King of the Danes sneaking along the little street under the eaves of the thatched roofs, until I was so worked up that I was on the point of shouting, “Fly! oh, Saxon!” when the door opened and the maid who waited on us at the table put her head in. I took this for a sign that the curfew bell was going to ring, and so I woke up Jone and we went to bed.
But all night long the heroes of the past flocked about me. I had been reading a lot of history, and I knew them all the minute my eyes fell upon them. Charlemagne and Canute sat on the end of the bed, while Alfred the Great climbed up one of the posts until he was stopped by Hannibal’s legs, who had them twisted about the post to keep himself steady. When I got up in the morning I went down-stairs into the little parlor, and there was the maid down on her knees cleaning the hearth.
“What is your name?” I said to her.
“Jane, please,” said she.
“Jane what?” said I.
“Jane Puddle, please,” said she.
I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I brought it down gently on top of her head. “Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,” said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and–would you believe it, madam?–she crept out of the room on her hands and knees. The cook waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about assassination.
[Illustration: “Rise, Sir Jane Puddle”]
That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a haycock. I don’t suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse hill with a road on it than the one we went up by. I was glad we had to go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing the tricycle, even when helped. I believe it would have taken away my breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive coaches and fours down that hill. At the top of the hill is this notice: “To cyclers–this hill is dangerous.” If I had thought of it I should have looked for the cyclers’ graves at the bottom of it.
The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their graves at the foot of the mountain. How they could walk through that graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.
In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.
_Letter Number Eleven_
[Illustration]
CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
On the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road, with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at night reached Lynton. It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth, and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.
Here we stopped at a house very different from the Ship Inn, for it looked as if it had been built the day before yesterday. Everything was new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty other people, just like a boardinghouse. Some of their ways reminded me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than backwoodsism, which naturally hasn’t the least alloy of the past. When the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through with about a dozen of them he said:
“Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans deteriorate in the third generation?”
I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up quick. “That depends,” says he, “on their original blood. When Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve, generation after generation.” The baldish man smiled at this, and said there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr. Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
The country about Lynton is wonderfully beautiful, with rocks and valleys, and velvet lawns running into the sea, and woods and ancestral mansions, and we spent the day seeing all this, and also going down to Lynmouth, where the little ships lie high and dry on the sand when the tide goes out, and the carts drive up to them and put goods on board, and when the tide rises the ships sail away, which is very convenient.
I wanted to keep on along the coast, but the others didn’t, and the next morning we started back to Chedcombe by a roundabout way, so that we might see Exmoor and the country where Lorna Doone and John Ridd cut up their didoes. I must say I liked the story a good deal better before I saw the country where the things happened. The mind of man is capable of soarings which Nature weakens at when she sees what she is called upon to do. If you want a real, first-class, tooth-on-edge Doone valley, the place to look for it is in the book. We went rolling along on the smooth, hard roads, which are just as good here as if they was in London, and all around us was stretched out the wild and desolate moors, with the wind screaming and whistling over the heather, nearly tearing the clothes off our backs, while the rain beat down on us with a steady pelting, and the ragged sheep stopped to look at us, as if we was three witches and they was Macbeths.
The very thought that I was out in a wild storm on a desolate moor filled my soul with a sort of triumph, and I worked my tricycle as if I was spurring my steed to battle. The only thing that troubled me was the thought that if the water that poured off my mackintosh that day could have run into our cistern at home, it would have been a glorious good thing. Jone did not like the fierce blast and the inspiriting rain, but I knew he’d stand it as long as Mr. Poplington did, and so I was content, although, if we had been overtaken by a covered wagon, I should have trembled for the result.
That night we stopped in the little village of Simonsbath at Somebody’s Arms. After dinner Mr. Poplington, who knew some people in the place, went out, but Jone and me went to bed as quick as we could, for we was tired. The next morning we was wakened by a tremendous pounding at the door. I didn’t know what to make of it, for it was too early and too loud for hot water, but we heard Mr. Poplington calling to us, and Jone jumped up to see what he wanted.
“Get up,” said he, “if you want to see a sight that you never saw before. We’ll start off immediately and breakfast at Exford.” The hope of seeing a sight was enough to make me bounce at any time, and I never dressed or packed a bag quicker than I did that morning, and Jone wasn’t far behind me.
When we got down-stairs we found our cycles waiting ready at the door, together with the stable man and the stable boy and the boy’s helper and the cook and the chambermaid and the waiters and the other servants, waiting for their tips. Mr. Poplington seemed in a fine humor, and he told us he had heard the night before that there was to be a stag hunt that day, the first of the season. In fact, it was not one of the regular meets, but what they called a by-meet, and not known to everybody.
“We will go on to Exford,” said he, straddling his bicycle, “for though the meet isn’t to be there, there’s where they keep the hounds and horses, and if we make good speed we shall get there before they start out.”
The three of us travelled abreast, Mr. Poplington in the middle, and on the way he told us a good deal about stag hunts. What I remember best, having to go so fast and having to mind my steering, was that after the hunting season began they hunted stags until a certain day–I forget what it was–and then they let them alone and began to hunt the does; and that after that particular day of the month, when the stags heard the hounds coming they paid no attention to them, knowing very well it was the does’ turn to be chased, and that they would not be bothered; and so they let the female members of their families take care of themselves; which shows that ungentlemanliness extends itself even into Nature.
When we got to Exford we left our cycles at the inn and followed Mr. Poplington to the hunting stables, which are near by. I had not gone a dozen steps from the door before I heard a great barking, and the next minute there came around the corner a pack of hounds. They crossed the bridge over the little river, and then they stopped. We went up to them, and while Mr. Poplington talked to the men the whole of that pack of hounds gathered about us as gentle as lambs. They were good big dogs, white and brown. The head huntsman who had them in charge told me there was thirty couple of them, and I thought that sixty dogs was pretty heavy odds against one deer. Then they moved off as orderly as if they had been children in a kindergarten, and we went to the stables and saw the horses; and then the master of the hounds and a good many other gentlemen in red coats, in all sorts of traps, rode up, and their hunters were saddled, and the dogs barked and the men cracked their whips to keep them together, and there was a bustle and liveliness to a degree I can’t write about, and Jone and I never thought about going in to breakfast until all those horses, some led and some ridden, and the men and the hounds, and even the dust from their feet, had disappeared.
I wanted to go see the hunt start off, but Mr. Poplington said it was two or three miles distant, and out of our way, and that we’d better move on as soon as possible so as to reach Chedcombe that night; but he was glad, he said, that we had had a chance to see the hounds and the horses.
As for himself, I could see he was a little down in the mouth, for he said he was very fond of hunting, and that if he had known of this meet he would have been there with a horse and his hunting clothes. I think he hoped somebody would lend him a horse, but nobody did, and not being able to hunt himself he disliked seeing other people doing what he could not. Of course, Jone and me could not go to the hunt by ourselves, so after we’d had our tea and toast and bacon we started off. I will say here that when I was at the Ship Inn I had tea for my breakfast, for I couldn’t bring my mind to order coffee–a drink the Saxons must never have heard of–in such a place; and since that we have been drinking it because Jone said there was no use fighting against established drinks, and that anyway he thought good tea was better than bad coffee.
_Letter Number Twelve_
CHEDCOMBE
As I said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast, as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr. Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk. But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of tunes he didn’t know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to expect rain for two or three hours anyway, and the country we passed through was so fine, with hardly any houses, and with great hills and woods, and sometimes valleys far below the road, with streams rushing and bubbling, that after a while I began to feel better, and I pricked up my tricycle, and, of course, being followed by Jone, we left Mr. Poplington, whose melancholy seemed to have gotten into his legs, a good way behind.
We must have travelled two or three hours when all of a sudden I heard a noise afar, and I drew up and listened. The noise was the barking of dogs, and it seemed to come from a piece of woods on the other side of the field which lay to the right of the road. The next instant something shot out from under the trees and began going over the field in ten-foot hops. I sat staring without understanding, but when I saw a lot of brown and white spots bounce out of the wood, and saw, a long way back in the open field, two red-coated men on horseback, the truth flashed upon me that this was the hunt. The creature in front was the stag, who had chosen to come this way, and the dogs and the horses was after him, and I was here to see it all.
Almost before I got this all straight in my mind the deer was nearly opposite me on the other side of the field, going the same way that we were. In a second I clapped spurs into my tricycle and was off. In front of me was a long stretch of down grade, and over this I went as fast as I could work my pedals; no brakes or holding back for me. My blood was up, for I was actually in a deer hunt, and to my amazement and wild delight I found I was keeping up with the deer. I was going faster than the men on horseback.
“Hi! Hi!” I shouted, and down I went with one eye on the deer and the other on the road, every atom of my body tingling with fiery excitement. When I began to go up the little slope ahead I heard Jone puffing behind me.
“You will break your neck,” he shouted, “if you go down hill that way,” and getting close up to me he fastened his cord to my tricycle. But I paid no attention to him or his advice.
“The stag! The stag!” I cried. “As long as he keeps near the road we can follow him! Hi!” And having got up to the top of the next hill I made ready to go down as fast as I had gone before, for we had fallen back a little, and the stag was now getting ahead of us; but it made me gnash my teeth to find that I could not go fast, for Jone held back with all his force (and both feet on the ground, I expect), and I could not get on at all.
“Let go of me,” I cried, “we shall lose the stag. Stop holding back.” But it wasn’t any use; Jone’s heels must have been nearly rubbed off, but he held back like a good fellow, and I seemed to be moving along no faster than a worm. I could not stand this; my blood boiled and bubbled; the deer was getting away from me; and if it had been Porlock Hill in front of me I would have dashed on, not caring whether the road was steep or level.
A thought flashed across my mind, and I clapped my hand into my pocket and jerked out a pair of scissors. In an instant I was free. The world and the stag was before me, and I was flying along with a tornado-like swiftness that soon brought me abreast of the deer. This perfectly splendid, bounding creature was not far away from me on the other side of the hedge, and as the field was higher than the road I could see him perfectly. His legs worked so regular and springy, except when he came to a cross hedge, which he went over with a single clip, and came down like India rubber on the other side, that one might have thought he was measuring the grass, and keeping an account of his jumps in his head.
[Illustration: “In an instant I was free.”]
For one instant I looked around for the hounds, and I saw there was not more than half a dozen following him, and I could only see the two hunters I had seen before, and these was still a good way back. As for Jone, I couldn’t hear him at all, and he must have been left far behind. There was still the woods on the other side, and the deer seemed to run to keep away from that and to cross the road, and he came nearer and nearer until I fancied he kept an eye on me as if he was wondering if I was of any consequence, and if I could hinder him from crossing the road and getting away into the valley below where there was a regular wilderness of woods and underbrush.
If he does that, I thought, he will be gone in a minute and I shall lose him, and the hunt will be over. And for fear he would make for the hedge and jump over it, not minding me, I jerked out my handkerchief and shook it at him. You can’t imagine how this frightened him. He turned sharp to the right, dashed up the hill, cleared a hedge and was gone. I gave a gasp and a scream as I saw him disappear. I believe I cried, but I didn’t stop, and glad I was that I didn’t; for in less than a minute I had come to a cross lane which led in the very direction the deer had taken. I turned into this lane and went on as fast as I could, and I soon found that it led through a thick wood. Down in the hollow, which I could not see into, I heard a barking and shouting, and I kept on just as fast as I could make that tricycle go. Where the lane led to, or what I should ever come to, I didn’t think about. I was hunting a stag, and all I cared for was to feel my tricycle bounding beneath me.
I may have gone a half a mile or two miles–I have not an idea how far it was–when suddenly I came to a place where there was green grass and rocks in an opening in the woods, and what a sight I saw! There was that beautiful, grand, red deer half down on his knees and perfectly quiet, and there was one of the men in red coats coming toward him with a great knife in his hand, and a little farther back was three or four dogs with another man, still on horseback, whipping them to keep them back, though they seemed willing enough to lie there with their tongues out, panting. As the man with the knife came up to the deer, the poor creature raised its eyes to him, and didn’t seem to mind whether he came or not. It was trembling all over and fairly tired to death. When the man got near enough he took hold of one of the deer’s horns and lifted up the hand with the knife in it, but he didn’t bring it down on that deer’s throat, I can tell you, madam, for I was there and had him by the arm.
He turned on me as if he had been struck by lightning.
“What do you mean?” he shouted. “Let go my arm.”
“Don’t you touch that deer,” said I–my voice was so husky I could hardly speak–“don’t you see it’s surrendered? Can you have the heart to cut that beautiful throat when he is pleading for mercy?” The man’s eyes looked as if they would burst out of his head. He gave me a pull and a push as if he would stick the knife into me, and he actually swore at me, but I didn’t mind that.
[Illustration: “IF YOU WAS A MAN I’D BREAK YOUR HEAD”]
“You have got that poor creature now,” said I, “and that’s enough. Keep it and tame it and bring it up with your children.” I didn’t have time to say anything more, and he didn’t have time to answer, for two of the dogs who had got a little of their wind back sprang up and made a jump at the stag; and he, having got a little of his wind back, jerked his horn out of the hand of the man, and giving a sort of side spring backward among the bushes and rocks, away he went, the dogs after him.
The man with the knife rushed out into the lane, and so did I, and so did the man on horseback, almost on top of me. On the other side of the lane was a little gorge with rocks and trees and water at the bottom of it, and I was just in time to see the stag spring over the lane and drop out of sight among the rocks and the moss and the vines.
The man stood and swore at me regardless of my sex, so violent was his rage.
“If you was a man I’d break your head,” he yelled.
“I’m glad I’m not,” said I, “for I wouldn’t want my head broken. But what troubles me is, that I’m afraid that deer has broken his legs or hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired.”
The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else’s legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already. Then he turned on me again.
“You are an American,” he shouted. “I might have known that. No English woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that.”
“You’re mistaken there,” I said; “there isn’t a true English woman that lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother–“
“Confound my mother!” yelled the man.
“All right,” said I; “that’s all in your family and none of my business.” Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a gatepost.
The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up to me and said he wouldn’t like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery Hill, and he didn’t know whether they was after two stags or one, he and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me; and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn’t so sorry, for this was Sir Skiddery Henchball’s land, and when a stag was killed it belonged to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part, which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he’s in the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. “There’s a cottage not a mile down this lane,” said he, “with its thatch torn off, and my sister and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on account of the rent, and so I’m glad the old skinflint didn’t get the venison.” And then he went off, being called by the other man.
I didn’t know what time it was, but it seemed as if it must be getting on into the afternoon; and feeling that my deer hunt was over, I thought I had better lose no time in hunting up Jone, so I followed on after the men and the dogs, who was going to the main road, but keeping a little back of them, though, for I didn’t know what the older one might do if he happened to turn and see me.
I was sure that Jone had passed the little lane without seeing it, so I kept on the way we had been going, and got up all the speed I could, though I must say I was dreadfully tired, and even trembling a little, for while I had been stag hunting I was so excited I didn’t know how much work I was doing. There was sign-posts enough to tell me the way to Chedcombe, and so I kept straight on, up hill and down hill, until at last I saw a man ahead on a bicycle, which I soon knew to be Mr. Poplington. He was surprised enough at seeing me, and told me my husband had gone ahead. I didn’t explain anything, and it wasn’t until we got nearly to Chedcombe that we met Jone. He had been to Chedcombe, and was coming back.
Jone is a good fellow, but he’s got a will of his own, and he said that this would be the end of my tricycle riding, and that the next time we went out together on wheels he’d drive. I didn’t tell him anything about the stag hunt then, for he seemed to be in favor of doing all the talking himself; but after dinner, when we was all settled down quiet and comfortable, I told him and Mr. Poplington the story of the chase, and they both laughed, Mr. Poplington the most.
_Letter Number Thirteen_
CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE
It is now about a week since my stag hunt, and Jone and I have kept pretty quiet, taking short walks, and doing a good deal of reading in our garden whenever the sun shines into the little arbor there, and Mr. Poplington spends most of his time fishing. He works very hard at this, partly for the sake of his conscience, I think, for his bicycle trip made him lose three or four days he had taken a license for.
It was day before yesterday that rheumatism showed itself certain and plain in Jone. I had been thinking that perhaps I might have it first, but it wasn’t so, and it began in Jone, which, though I don’t want you to think me hard-hearted, madam, was perhaps better; for if it had not been for it, it might have been hard to get him out of this comfortable little cottage, where he’d be perfectly content to stay until it was time for us to sail for America. The beautiful greenness which spreads over the fields and hills, and not only the leaves of trees and vines, but down and around trunks and branches, is charming to look at and never to be forgotten; but when this moist greenness spreads itself to one’s bones, especially when it creeps up to the parts that work together, then the soul of man longs for less picturesqueness and more easy-going joints. Jone says the English take their climate as they do their whiskey; and he calls it climate-and-water, with a very little of the first and a good deal of the other.
Of course, we must now leave Chedcombe; and when we talked to Mr. Poplington about it he said there was two places the English went to for their rheumatism. One was Bath, not far from here, and the other was Buxton, up in the north. As soon as I heard of Bath I was on pins and needles to go there, for in all the novel-reading I’ve done, which has been getting better and better in quality since the days when I used to read dime novels on the canal-boat, up to now when I like the best there is, I could not help knowing lots about Evelina and Beau Brummel, and the Pump Room, and the fine ladies and young bucks, and it would have joyed my soul to live and move where all these people had been, and where all these things had happened, even if fictitiously.
But Mr. Poplington came down like a shower on my notions, and said that Bath was very warm, and was the place where everybody went for their rheumatism in winter; but that Buxton was the place for the summer, because it was on high land and cool. This cast me down a good deal; for if we could have gone where I could have steeped my soul in romanticness, and at the same time Jone could have steeped himself in warm mineral water, there would not have been any time lost, and both of us would have been happier. But Mr. Poplington stuck to it that it would ruin anybody’s constitution to go to such a hot place in August, and so I had to give it up.
So to-morrow we start for Buxton, which, from what I can make out, must be a sort of invalid picnic ground. I always did hate diseases and ailments, even of the mildest, when they go in caravan. I like to take people’s sicknesses separate, because then I feel I might do something to help; but when they are bunched I feel as if it was sort of mean for me to go about cheerful and singing when other people was all grunting.
But we are not going straight to Buxton. As I have often said, Jone is a good fellow, and he told me last night if there was any bit of fancy scenery I’d like to stop on the way to the unromantic refuge he’d be glad to give me the chance, because he didn’t suppose it would matter much if he put off his hot soaks for a few days. It didn’t take me long to name a place I’d like to stop at–for most of my reading lately has been in the guide books, and I had crammed myself with the descriptions of places worth seeing, that would take us at least two years to look at–so I said I would like to go to the River Wye, which is said to be the most romantic stream in England, and when that is said, enough is said for me, so Jone agreed, and we are going to do the Wye on our way north.
There is going to be an election here in a few days, and this morning Jone and me hobbled into the village–that is, he hobbled in body, and I did in mind to think of his going along like a creaky wheelbarrow.
Everybody was agog about the election, and we was looking at some placards posted against a wall, when Mr. Locky, the innkeeper, came along, and after bidding us good-morning he asked Jone what party he belonged to. “I’m a Home Ruler,” said Jone, “especially in the matter of tricycles.” Mr. Locky didn’t understand the last part of this speech, but I did, and he said, “I am glad you are not a Tory, sir. If you will read that, you will see what the Tory party has done for us,” and he pointed out some lines at the bottom of a green placard, and these was the words: “Remember it was the Tory party that lost us the United States of America.”
“Well,” said Jone, “that seems like going a long way off to get some stones to throw at the Tories, but I feel inclined to heave a rock at them myself for the injury that party has done to America.”
“To America!” said Mr. Locky, “Did the Tories ever harm America?”
“Of course they did,” said Jone; “they lost us England, a very valuable country, indeed, and a great loss to any nation. If it had not been for the Tory party, Mr. Gladstone might now be in Washington as a senator from Middlesex.”
[Illustration: “I’m a Home Ruler”]
Mr. Locky didn’t understand one word of this, and so he asked Jone which leg his rheumatism was in; and when Jone told him it was his left leg he said it was a very curious thing, but if you would take a hundred men in Chedcombe there would be at least sixty with rheumatism in the left leg, and perhaps not more than twenty with it in the right, which was something the doctors never had explained yet.
It is awfully hard to go away and leave this lovely little cottage with its roses and vines, and Miss Pondar, and all its sweet-smelling comforts; and not only the cottage, but the village, and Mrs. Locky and her husband at the Bordley Arms, who couldn’t have been kinder to us and more anxious to know what we wanted and what they could do. The fact is, that when English people do like Americans they go at it with just as much vim and earnestness as if they was helping Britannia to rule more waves.
While I was feeling badly at leaving Miss Pondar your letter came, dear madam, and I must say it gave heavy hearts to Jone and me, to me especially, as you can well understand. I went off into the summer-house, and as I sat there thinking and reading the letter over again, I do believe some tears came into my eyes; and Miss Pondar, who was working in the garden only a little way off–for if there is anything she likes to do it is to weed and fuss among the rose-bushes and other flowers, which she does whenever her other work gives her a chance–she happened to look up, and seeing that I was in trouble, she came right to me, like the good woman she is, and asked me if I had heard bad news, and if I would like a little gin and water.
I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits, and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost that way. I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said: “Poor Lord Edward is dead. To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not any right to think he’d live even as long as he did; and as he was nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better that he should go. But when I think of what friends we used to be before I was married, I can’t help feeling badly to think that he has gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see me home again, which he would be if there wasn’t another soul on the whole continent who felt that way.”
Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her, and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with eight ostrich plumes on it. “Lord Edward,” she said, in a melancholy, respectful voice, “and will his remains be brought to England for interment?”
“Oh, no,” said I, not understanding what she was talking about. “I am sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his grave will be one of the first places I will visit.”
A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar’s melancholy respectfulness, and she said: “Of course, when one lives in foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like that they were brought home to their family vaults.”
It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the mistake she had made. “Oh,” I said, “he was not a member of the British nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name. I never loved any animal as I loved him.”
I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below, and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog. I think that for one brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and that she–she herself–was in my service. But the drop was an awful one. I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid, as well as weeds. When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it was a dog I mourned. She has tried so hard to make everything all right while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on thinking that it was a noble earl who died.
To-morrow morning we shall have our last Devonshire clotted cream, for they tell me this is to be had only in the west of England, and when I think of the beautiful hills and vales of this country I shall not forget that.
Of course we would not have time to stay here longer, even if Jone hadn’t got the rheumatism; but if he had to have it, for which I am as sorry as anybody can be, it is a lucky thing that he did have it just about the time that we ought to be going away, anyhow. And although I did not think, when we came to England, that we should ever go to Buxton, we are thankful that there is such a place to go to; although, for my part, I can’t help feeling disappointed that the season isn’t such that we could go to Bath, and Evelina and Beau Brummel.
_Letter Number Fourteen_
[Illustration]
BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
We came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going from four different quarters.
There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see old England, and I don’t want to see its new and shiny things, so we came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.
Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry Mr. Poplington couldn’t come here with us, for he could have shown us a great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing, and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for his arm.
To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning of the navigable part of the river–I might almost say the wadeable part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would be about a day’s row, and give us the best part of the river. But I must say that when we looked out over the valley the prospect was not very encouraging, for it seemed to me that if the sun came out hot it would dry up that river, and Jone might not be willing to wait until the next heavy rain.
While we was at Chedcombe I read the “Maid of Sker,” because its scenes are laid in the Bristol Channel, about the coast near where we was, and over in Wales. And when the next morning we went down to the boat which we was going to take our day’s trip in, and I saw the man who was to row us, David Llewellyn popped straight into my mind.
This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with a general air of water and fish. He was good-natured and sociable from the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need of pitying him.
It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been a “rime” that morning, which made me think of the “Ancient Mariner.” The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a coracle. “A corkle?” said he. “Oh, yes, ma’am, I’ve seen many a one and rowed in them.”
I couldn’t wait any longer, and so I asked him his name. He stopped rowing and leaned on his oars and let the boat drift. “Now,” said he, “if you’ve got a piece of paper and a pencil I wish you would listen careful and put down my name, and if you ever know of any other people in your country coming to the River Wye, I wish you would tell them my name, and say I am a boatman, and can take them down the river better than anybody else that’s on it. My name is Samivel Jones. Be sure you’ve got that right, please–Samivel Jones. I was born on this river, and I rowed on it with my father when I was a boy, and I have rowed on it ever since, and now I am sixty-five years old. Do you want to know why this river is called the Wye? I will tell you. Wye means crooked, so this river is called the Wye because it is crooked. Wye, the crooked river.”
There was no doubt about the old man’s being right about the crookedness of the stream. If you have ever noticed an ant running over the floor you will have an idea how the Wye runs through this beautiful country. If it comes to a hill it doesn’t just pass it and let you see one side of it, but it goes as far around it as it can, and then goes back again, and goes around some other hill or great rocky point, or a clump of woods, or anything else that travellers might like to see. At one place, called Symond’s Yat, it makes a curve so great, that if we was to get out of our boat and walk across the land, we would have to walk less than half a mile before we came to the river again; but to row around the curve as we did, we had to go five miles.
Every now and then we came to rapids. I didn’t count them, but I think there must have been about one to every mile, where the river-bed was full of rocks, and where the water rushed furiously around and over them. If we had been rowing ourselves we would have gone on shore and camped when we came to the first of these rapids, for we wouldn’t have supposed our little boat could go through those tumbling, rushing waters; but old Samivel knew exactly how the narrow channel, just deep enough sometimes for our boat to float without bumping the bottom, runs and twists itself among the hidden rocks, and he’d stand up in the bow and push the boat this way and that until it slid into the quiet water again, and he sat down to his oars. After we had been through four or five of these we didn’t feel any more afraid than if we had been sitting together on our own little back porch.
As for the banks of this river, they got more and more beautiful as we went on. There was high hills with some castles, woods and crags and grassy slopes, and now and then a lordly mansion or two, and great massive, rocky walls, bedecked with vines and moss, rising high up above our heads and shutting us out from the world.
Jone and I was filled as full as our minds could hold with the romantic loveliness of the river and its banks, and old Samivel was so pleased to see how we liked it–for I believe he looked upon that river as his private property–that he told us about everything we saw, and pointed out a lot of things we wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t been for him, as if he had been a man explaining a panorama, and pointing out with a stick the notable spots as the canvas unrolled.
The only thing in his show which didn’t satisfy him was two very fine houses which had both of them belonged to noble personages in days gone by, but which had been sold, one to a man who had made his money in tea, and the other to a man who had made money in cotton. “Think of that,” said he; “cotton and tea, and living in such mansions as them are, once owned by lords. They are both good men, and gives a great deal to the poor, and does all they can for the country; but only think of it, madam, cotton and tea! But all that happened a good while ago, and the world is getting too enlightened now for such estates as them are to come to cotton and tea.”
Sometimes we passed houses and little settlements, but, for the most part, the country was as wild as undiscovered lands, which, being that to me, I felt happier, I am sure, than Columbus did when he first sighted floating weeds. Jone was a good deal wound up too, for he had never seen anything so beautiful as all this. We had our luncheon at a little inn, where the bread was so good that for a time I forgot the scenery, and then we went on, passing through the Forest of Dean, lonely and solemn, with great oak and beech trees, and Robin Hood and his merry men watching us from behind the bushes for all we knew. Whenever the river twists itself around, as if to show us a new view, old Samivel would say: “Now isn’t that the prettiest thing you’ve seen yet?” and he got prouder and prouder of his river every mile he rowed.
At one place he stopped and rested on his oars. “Now, then,” said he, twinkling up his face as if he was really David Llewellyn showing us a fish with its eyes bulged out with sticks to make it look fresh, “as we are out on a kind of a lark, suppose we try a bit of a hecho,” and then he turned to a rocky valley on his left, and in a voice like the man at the station calling out the trains he yelled, “Hello there, sir! What are you doing there, sir? Come out of that!” And when the words came back as if they had been balls batted against a wall, he turned and looked at us as proud and grinny as if the rocks had been his own baby saying “papa” and “mamma” for visitors.
Not long after this we came to a place where there was a wide field on one side, and a little way off we could see the top of a house among the trees. A hedge came across the field to the river, and near the bank was a big gate, and on this gate sat two young women, and down on the ground on the side of the hedge nearest to us was another young woman, and not far from her was three black hogs, two of them pointing their noses at her and grunting, and the other was grunting around a place where those young women had been making sketches and drawings, and punching his nose into the easels and portfolios on the ground. The young woman on the grass was striking at the hogs with a stick and trying to make them go away, which they wouldn’t do; and just as we came near she dropped the stick and ran, and climbed up on the gate beside the others, after which all the hogs went to rooting among the drawing things.
As soon as Samivel saw what was going on he stopped his boat, and shouted to the hogs a great deal louder than he had shouted to the echo, but they didn’t mind any more than they had minded the girl with the stick. “Can’t we stop the boat,” I said, “and get out and drive off those hogs? They will eat up all the papers and sketches.”
“Just put me ashore,” said Jone, “and I’ll clear them out in no time;” and old Samivel rowed the boat close up to the bank.
But when Jone got suddenly up on his feet there was such a twitch across his face that I said to him, “Now just you sit down. If you go ashore to drive off those hogs you’ll jump about so that you’ll bring on such a rheumatism you can’t sleep.”
“I’ll get out myself,” said Samivel, “if I can find a place to fasten the boat to. I can’t run her ashore here, and the current is strong.”
“Don’t you leave the boat,” said I, for the thought of Jone and me drifting off and coming without him to one of those rapids sent a shudder through me; and as the stern of the boat where I sat was close to the shore I jumped with Jone’s stick in my hand before either of them could hinder me. I was so afraid that Jone would do it that I was very quick about it.
The minute I left the boat Jone got ready to come after me, for he had no notion of letting me be on shore by myself, but the boat had drifted off a little, and old Samivel said:
“That is a pretty steep bank to get up with the rheumatism on you. I’ll take you a little farther down, where I can ground the boat, and you can get off more steadier.”
But this letter is getting as long as the River Wye itself, and I must stop it.
_Letter Number Fifteen_
BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER
As soon as I jumped on shore, as I told you in my last, and had taken a good grip on Jone’s heavy stick, I went for those hogs, for I wanted to drive them off before Jone came ashore, for I didn’t want him to think he must come.
I have driven hogs and cows out of lots and yards often enough, as you know yourself, madam, so I just stepped up to the biggest of them and hit him a whack across the head as he was rubbing his nose in among some papers with bits of landscapes on them, as was enough to make him give up studying art for the rest of his life; but would you believe it, madam, instead of running away he just made a bolt at me, and gave me such a push with his head and shoulders he nearly knocked me over? I never was so astonished, for they looked like hogs that you might think could be chased out of a yard by a boy. But I gave the fellow another crack on the back, which he didn’t seem to notice, but just turned again to give me another push, and at the same minute the two others stopped rooting among the paint-boxes and came grunting at me.
For the first time in my life I was frightened by hogs. I struck at them as hard as I could, and before I knew what I was about I flung down the stick, made a rush for that gate, and was on top of it in no time, in company with the three other young women that was sitting there already.
“Really,” said the one next to me, “I fancied you was going to be gored to atoms before our eyes. Whatever made you go to those nasty beasts?”
I looked at her quite severe, getting my feet well up out of reach of the hogs if they should come near us.
“I saw you was in trouble, miss, and I came to help you. My husband wanted to come, but he has the rheumatism and I wouldn’t let him.”
The other two young women looked at me as well as they could around the one that was near me, and the one that was farthest off said:
“If the creatures could have been driven off by a woman, we could have done it ourselves. I don’t know why you should think you could do it any better than we could.”
I must say, madam, that at that minute I was a little humble-minded, for I don’t mind confessing to you that the idea of one American woman plunging into a conflict that had frightened off three English women, and coming out victorious, had a good deal to do with my trying to drive away those hogs; and now that I had come out of the little end of the horn, just as the young women had, I felt pretty small, but I wasn’t going to let them see that.
“I think that English hogs,” said I, “must be savager than American ones. Where I live there is not any kind of a hog that would not run away if I shook a stick at him.” The young woman at the other end of the gate now spoke again.
“Everything British is braver than anything American,” said she; “and all you have done has been to vex those hogs, and they are chewing up our drawing things worse than they did before.”
Of course I fired up at this, and said, “You are very much mistaken about Americans.” But before I could say any more she went on to tell me that she knew all about Americans; she had been in America, and such a place she could never have fancied.
“Over there you let everybody trample over you as much as they please. You have no conveniences. One cannot even get a cab. Fancy! Not a cab to be had unless one pays enough for a drive in Hyde Park.”
I must say that the hogs charging down on me didn’t astonish me any more than to find myself on top of a gate with a young woman charging on my country in this fashion, and it was pretty hard on me to have her pitch into the cab question, because Jone and me had had quite a good deal to say about cabs ourselves, comparing New York and London, without any great fluttering of the stars and stripes; but I wasn’t going to stand any such talk as that, and so I said:
“I know very well that our cab charges are high, and it is not likely that poor people coming from other countries are able to pay them; but as soon as our big cities get filled up with wretched, half-starved people, with the children crying for bread at home, and the father glad enough that he’s able to get people to pay him a shilling for a drive, and that he’s not among the hundreds and thousands of miserable men who have not any work at all, and go howling to Hyde Park to hold meetings for blood or bread, then we will be likely to have cheap cabs as you have.”
“How perfectly awful!” said the young woman nearest me; but the one at the other end of the gate didn’t seem to mind what I said, but shifted off on another track.
“And then there’s your horses’ tails,” said she; “anything nastier couldn’t be fancied. Hundreds of them everywhere with long tails down to their heels, as if they belong to heathens who had never been civilized.”
“Heathens?” said I. “If you call the Arabians heathens, who have the finest horses in the world, and wouldn’t any more think of cutting off their tails than they would think of cutting their legs off; and if you call the cruel scoundrels who torture their poor horses by sawing their bones apart so as to get a little stuck-up bob on behind, like a moth-eaten paint-brush–if you call them Christians, then I suppose you’re right. There is a law in some parts of our country against the wickedness of chopping off the tails of live horses, and if you had such a law here you’d be a good deal more Christian-like than you are, to say nothing of getting credit for decent taste.”
By this time I had forgotten all about what Jone and I had agreed upon as to arguing over the differences between countries, and I was just as peppery as a wasp. The young woman at the other end of the gate was rather waspy too, for she seemed to want to sting me wherever she could find a spot uncovered; and now she dropped off her horses’ tails, and began to laugh until her face got purple.
“You Americans are so awfully odd,” she said. “You say you raise your corn and your plants instead of growing them. It nearly makes me die laughing when I hear one of you Americans say raise when you mean grow.”
Now Jone and me had some talk about growing and raising, and the reasons for and against our way of using the words; but I was ready to throw all this to the winds, and was just about to tell the impudent young woman that we raised our plants just the same as we raised our children, leaving them to do their own growing, when the young woman in the middle of the three, who up to this time hadn’t said a word, screamed out:
[Illustration: “AND WITH A SCREECH I DASHED AT THOSE HOGS LIKE A STEAM ENGINE”]
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! He’s pulled out my drawing of Wilton Bridge. He’ll eat it up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Whatever shall I do?”
Instead of speaking I turned quick and looked at the hogs, and there, sure enough, one of them had rooted open a portfolio and had hold of the corners of a colored picture, which, from where I sat, I could see was perfectly beautiful. The sky and the trees and the water was just like what we ourselves had seen a little while ago, and in about half a minute that hog would chew it up and swallow it.
The young woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn’t stop to think about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they didn’t stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of the bridge, together with the portfolio, and took them to the young woman who owned them. As the hogs had gone, all three of the women was now getting down from the gate.
“Thank you very much,” she said, “for saving my drawings. It was awfully good of you, especially–“
“Oh, you are welcome,” said I, cutting her off short; and, handing the other young woman her umbrella, I passed by the impudent one without so much as looking at her, and on the other side of the hedge I saw Jone coming across the grass. I jerked open the gate, not caring who it might swing against, and walked to meet Jone. When I was near enough I called out to know what on earth had become of him that he had left me there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn’t wanted him to come at all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore, because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good way around it.
“I was troubled,” said he, “because I thought you might come to grief with the hogs.”
“Hogs!” said I, so sarcastic, that Jone looked hard at me, but I didn’t tell him anything more till we was in the boat, and then I just said right out what had happened. Jone couldn’t help laughing.
“If I had known,” said he, “that you was on top of a gate discussing horses’ tails and cabs I wouldn’t have felt in such a hurry to get to you.”
“And you would have made a mistake if you hadn’t,” I said, “for hogs are nothing to such a person as was on that gate.”
Old Samivel was rowing slow and looking troubled, and I believe at that minute he forgot the River Wye was crooked.
“That was really hard, madam,” he said, “really hard on you; but it was a woman, and you have to excuse women. Now if they had been three Englishmen sitting on that gate they would never have said such things to you, knowing that you was a stranger in these parts and had come on shore to do them a service. And now, madam, I’m glad to see you are beginning to take notice of the landscapes again. Just ahead of us is another bend, and when we get around that you’ll see the prettiest picture you’ve seen yet. This is a crooked river, madam, and that’s how it got its name. Wye means crooked.”
After a while we came to a little church near the river bank, and here Samivel stopped rowing, and putting his hands on his knees he laughed gayly.
“It always makes me laugh,” he said, “whenever I pass this spot. It seems to me like such an awful good joke. Here’s that church on this side of the river, and away over there on the other side of the river is the rector and the congregation.”
“And how do they get to church?” said I.
“In the summer time,” said he, “they come over with a ferry-boat and a rope; but in the winter, when the water is frozen, they can’t get over at all. Many’s the time I’ve lain in bed and laughed and laughed when I thought of this church on one side of the river, and the whole congregation and the rector on the other side, and not able to get over.”
Toward the end of the day, and when we had rowed nearly twenty miles, we saw in the distance the town of Monmouth, where we was going to stop for the night.
[Illustration: “In the winter, when the water is frozen, they can’t get over”]
Old Samivel asked us what hotel we was going to stop at, and when we told him the one we had picked out he said he could tell us a better one.
“If I was you,” he said, “I’d go to the Eyengel.” We didn’t know what this name meant, but as the old man said he would take us there we agreed to go.
“I should think you would have a lonely time rowing back by yourself,” I said.
“Rowing back?” said he. “Why, bless your soul, lady, there isn’t nobody who could row this boat back agen that current and up them rapids. We take the boats back with the pony. We put the boat on a wagon and the pony pulls it back to Ross; and as for me, I generally go back by the train. It isn’t so far from Monmouth to Ross by the road, for the road is straight and the river winds and bends.”
The old man took us to the inn which he recommended, and we found it was the Angel. It was a nice, old-fashioned, queer English house. As far as I could see, they was all women that managed it, and it couldn’t have been managed better; and as far as I could see, we was the only guests, unless there was “commercial gents,” who took themselves away without our seeing them.
We was sorry to have old Samivel leave us, and we bid him a most friendly good-by, and promised if we ever knew of anybody who wanted to go down the River Wye we would recommend them to ask at Ross for Samivel Jones to row them.
We found the landlady of the Angel just as good to us as if we had been her favorite niece and nephew. She hired us a carriage the next day, and we was driven out to Raglan Castle, through miles and miles of green and sloping ruralness. When we got there and rambled through those grand old ruins, with the drawbridge and the tower and the courtyard, my soul went straight back to the days of knights and ladies, and prancing steeds, and horns and hawks, and pages and tournaments, and wild revels and vaulted halls.
The young man who had charge of the place seemed glad to see how much we liked it, as is natural enough, for everybody likes to see us pleased with the particular things they have on hand.
“You haven’t anything like this in your country,” said he. But to this I said nothing, for I was tired of always hearing people speak of my national denomination as if I was something in tin cans, with a label pasted on outside; but Jone said it was true enough that we didn’t have anything like it, for if we had such a noble edifice we would have taken care of it, and not let it go to rack and ruin in this way.
Jone has an idea that it don’t show good sense to knock a bit of furniture about from garret to cellar until most of its legs are broken, and its back cracked, and its varnish all peeled off, and then tie ribbons around it, and hang it up in the parlor, and kneel down to it as a relic of the past. He says that people who have got old ruins ought to be very thankful that there is any of them left, but it’s no use in them trying to fill up the missing parts with brag.
We took the train and went to Chepstow, which is near the mouth of the Wye, and as the railroad ran near the river nearly all the way we had lots of beautiful views, though, of course, it wasn’t anything like as good as rowing along the stream in a boat. The next day we drove to the celebrated Tintern Abbey, and on the way the road passed two miles and a half of high stone wall, which shut in a gentleman’s place. What he wanted to keep in or keep out by means of a wall like that, we couldn’t imagine; but the place made me think of a lunatic asylum.
The road soon became shady and beautiful, running through woods along the river bank and under some great crags called the Wyndcliffe, and then we came to the Abbey and got out.
Of all the beautiful high-pointed archery of ancient times, this ruined Abbey takes the lead. I expect you’ve seen it, madam, or read about it, and I am not going to describe it; but I will just say that Jone, who had rather objected to coming out to see any more old ruins, which he never did fancy, and only came because he wouldn’t have me come by myself, was so touched up in his soul by what he saw there, and by wandering through this solemn and beautiful romance of bygone days, he said he wouldn’t have missed it for fifty dollars.
We came back to Gloucester to-day, and to-morrow we are off for Buxton. As we are so near Stratford and Warwick and all that, Jone said we’d better go there on our way, but I wouldn’t agree to it. I am too anxious to get him skipping round like a colt, as he used to, to stop anywhere now, and when we come back I can look at Shakespeare’s tomb with a clearer conscience.
* * * * *
LONDON.
After all, the weather isn’t the only changeable thing in this world, and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London two or three days before didn’t come, and he thought it would be wise for him to go and look after it. So yesterday, which was Saturday, we started off for London, and came straight to the Babylon Hotel, where we had been before.
Of course we couldn’t do anything until Monday, and this morning when we got up we didn’t feel in very good spirits, for of all the doleful things I know of, a Sunday in London is the dolefullest. The whole town looks as if it was the back door of what it was the day before, and if you want to get any good out of it, you feel as if you had to sneak in by an alley, instead of walking boldly up the front steps.
Jone said we’d better go to Westminster Abbey to church, because he believed in getting the best there was when it didn’t cost too much, but I wouldn’t do it.
[Illustration: “Who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington!”]
“No,” said I. “When I walk in that religious nave and into the hallowed precincts of the talented departed, the stone passages are full of cloudy forms of Chaucers, Addisons, Miltons, Dickenses, and all those great ones of the past; and I would hate to see the place filled up with a crowd of weekday lay people in their Sunday clothes, which would be enough to wipe away every feeling of romantic piety which might rise within my breast.”
As we didn’t go to the Abbey, and was so long making up our minds where we should go, it got too late to go anywhere, and so we stayed in the hotel and looked out into a lonely and deserted street, with the wind blowing the little leaves and straws against the tight-shut doors of the forsaken houses. As I stood by that window I got homesick, and at last I could stand it no longer, and I said to Jone, who was smoking and reading a paper:
“Let’s put on our hats and go out for a walk, for I can’t mope here another minute.”
So down we went, and coming up the front steps of the front entrance who do you suppose we met? Mr. Poplington! He was stopping at that hotel, and was just coming home from church, with his face shining like a sunset on account of the comfortableness of his conscience after doing his duty.
_Letter Number Sixteen_
BUXTON
When I mentioned Mr. Poplington in my last letter in connection with the setting sun I was wrong; he was like the rising orb of day, and he filled London with effulgent light. No sooner had we had a talk, and we had told him all that had happened, and finished up by saying what a doleful morning we had had, than he clapped his hand on his knees and said, “I’ll tell you what we will do. We will spend the afternoon among the landmarks.” And what we did was to take a four-wheeler and go around the old parts of London, where Mr. Poplington showed us a lot of soul-awakening spots which no common stranger would be likely to find for himself.
If you are ever steeped in the solemnness of a London Sunday, and you can get a jolly, red-faced, middle-aged English gentleman, who has made himself happy by going to church in the morning, and is ready to make anybody else happy in the afternoon, just stir him up in the mixture, and then you will know the difference between cod-liver oil and champagne, even if you have never tasted either of them. The afternoon was piled-up-and-pressed-down joyfulness for me, and I seemed to be walking in a dream among the beings and the things that we only see in books.
Mr. Poplington first took us to the old Watergate, which was the river entrance to York House, where Lord Bacon lived, and close to the gate was the small house where Peter the Great and David Copperfield lived, though not at the same time; and then we went to Will’s old coffee-house, where Addison, Steele, and a lot of other people of that sort used to go to drink and smoke before they was buried in Westminster Abbey, and where Charles and Mary Lamb lived afterward, and where Mary used to look out of the window to see the constables take the thieves to the Old Bailey near by. Then we went to Tom-all-alone’s, and saw the very grating at the head of the steps which led to the old graveyard where poor Joe used to sweep the steps when Lady Dedlock came there, and I held on to the very bars that the poor lady must have gripped when she knelt on the steps to die.
Not far away was the Black Jack Tavern, where Jack Sheppard and all the great thieves of the day used to meet. And bless me! I have read so much about Jack Sheppard that I could fairly see him jumping out of the window he always dropped from when the police came. After that we saw the house where Mr. Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock’s lawyer, used to live, and also the house where old Krook was burned up by spontaneous combustion. Then we went to Bolt Court, where old Samuel Johnson lived, walked about, and talked, and then to another court where he lived when he wrote the dictionary, and after that to the “Cheshire Cheese” Inn, where he and Oliver Goldsmith often used to take their meals together.
Then we saw St. John’s Gate, where the Knights Templars met, and the yard of the Court of Chancery, where little Miss Flite used to wait for the Day of Judgment; and as we was coming home he showed us the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, where every other Friday the bells are rung at five o’clock in the afternoon, most people not knowing what it is for, but really because the famous Nell Gwynn, who was far from being a churchwoman, left a sum of money for having a merry peal of bells rung every Friday until the end of the world. I got so wound up by all this, that I quite forgot Jone, and hardly thought of Mr. Poplington, except that he was telling me all these things, and bringing back to my mind so much that I had read about, though sometimes very little.
When we got back to the hotel and had gone up to our room, Jone said to me:
“That was all very fine and interesting from top to toe, but it does seem to me as if things were dreadfully mixed. Dr. Johnson and Jack Sheppard, I suppose, was all real and could live in houses; but when it comes to David Copperfields and Lady Dedlocks and little Miss Flites, that wasn’t real and never lived at all, they was all talked about in just the same way, and their favorite tramping grounds pointed out, and I can’t separate the real people from the fancy folk, if we’ve got to have the same bosom heaving for the whole of them.”
“Jone,” said I, “they are all real, every one of them. If Mr. Dickens had written history I expect he’d put Lady Dedlock and Miss Flite and David Copperfield into it; and if the history writers had written stories they would have been sure to get Dr. Johnson and Lord Bacon and Peter the Great into them; and the people in the one kind of writing would have been just as real as the people in the other. At any rate, that’s the way they are to me.”
On the Monday after our landmark expedition with Mr. Poplington, which I shall never forget, Jone settled up his business matters, and the next day we started for Buxton and the rheumatism baths. To our great delight Mr. Poplington said he would go with us, not all the way, for he wanted to stop at a little place called Rowsley, where he would stay for a few days and then go on to Buxton; but we was very glad to have him with us during the greater part of the way, and we all left the hotel in the same four-wheeler.
When we got to the station Jone got first-class tickets, for we have found out that if you want to travel comfortable in England, and have porters attend to your baggage and find an empty carriage for you, and have the guard come along and smile in the window and say he’ll try to let you have that carriage all to yourselves if he’s able–the ableness depending a good deal on what you give him–and for everybody to do their best to make your journey pleasant, you must travel first class. Mr. Poplington also bought a first-class ticket, for there was no seconds on this line. As we was walking along by the platform Jone and I gave a sort of a jump, for there was a regular Pullman car, which made us think we might be at home. We stopped and looked at it, and then the guard, who was standing by, stepped up to us and touched his hat, and asked us if we would like to take the Pullman, and when Jone asked what the extra charge was, he said nothing at all for first-class passengers. We didn’t have to stop to think a minute, but said right off that we would go in it, but Mr. Poplington would not come with us. He said English people wasn’t accustomed to that, they wanted to be more private; and, although he’d like to be with us, he could not travel in a caravan like that, and so he went off by himself, and we got into the Pullman.
The guard said we could take any seats we pleased; and when we got in we found there was only two or three people in it, and we chose two nice armchairs, hung up our wraps, and made ourselves comfortable and cosey.
We expected that the people who engaged seats would soon come crowding in, but when the train started there was only four people besides ourselves in that beautiful car, which was a first-class one, built in the United States, with all sorts of comforts and conveniences. There was a porter who laid himself out to make us happy, and about one o’clock we had a nice lunch on a little table which was set up between us, with two waiters to attend to us, and then Jone went and had a smoke in a small room at one end of the car.
We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he’d have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs of somebody else.
Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn’t help laughing when he said:
“Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a caravan more pleasant. Don’t you want to come to the Pullman with us? There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at them, just as you please, and there’s plenty of room to walk about and stretch yourself a little if you want to. There’s a smoking-room, too, that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Poplington, “but I really couldn’t do that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman’s house is his castle, and when he’s travelling his railway carriage is his house. He likes privacy and dislikes publicity.”
“This is a funny kind of privacy you have here,” said Jone. “And how about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally strangers to each other?”
“Oh, a club is a very different thing,” said Mr. Poplington.
Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.
We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at us for all the rest of the trip you don’t feel anything like as private as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.
But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn’t find any fault with English people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we’d be a great deal better off than we are.
Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don’t believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before. The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn’t their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform, running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when I asked him to, he looked into our car.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he said. “What a public apartment! I could not travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few days.”
[Illustration: Mr. Poplington looking for the luggage]
We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton, and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now. There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room, and I was mighty sorry we couldn’t do it, but it was taken. If I could have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.
Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I think I am going to like it very much.
_Letter Number Seventeen_
[Illustration]
BUXTON
When we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her baths. He charges four times as much as the others, and has about a quarter as many patients, which makes it all the same to him, and a good deal better for the rheumatic ones who come to him, for they have more time to go into particulars. And if anything does good to a person who has something the matter with him, it’s being able to go into particulars about it. It’s often as good as medicine, and always more comforting.
We unpacked our trunks and settled ourselves down for a three weeks’ stay here, for no matter how much rheumatism you have or how little, you’ve got to take Buxton and its baths in three weeks’ doses.
Besides taking the baths Jone has to drink the waters, and as I cannot do much else to help him, I am encouraging him by drinking them too. There are two places where you can get the lukewarm water that people come here to drink. One is the public well, where there is a pump free to everybody, and the other is in the pump-room just across the street from the well, where you pay a penny a glass for the same water, which three doleful old women spend all their time pumping for visitors.
[Illustration: Pomona encourages Jonas]
People are ordered to drink this water very carefully. It must be done at regular times, beginning with a little, and taking more and more each day until you get to a full tumbler, and then if it seems to be too strong for you, you must take less. So far as I can find out there is nothing particular about it, except that it is lukewarm water, neither hot enough nor cold enough to make it a pleasant drink. It didn’t seem to agree with Jone at first, but after he kept at it three or four days it began to suit him better, so that he could take nearly a tumbler without feeling badly. Two or three times I felt it might be better for my health if I didn’t drink it, but I wanted to stand by Jone as much as I could, and so I kept on.
We have been here a week now, and this morning I found out that all the water we drink at this hotel is brought from the well of St. Ann, where the public pump is, and everybody drinks just as much of it as they want whenever they want to, and they never think of any such thing as feeling badly or better than if it was common water. The only difference is, that it isn’t quite as lukewarm when we get it here as it is at the well. When I was told this I was real mad, after all the measuring and fussing we had had when taking the water as a medicine, and then drinking it just as we pleased at the table. But the people here tell me that it is the gas in it which makes it medicinal, and when that floats out it is just like common water. That may be; but if there’s a penny’s worth of gas in every tumbler of water sold in the pump-room, there ought to be some sort of a canopy put over the town to catch what must escape in the pourings and pumpings, for it’s too valuable to be allowed to get away. If it’s the gas that does it, a rheumatic man anchored in a balloon over Buxton, and having the gas coming up unmixed to him, ought to be well in about two days.
When Jone told me his first bath was to be heated up to ninety-four degrees I said to him that he’d be boiled alive, but he wasn’t; and when he came home he said he liked it. Everything is very systematic in the great bathing-house. The man who tends to Jone hangs up his watch on a little stand on the edge of the bathtub, and he stays in just so many minutes, and when he’s ready to come out he rings a bell, and then he’s wrapped up in about fourteen hot towels, and sits in an armchair until he’s dry. Jone likes all this, and says so much about it that it makes me want to try it too; though as there isn’t any reason for it I haven’t tried them yet.
This is an awfully queer, old-fashioned town, and must have been a good deal like Bath in the days of Evelina. There is a long line of high buildings curved like a half moon, which is called the Crescent, and at one end of this is a pump-room, and at the other are the natural baths, where the water is just as warm as when it comes out of the ground, which is eighty-two degrees. This is said to chill people; but from what I remember about summer time I don’t see how eighty-two degrees can be cold.
Opposite the Crescent is a public park called The Slopes, and farther on there are great gardens with pavilions, and a band of music every day, and a theatre, and a little river, and tennis courts, and all sorts of things for people who haven’t anything to do with their time, which is generally the case with folks at rheumatic watering-places. Opposite to our hotel is a bowling court, which they say has been there for hundreds of years, and is just as hard and smooth as a boy’s slate. The men who play bowls here are generally those who have got over the rheumatism of their youth, and whose joints have not been very much stiffened up yet by old age. The people who are yet too young for rheumatism, and have come here with their families, play tennis.
The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can’t play tennis or bowl, and don’t want to spend the whole time in the pavilion listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can see, are just as important as the baths. I don’t know whether you ever saw a bath-chair, madam, but it’s a comfortable little cab on three wheels, pulled by a man. They take people everywhere, and all the streets are full of them.
As soon as I saw these nice little traps I said to Jone, “Now this is the very thing for you. It hurts you to walk far, and you want to see all over this town, and one of these bath-chairs will take you into lots of places where you couldn’t go in a carriage.”
“Take me!” said Jone. “I should say not. You don’t catch me being hauled about in one of those things as if I was in a sort of wheelbarrow ambulance being taken to the hospital, with you walking along by my side like a trained nurse. No, indeed! I have not gone so far as that yet.”
I told him this was all stuff and nonsense, and if he wanted to get the good out of Buxton he’d better go about and see it, and he couldn’t go about if he didn’t take a bath-chair; but all he said to that was, that he could see it without going about, and he was satisfied. But that didn’t count anything with me, for the trouble with Jone is, that he’s too easy satisfied.
It’s true that there is a lot to be seen in Buxton without going about. The Slopes are just across the street from the hotel, and when it doesn’t happen to be raining we can go and sit there on a bench and see lively times enough. People are being trundled about in their bath-chairs in every direction; there is always a crowd at St. Ann’s well, where the pump is; all sorts of cabs and carts are being driven up and down just as fast as they can go, for the streets are as smooth as floors, and in the morning and evening there are about half a dozen coaches with four horses, and drivers and horn-blowers in red coats, the horses prancing and whips cracking as they start out for country trips or come back again. And as for the people on foot, they just swarm like bees, and rain makes no difference, except that then they wear mackintoshes, and when it’s fine they don’t. Some of these people step along as brisk as if they hadn’t anything the matter with them, but a good many of them help out their legs with canes and crutches. I begin to think I can tell how long a man has been at Buxton by the number of sticks he uses.
One day we was sitting on a bench in The Slopes, enjoying a bit of sunshine that had just come along, when a middle-aged man, with a very high collar and a silk hat, came and sat down by Jone. He spoke civilly to us, and then went on to say that if ever we happened to take a house near Liverpool he’d be glad to supply us with coals, because he was a coal merchant. Jone told him that if he ever did take a house near Liverpool he certainly would give him his custom. Then the man gave us his card. “I come here every year,” he said, “for the rheumatism in my shoulder, and if I meet anybody that lives near Liverpool, or is likely to, I try to get his custom. I like it here. There’s a good many ‘otels in this town. You can see a lot of them from here. There’s St. Ann’s, that’s a good house, but they charge you a pound a day; and then there’s the Old Hall. That’s good enough, too, but nobody goes there except shopkeepers and clergymen. Of course, I don’t mean bishops; they go to St. Ann’s.”
I wondered which the man would think Jone was, if he knew we was stopping at the Old Hall; but I didn’t ask him, and only said that other people besides shopkeepers and clergymen went to the Old Hall, for Mary Queen of Scots used to stop at that house when she came to take the waters, and her room was still there, just as it used to be.
“Mary Queen of Scots!” said he. “At the Old Hall?”
“Yes,” said I, “that’s where she used to go; that was her hotel.”
“Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots!” he said again. “Well, well, I wouldn’t have believed it. But them Scotch people always was close-fisted. Now if it had been Queen Elizabeth, she wouldn’t have minded a pound a day;” and then, after asking Jone to excuse him for forgetting his manners and not asking where his rheumatism was, and having got his answer, he went away, wondering, I expect, how Mary Queen of Scots could have been so stingy.
But although we could see so much sitting on benches, I didn’t give up Jone and the bath-chairs, and day before yesterday I got the better of him. “Now,” said I, “it is stupid for you to be sitting around in this way as if you was a statue of a public benefactor carved by subscription and set up in a park. The only sensible thing for you to do is to take a bath-chair and go around and see things. And if you are afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe. Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes. And if you don’t want me walking by your side like a trained nurse, I’ll take another chair and be pulled along with you.”
The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses. Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses on a farm, that the women drive to town.
Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to agreeable spots, which they said they would do.
After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went