A Voyage of Consolation

It seems inexcusable to remind the public that one has written a book. Poppa says I ought not to feel that way about it-that he might just as well be shy about referring to the baking soda that he himself invented-but I do, and it is with every apology that I mention it. I once had such a good time in England that I printed my experiences, and at the very end of the volume it seemed necessary to admit that I was engaged to Mr. Arthur Greenleaf Page, of Yale College, Connecticut. I remember thinking this was indiscreet at the time, but I felt compelled to bow to the requirements of fiction.

I was my own heroine, and I had to be disposed of. There seemed to be no alternative. I did not wish to marry Mr. Mafferton, even for literary purposes, and Peter Corke's suggestion, that I should cast myself overboard in mid-ocean at the mere idea of living anywhere out of England for the future, was autobiographically impossible even if I had felt so inclined. So I committed the indiscretion. In order that the world might be assured that my heroine married and lived happily ever afterwards, I took it prematurely into my confidence regarding my intention. The thing that occurred, as naturally and inevitably as the rain if you leave your umbrella at home, was that within a fortnight after my return to Chicago my engagement to Mr. Page terminated; and the even more painful consequence is that I feel obliged on that account to refer to it again.

Even an American man has his lapses into unreasonableness. Arthur especially encouraged the idea of my going to England on the ground that it would be so formative. He said that to gaze upon the headsman's block in the Tower was in itself a liberal education. As we sat together in the drawing-room-momma and poppa always preferred the sitting-room when Arthur was there-he used to gild all our future with the culture which I should acquire by actual contact with the hoary traditions of Great Britain. He advised me earnestly to disembark at Liverpool in a receptive and appreciative, rather than a critical and antagonistic, state of mind, to endeavour to assimilate all that was worth assimilating over there, remembering that this might give me as much as I wanted to do in the time. I remember he expressed himself rather finely about the only proper attitude for Americans visiting England being that of magnanimity, and about the claims of kinship, only once removed, to our forbearance and affection. He put me on my guard, so to speak, about only one thing, and that was spelling. American spelling, he said, had become national, and attachment to it ranked next to patriotism. Such words as "color," "program," "center," had obsolete English forms which I could only acquire at the sacrifice of my independence, and the surrender of my birthright to make such improvements upon the common language as I thought desirable. And I know that I was at some inconvenience to mention "color," "program," and "center," in several of my letters just to assure Mr. Page that my orthography was not in the least likely to be undermined.

Indeed, I took his advice at every point. I hope I do not presume in asking you to remember that I did. I know I was receptive, even to penny buns, and sometimes simply wild with appreciation. I found it as easy as possible to subdue the critical spirit, even in connection with things which I should never care to approve of. I shook hands with Lord Mafferton without the slightest personal indignation with him for being a peer, and remember thinking that if he had been a duke I should have had just the same charity for him. Indeed, I was sorry, and am still sorry, that during the four months I spent in England I didn't meet a single duke. This is less surprising than it looks, as they are known to be very scarce, and at least a quarter of a million Americans visit Great Britain every year; but I should like to have known one or two. As it was, four or five knights-knights are very thick-one baronet, Lord Mafferton, one marquis-but we had no conversation-one colonel of militia, one Lord Mayor, and a Horse Guard, rank unknown, comprise my acquaintance with the aristocracy. A duke or so would have completed the set. And the magnanimity which I would so willingly have stretched to include a duke spread itself over other British institutions as amply as Arthur could have wished. When I saw things in Hyde Park on Sunday that I was compelled to find excuses for, I thought of the tyrant's iron heel; and when I was obliged to overlook the superiorities of the titled great, I reflected upon the difficulty of walking in iron heels without inconveniencing a prostrate population. I should defy anybody to be more magnanimous than I was.

As to the claims of kinship, only once removed, to our forbearance and affection, I never so much as sat out a dance on a staircase with Oddie Pratte without recognising them.

It seems almost incredible that Arthur should not have been gratified, but the fact remains that he was not. Anyone could see, after the first half hour, that he was not. During the first half hour it is, of course, impossible to notice anything. We had sunk to the level of generalities when I happened to mention Oddie.

"He had darker hair than you have, dear," I said, "and his eyes were blue. Not sky blue, or china blue, but a kind of sea blue on a cloudy day. He had rather good eyes," I added reminiscently.

"Had he?" said Arthur.

"But your noses," I went on reassuringly, "were not to be compared with each other."

"Oh!" said Arthur.

"He was so impulsive!" I couldn't help smiling a little at the recollection. "But for that matter they all were."

"Impulsive?" asked Arthur.

"Yes. Ridiculously so. They thought as little of proposing as of asking one to dance."

"Ah!" said Arthur.

"Of course, I never accepted any of them, even for a moment. But they had such a way of taking things for granted. Why one man actually thought I was engaged to him!"

"Really!" said Arthur. "May I inquire--"

"No, dear," I replied, "I think not. I couldn't tell anybody about it-for his sake. It was all a silly mistake. Some of them," I added thoughtfully, "were very stupid."

"Judging from the specimens that find their way over here," Arthur remarked, "I should say there was plenty of room in their heads for their brains."

Arthur was sitting on the other side of the fireplace, and by this time his expression was aggressive. I thought his remark unnecessarily caustic, but I did not challenge it.

"Some of them were stupid," I repeated, "but they were nearly all nice." And I went on to say that what Chicago people as a whole thought about it I didn't know and I didn't care, but so far as my experience went the English were the loveliest nation in the world.

"A nation like a box of strawberries," Mr. Page suggested, "all the big ones on top, all the little ones at the bottom."

"That doesn't matter to us," I replied cheerfully, "we never get any further than the top. And you'll admit there's a great tendency for little ones to shake down. It's only a question of time. They've had so much time in England. You see the effects of it everywhere."

"Not at all. By no means. Our little strawberries rise," he declared.

"Do they? Dear me, so they do! I suppose the American law of gravity is different. In England they would certainly smile at that."

Arthur said nothing, but his whole bearing expressed a contempt for puns.

"Of course," I said, "I mean the loveliest nation after Americans."

I thought he might have taken that for granted. Instead, he looked incredulous and smiled, in an observing, superior way.

"Why do you say 'ahfter'?" he asked. His tone was sweetly acidulated.

"Why do you say 'affter'?" I replied simply.

"Because," he answered with quite unnecessary emphasis, "in the part of the world I come from everybody says it. Because my mother has brought me up to say it."

"Oh," I said, looking at the lamp, "they say it like that in other parts of the world too. In Yorkshire-and such places. As far as mothers go, I must tell you that momma approves of my pronunciation. She likes it better than anything else I have brought back with me-even my tailor-mades-and thinks it wonderful that I should have acquired it in the time."

"Don't you think you could remember a little of your good old American? Doesn't it seem to come back to you?"

All the Wicks hate sarcasm, especially from those they love, and I certainly had not outgrown my fondness for Mr. Page at this time.

"It all came back to me, my dear Arthur," I said, "the moment you opened your lips!"

At that not only Mr. Page's features and his shirt front, but his whole personality seemed to stiffen. He sat up and made an outward movement on the seat of his chair which signified, "My hat and overcoat are in the hall, and if you do not at once retract--"

"Rather than allow anything to issue from them which would imply that I was not an American I would keep them closed for ever," he said.

"You needn't worry about that," I observed. "Nothing ever will. But I don't know why we should glory in talking through our noses." Involuntarily I played with my engagement ring, slipping it up and down, as I spoke.

Arthur rose with an expression of tolerant amusement-entirely forced-and stood by the fireplace. He stood beside it, with his elbow on the mantelpiece, not in front of it with his legs apart, and I thought with a pang how much more graceful the American attitude was.

"Have you come back to tell us that we talk through our noses?" he asked.

"I don't like being called an Anglomaniac," I replied, dropping my ring from one finger to another. Fortunately I was sitting in a rocking chair-the only one I had not been able to persuade momma to have taken out of the drawing-room. The rock was a considerable relief to my nerves.

"I knew that the cockneys on the other side were fond of inventing fictions about what they are pleased to call the 'American accent,'" continued Mr. Page, with a scorn which I felt in the very heels of my shoes, "but I confess I thought you too patriotic to be taken in by them."

"Taken in by them" was hard to bear, but I thought if I said nothing at this point we might still have a peaceful evening. So I kept silence.

"Of course, I speak as a mere product of the American Constitution-a common unit of the democracy," he went on, his sentences gathering wrath as he rolled them out, "but if there were such a thing as an American accent, I think I've lived long enough, and patrolled this little Union of ours extensively enough, to hear it by this time. But it appears to be necessary to reside four months in England, mixing freely with earls and countesses, to detect it."

"Perhaps it is," I said, and I may have smiled.

"I should hate to pay the price."

Mr. Page's tone distinctly expressed that the society of earls and countesses would be, to him, contaminating.

Again I made no reply. I wanted the American accent to drop out of the conversation, if possible, but Fate had willed it otherwise.

"I sai, y'know, awfly hard luck, you're havin' to settle down amongst these barbarians again, bai Jove!"

I am not quite sure that it's a proper term for use in a book, but by this time I was mad. There was criticism in my voice, and a distinct chill as I said composedly, "You don't do it very well."

I did not look at him, I looked at the lamp, but there was that in the air which convinced me that we had arrived at a crisis.

"I suppose not. I'm not a marquis, nor the end man at a minstrel show. I'm only an American, like sixty million other Americans, and the language of Abraham Lincoln is good enough for me. But I suppose I, like the other sixty million, emit it through my nose!"

"I should be sorry to contradict you," I said.

Arthur folded his arms and gathered himself up until he appeared to taper from his stem like a florist's bouquet, and all the upper part of him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain corpulence; he is already well rounded.

"I need hardly say," he said majestically, "that when I did myself the honour of proposing, I was under the impression that I had a suitable larynx to offer you."

"You see I didn't know," I murmured, and by accident I dropped my engagement ring, which rolled upon the carpet at his feet. He stooped and picked it up.

"Shall I take this with me?" he asked, and I said "By all means."

That was all.

I gave ten minutes to reflection and to the possibility of Arthur's coming back and pleading, on his knees, to be allowed to restore that defective larynx. Then I went straight upstairs to the telephone and rang up the Central office. When they replied "Hello," I said, in the moderate and concentrated tone which we all use through telephones, "Can you give me New York?"

Poppa was in New York, and in an emergency poppa and I always turn to one another. There was a delay, during which I listened attentively, with one eye closed-I believe it is the sign of an unbalanced intellect to shut one eye when you use the telephone, but I needn't go into that-and presently I got New York. In a few minutes more I was accommodated with the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

"Mr. T.P. Wick, of Chicago," I demanded.

"Is his room number Sixty-two?"

That is the kind of mind which you usually find attached to the New York end of a trans-American telephone. But one does not bandy words across a thousand miles of country with a hotel clerk, so I merely responded:

"Very probably."

There was a pause, and then the still small voice came again.

"Mr. Wick is in bed at present. Anything important?"

I reflected that while I in Chicago was speaking to the hotel clerk at half-past nine o'clock, the hotel clerk in New York was speaking to me at eleven. This in itself was enough to make our conversation disjointed.

"Yes," I responded, "it is important. Ask Mr. Wick to get out of bed."

Sufficient time elapsed to enable poppa to put on his clothes and come down by the elevator, and then I heard:

"Mr. Wick is now speaking."

"Yes, poppa," I replied, "I guess you are. Your old American accent comes singing across in a way that no member of your family would ever mistake. But you needn't be stiff about it. Sorry to disturb you."

Poppa and I were often personal in our intercourse. I had not the slightest hesitation in mentioning his American accent.

"Hello, Mamie! Don't mention it. What's up? House on fire? Water pipes burst? Strike in the kitchen? Sound the alarm-send for the plumber-raise Gladys's wages and sack Marguerite."

"My engagement to Mr. Page is broken. Do you get me? What do you suggest?"

I heard a whistle, which I cannot express in italics, and then, confidentially:

"You don't say so! Bad break?"

"Very," I responded firmly.

"Any details of the disaster available? What?"

"Not at present," I replied, for it would have been difficult to send them by telephone.

I could hear poppa considering the matter at the other end. He coughed once or twice and made some indistinct inquiries of the hotel clerk. Then he called my attention again.

"Hello!" he said. "On to me? All right. Go abroad. Always done. Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, and the other places. I'll stand in. Germanic sails Wednesdays. Start by night train to-morrow. Bring momma. We can get Germanic in good shape and ten minutes to spare. Right?"

"Right," I responded, and hung up the handle. I did not wish to keep poppa out of bed any longer than was necessary, he was already up so much later than I was. I turned away from the instrument to go down stairs again, and there, immediately behind me, stood momma.

"Well, really!" I exclaimed. It did not occur to me that the privacy of telephonic communication between Chicago and New York was not inviolable. Besides, there are moments when one feels a little annoyed with one's momma for having so lightly undertaken one's existence. This was one of them. But I decided not to express it.

"I was only going to say," I remarked, "that if I had shrieked it would have been your fault."

"I knew everything," said momma, "the minute I heard him shut the gate. I came up immediately, and all this time, dear, you've been confiding in us both. My dear daughter."

Momma carries about with her a well-spring of sentiment, which she did not bequeath to me. In that respect I take almost entirely after my other parent.

"Very well," I said, "then I won't have to do it again."

Her look of disappointment compelled me to speak with decision. "I know what you would like at this juncture, momma. You'd like me to get down on the floor and put my head in your lap and weep all over your new brocade. That's what you'd really enjoy. But, under circumstances like these, I never do things like that. Now the question is, can you get ready to start for Europe to-morrow night, or have you a headache coming on?"

Momma said that she expected Mrs. Judge Simmons to tea to-morrow afternoon, that she hadn't been thinking of it, and that she was out of nerve tincture. At least, these were her principal objections. I said, on mature consideration, I didn't see why Mrs. Simmons shouldn't come to tea, that there were twenty-four hours for all necessary thinking, and that a gallon of nerve tincture, if required, could be at her disposal in ten minutes.

"Being Protestants," I added, "I suppose a convent wouldn't be of any use to us-what do you think?"

Momma thought she could go.

There was no need for hurry, and I attended to only one other matter before I went to bed. That was a communication to the Herald, which I sent off in plenty of time to appear in the morning. It was addressed to the Society Editor, and ran as follows:

"The marriage arranged between Professor Arthur Greenleaf Page, of Yale University, and Miss Mamie Wick, of 1453, Lakeside-avenue, Chicago, will not take place. Mr. and Mrs. Wick, and Miss Wick, sail for Europe on Wednesday by s.s. Germanic."

I reflected, as I closed my eyes, that Arthur was a regular reader of the Herald.

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