THE JOURNEY
Personally, I am of such an impatient disposition that I can't bear to
read a chapter in a book which begins: "Meanwhile----" Life is too
short for meanwhiles! But, since the Oldburgh epoch of my career has
passed, and the brilliant new epoch has a sea-voyage before it--and
crossing the ocean is distinctly a "meanwhile" occupation--I have
decided to mark time by taking extracts from my green leather voyage
book, with the solid gold clasp and the pencil that won't write. (The
city editor gave me the book.)
The first entry was made at the breakfast table in an unnecessarily
smart New York hotel. That's one bad feature about having a newspaper
pay your traveling expenses! You can't have the pleasure of indulging
the vagabondage of your nature--as you can when you're traveling on
your hook. The lonely little entry says:
"_Hate_ New York! Always feel countrified and unpopular
here!"
But the next one was much better. It reads:
"_Love_ the sea, whose principal charm is the sky above it!
The one acceptable fact about orthodox Heaven is that it's up
in the sky. You couldn't endure it if it were in any closer
quarters."
Yet between New York and Heaven there lay several unappreciated
days--days when I sat for long hours facing strange faces and hearing
a jumbled jargon about "barth" hours, deck chairs and miscarried
roses. By the way, a strange trick of fate had filled my own bare
little stateroom with flowers. I say a trick of fate, because some of
them were for Pauline Calhoun, whose New York friends had heard of her
proposed journey, but not of her accident, and some of them were
addressed to me. I could understand the Pauline blossoms, but those
directed to Miss Grace Christie were mystifying--very. But I accepted
them with hearty thanks, and the time I spent wondering over them kept
me from grieving over the fact that the Statue of Liberty was the only
person on the horizon whose face I had ever seen before; and they kept
me feeling like a prima donna for half a week.
"Henry Walker couldn't have sent them," I pondered the first day, as
the big, big box was deposited inside my door. "He's not such a close
friend, even though he is the Hiram Walkers' son--and then, New York
law students never have any money left over for orchids."
I enumerated all the other people I happened to know in New York at
that time, all of them there for the purpose of "studying" something,
and not for the purpose of buying vast quantities of the
highest-priced flower blown, and the mystery only loomed larger.
Still, the question could not keep me entirely occupied between meals,
and on the very day we sailed, before we had got into the space where
the union of the sea and sky seem to shut out all pettiness, I got to
feeling very sorry for myself. Thinking to get rid of this by mingling
with humanity, I went down into the lounge, where I was amazed to find
dozens of other women sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. It
was not an inspiring sight, so after a vain attempt to read, I curled
my arms round a sofa cushion in the corner of the big room and turned
my face away from the world in general. The next communication I
received was rather unexpected. I heard a brisk voice, close beside me
exclaim:
"My word! A great big girl like you crying!"
It was an English voice--a woman's, or rather a girl's, and as I
braced up indignantly I met the blue-gray eyes of a fresh-faced young
Amazon bent toward my corner sympathetically.
"I'm not crying," I denied.
She turned directly toward me then, and I saw a surprised smile come
over her face.
"Oh, _you_! No--I supposed that you were ill; but the little kid over
there----"
I saw then that there was a tiny girl tucked farther away into the
corner, her shoulders heaving between the conflict of pride and grief.
"Cheer up, and I'll tell you a story," the English girl encouraged,
and after a few minutes the small flushed face came out of its
hiding-place.
"So you thought I was talking to _you_?"
She turned to me laughingly after the smaller bunch of loneliness had
been soothed and sent away.
"I was--mistaken----"
"But I'm sure I should have offered to tell you a story--if I had
supposed that it would do you any good," she continued.
"Almost anything--any sound of a human voice would do me good now," I
answered desperately, and with that sky-rocket sort of spontaneity
which you feel you can afford once or twice in a lifetime.
"You're alone?"
"Yes--and miserable."
Her blue eyes were very frank and friendly, and I immediately
straightened up with a hope that we might discover some mutual
interest nearer and dearer than the Boston Tea-Party.
That's one good thing about a seafaring life--the preliminaries that
you are able to do without in making friends. If you meet a nice woman
who discovers that her son went to Princeton with your father's
friend's nephew you at once take it for granted that you may tell her
many things about yourself that are not noted down in your passport.
"You're American--of course?" this English girl asked next.
I acquiesced patriotically, but not arrogantly.
"Yes--I'm American! My name's Grace Christie, and I'm a newspaper
woman from--from----"
I hesitated, and she looked at me inquiringly.
"I didn't understand the name of the state?" she said.
"Because I haven't told you yet!" I laughed. "I remember other
experiences in mentioning my native place to you English. You always
say, 'Oh, the place where the negro minstrels come from!'"
She smiled, and her face brightened suddenly.
"The South! How nice! I _love_ Americans!" she exclaimed, confiding
the clause about her affection for my countrymen in a lowered voice,
and looking around to make sure that no one heard.
Then, after this, it took her about half a minute to invite me out of
my corner and to propose that I go and meet her father and mother.
"We'll find them in the library," she ventured, and we did.
"The South! How nice! We _love_ Americans!" they both exclaimed, as we
unearthed them a little while later in a corner of the reading-room.
And before they had confided to me their affection for my countrymen
they lowered their voices and glanced at their daughter to make sure
that she was not listening. They made their observations in precisely
the same tone and they looked precisely alike, except that the father
had side-whiskers. They were both small and slight and very durably
dressed.
"Miss Christie is a newspaper woman--traveling alone!"
The daughter, whom they addressed as "Hilda" made the announcement
promptly, and her manner seemed to warn them that if they found this
any just cause or impediment they were to speak now or else hereafter
forever hold their peace.
"Indeed?" said the mother, looking over my clothes with a questioning
air, which, however, did not disapprove. "Indeed?"
"My word!" said the father, also taking stock of me, but his glance
got no further than my homesick face. "My _word_!"
But you are not to suppose from the tone that anything had gone
seriously wrong with his word. He said it in a gently searching way,
as an old grandfather, seeking about blindly on the mantlepiece might
say, "My spectacles!"
So realistic was the impression of his peering around mildly in
search of something that I almost jumped up from my chair to see if I
could, by mistake, be sitting on his word.
"Isn't she young?"
His twinkling little gray eyes sought his wife's as if for
corroboration, and she nodded vigorously.
"Indeed, yes, Herbert! But they shed their pinafores long before our
girls do, remember!"
Then he turned to his daughter.
"My dear, the American women _are_ so capable!" he said, and she threw
him a smile which would have been regarded as impertinent--on English
soil.
"Well, I'm sure I've no objections to being an American woman myself,"
she said.
"And you do not mind the loneliness of the trip you're taking?" the
mother put in hastily, as if to cover her daughter's remark.
"I didn't--until to-day."
"But we must see to it now that you're not too lonely," she hastened
to assure me. "Where have they put you in the dining-room, my dear?"
I mentioned my table's location.
"Oh, but we'll get the steward to change you at once!" they chorused,
when it had been pointed out to them that my position in the salon was
isolated and far away from the music of the orchestra.
"We're just next the captain's table," Hilda explained. "We happened
to know him and----"
"And it's inspiring to watch the liberties he takes with the menu,"
the father said. "I'd best write down our number, though I'll see the
steward myself."
From his pocketbook he produced a card, scribbling their table number
upon the back and handing it to me.
I took it and glanced at the legend the face of it bore, first of all,
for figures are just figures, even though they do radiate out from the
captain's table.
"Mr. Herbert Montgomery, Bannerley Hall, Bannerley, Lancashire," was
the way it read.
"Lancashire?" I asked, looking up so quickly that Hilda mistook my
emotion for dismay.
"Yes, we live in Lancashire, but----"
"But we're going on to London first," Mrs. Montgomery assured me.
"We'll see to it that you're put down, safe and sound, at Charing
Cross," Mr. Herbert Montgomery finished up.
I looked up again, this time in sheer bewilderment.
"Liverpool's in Lancashire," Hilda explained. "I thought perhaps you
were afraid we would desert you as soon as we docked."
I laughed in some embarrassment.
"I'm sure I never before heard that Liverpool had any connection with
Lancashire," I explained. "But I was thinking of--something else."
"Something else--how curious! Why, what else is Lancashire noted for
in America, pray?"
They were all three looking at me in some excitement, for my eyes were
betraying the palpitations I was experiencing.
"Do you--does it happen that you have ever heard of Colmere Abbey?" I
asked.
They drew a deep breath, evidently relieved.
"Do we!" they chorused again, as they had a habit of doing, I learned,
whenever they were surprised or amused. "Well, _rather_!"
"Surely you don't mean to tell me that it's your own home?" I
demanded, wondering if coincidence had gone so far, but they shook
their heads.
"No! Just next-door neighbors."
"Next-door neighbors to the place, my dear young lady," Mr. Montgomery
modified, glancing at his wife rather reproachfully. "Not to
the--owner of Colmere!"
But I scarcely heard him. I was trying to place an ancient memory in
my mind.
"'Bannerley Hall!'"
"That's our place."
"But I'm trying to remember where I have heard of it," I explained.
"Of course! They all mentioned it at one time or another."
"They?--Who, my dear? Why Herbert--isn't this interesting?"
"Why, Washington Irving--and Lady Frances Webb--and Uncle James
Christie."
Their questions and my half-dazed answers were tumbling over one
another.
"James Christie--Grace Christie?" Mrs. Montgomery asked, connecting
our names with a delighted opening of her eyes. "Why, my _dear_!"
"How fortunate I was!" observed Hilda. "I knew, though, from the
moment I saw the back of your head that you were no ordinary American
tourist!"
"They all 'rode over to Bannerley Hall--the day being fine!'" I
quoted, from one of the letters written by Lady Frances Webb.
"That was in my great-grandfather's time," Mr. Montgomery elucidated.
"And James Christie was your----"
"Uncle--with several 'greats' between."
"He was even more famous in England than in his own country," Mrs.
Montgomery threw in hastily, as she saw her husband's eyes
twinkling--a sure sign, I afterward learned, that he was going to say
something wicked. "He painted all the notable people of the age."
"He made many pictures of the Lady Frances Webb," Mr. Montgomery
succeeded in saying, after a while. "I don't know whether it's well
known in America or not, but--there was--_talk_!"
"Herbert!"
He stiffened.
"It's true, my dear."
"We don't know whether it's true or not!" she contended.
"Well, it's tradition! I'm sure Miss Christie wouldn't want to come to
England and not learn all the old legends she might."
Then, partly because I was bubbling over with excitement, and partly
because I wished to ease Mrs. Montgomery's mind on the subject, I
began telling them my story--from the day of Aunt Patricia's sudden
whim, three days before her death, down to the packet of faded letters
lying at that moment in the bottom of my steamer trunk.
"I thought perhaps the present owner of Colmere might let me burn them
there!" I explained. "I have pictured her as a dear and somewhat
lonely old dowager who would take a great deal of interest in this
ancient affair."
The three looked at me intently for an instant, but not one of them
laughed.
"And you're carrying them back to Colmere--instead of selling them!"
Mrs. Montgomery finally uttered in a little awed voice, as I finished
my story. "How extraordinary!"
"Very," said Hilda.
"Most un-American--if you'll not be offended with me for saying so,
Miss Christie," Mr. Montgomery observed. Then he turned to his wife.
"My dear, only _think_ of Lord Erskine!" he said.
She shook her head.
"But I mustn't!" she answered, with a sad little smile. "I really
couldn't think of Lord Erskine while listening to anything so
pretty."
I caught at the name, curiously.
"Lord Erskine?"
"Yes--the present owner of the abbey."
"But--what a beautiful-sounding name! Lord Erskine!"
I looked at them encouragingly, but a hush seemed to have fallen over
their audible enthusiasm. Mrs. Montgomery's lips presently primped
themselves up into a signal for me to come closer to her side--where
her husband might not hear her.
"Lord Erskine is, my dear--the most--notorious old man in _England_!"
she pronounced--so terribly that "And may the Lord have mercy on his
soul" naturally followed. Her verdict was final.
"But what has he done?" I started to inquire, the journalistic
tendency for the moment uppermost, but her lips showed white lines of
repression.
"He is never _mentioned_!" she warned briefly, and I felt constrained
to wish that the same punishment could be applied to America's
ancient sinners.
"Oh, so bad as that?"
She leaned closer.
"My dear Miss Christie, it would be impossible--quite impossible--to
enumerate the peccadillos of that wretched old creature!"
"Yet you women are always ready to attempt the impossible!" her
husband interposed, after his noisy attempt at lighting a cigarette
had failed to drown out our voices.
She looked up at him.
"Herbert, I don't understand you, I'm sure."
He laughed.
"Well, I don't understand you, either!" he replied. "For twenty years
now I have noticed that when two or three women in our part of the
country are gathered together the first thing they say to each other
before the men have come into the room is that Lord Erskine's recent
escapades are positively unmentionable--then they fly at each other's
throats for the privilege of retailing them."
She continued to stare at him, steadily and with no especial
unfriendliness in her gaze.
"And the men--over their wine?" she asked casually.
He squared his shoulders.
"That's a very different matter," he declared. "With us he is as
honest and open a diversion as hunting! The first thing we say in
greeting, if we meet a neighbor on the road is: 'What's the latest
news from Lord Erskine?'"
Their eyes challenged each other humorously for another moment, when
Hilda broke in.
"Don't you think we've given Miss Christie a fairly good idea that she
mustn't expect to be invited down to Colmere Abbey--and that if she is
invited, she mustn't go?" she inquired, with gentle sarcasm.
"But, before we get away from the subject--what of the Webb family?" I
begged forlornly. "Is there no one living who might take an interest
in the story of Lady Frances?"
I am sure my voice was as sad with disappointment as old Joe
Jefferson's used to be when he'd plead: "Does _no one_ know Rip Van
Winkle?"
"Lord Erskine's mother was a Webb," Mrs. Montgomery explained.
"The one fact which can be stated about the old gentleman which need
not be blushed for," her husband added. "In truth, he has always been
vastly proud of his lineage."
"About all that he's ever had to be proud of! His own performances in
social and family life have been--well, what I have outlined to you. I
happened to know details of some earlier happenings, and all I can say
is that my own attitude toward Lord Erskine is rather unchristian."
"But I believe Miss Christie was asking about the family history
further back than the present lord," Hilda reminded them again, and
her mother took the cue.
"Ah, yes! To be sure! It's the failing of later years, my dear, to
wish to discuss one's own memories! But of course your interest lies
in the traditions of the novelist."
"Her history has always held a peculiar interest for me," I replied,
"first, naturally, on account of the connecting link--then on account
of the--tragic complication----"
She nodded her head briskly.
"Yes--poor Lady Frances! She was not very happy, if the ancient
reports be true."
"I judge not--from her letters."
"But her memory is held in great reverence by the educated people
around in the country," she hastened to assure me. "And there is a
lovely memorial tablet in the church--quite aside from the tomb! A
literary club of London had it placed there!"
"And every birthday there are wreaths," Mr. Montgomery threw in,
evidently hoping to make it up to me for the disheartening gossip of
the present age; but my dreams were rapidly fading--and I saw my
chances for having a bonfire on the library hearth at Colmere go up
in something far more unsubstantial than smoke.
"Well, I'm sure we've told Miss Christie quite enough about our
neighbors--for a first sitting," Hilda Montgomery broke in at this
point, as she rose and made a reckless suggestion that we go out and
walk a little while. "_I_ don't wish to spend the whole afternoon
talking about a villainous old Englishman!" she confided, when we were
well out of ear-shot. "One might spend the time talking about
'Americans--don't you know?'"
"Americans?"
"Yes--charming, handsome, young Americans! You remember the first
thing I told you was that I loved Americans?"
"Yes--and your father and mother said they did, too--when you weren't
listening."
She nodded her blond head, in energetic delight.
"They are trying to pretend that it will be a difficult matter to win
their consent--but it won't."
We steered our course around a group of people who were disputing, in
Wabash tones, over a game of shuffleboard.
"Consent?" I repeated.
"His name is John McAdoo Carpenter--and he lives at South Bend,
Indiana--did you ever hear of the place? Did you ever hear of him?"
She caught me by the arm and we walked precipitately over to the
railing--out of the sound of the Wabash tones.
"If I don't talk to somebody before that sun goes down I'll jump right
over this railing," she explained. "Here's his picture!"
I took the small blue leather case and looked at the honest, rather
distinguished face it held.
"But why should your parents disapprove of _him_?" I asked in such
genuine surprise that she gave me a smile which sealed forever our
friendship.
"They don't--really! It's just that they like to torment me because he
happened not to be born in either New York or Kentucky. An
Englishman's knowledge of America's excellence extends no further
than that."
Night was coming on--and the sea looked pretty vast and unfriendly. It
was the lonesome hour, when any feminine thing far away from home has
to wax either confidential or tearful. Hilda was determined to be
confidential, and I let her have her say. I went down, after a while,
and dressed for dinner--listlessly and without heart, but when I went
into the dining-room a little later and found my place at the table
next the captain's, the geniality of the family atmosphere I found
there was vastly cheering.
Mrs. Montgomery was a rather magnificent little gray-haired lady in
gray satin and diamonds, and her husband had made the evolution from
the chrysalis state into that of the butterfly by donning his dress
clothes and putting up a monocle in place of the comfortable reading
glasses he had worn in the afternoon. Hilda was wholesome and
sweet-looking but quite secondary to her parents, in a soft blue
gown.
The subject under discussion when I arrived was evidently the points
of superiority of one American locality over another and they took me
into their confidence at once.
"I appeal to you, Miss Christie, as an American," Mr. Montgomery said,
after the steward who had acted as my pilot was out of hearing.
"Shouldn't you think now--if you didn't know the difference--_shouldn't_
you think now that a 'South _Bender'_ was a species of acrobat?"
* * * * *
Then, try as hard as I might to keep all physical signs of my mental
infirmity from cropping out in my log-book, the second evening out
found an entry like this showing itself--written almost entirely
without effort on my part--like "spirit writing":
"To-night the orchestra is playing _The Rosary_, and I had to
get away from all those people in the lounge!
"I have come down here--away from it, as I thought, but, no!
Those same high, wailing notes that we heard that first
day--_that first day_--are ringing in my ears this minute.
"How they sob--sob--sob! And over the hours they spent
together! That's the foolish part of it! I am sobbing over
the hours I _might_ have spent with him--and didn't!
"'Are like a string of pearls to me!'
"Bah! The hours I spent with him wouldn't make pearls enough
for a stick-pin--much less a rosary!
"To me _Caro Mio Ben_ is a much more sensible little love
plaint! I wonder if _he_ knows it? I wonder if he heard that
girl singing in the parlor the night of the Kendalls'
dance--and if it still rings--rings--rings in his mind every
time he thinks of me? Or if he ever thinks of me at all?"
I have inserted this not so much to show you how very critical my case
was, as to demonstrate how valuable a thing is diversion. Without
Hilda and the elder Montgomerys I should no doubt have tried to
emulate Lady Frances Webb in the feat of writing heart-throbs.
The third day's observation was a distinct improvement.
"The men on shipboard are rather better than the women--just as
they are on dry land. True, there are some who have sold
Chicago real estate, and are now bent upon spending the rest of
their lives running over to Europe to criticize everything that
they can not buy. Nothing is sacred to them--until after they
have paid duty on it. They revere and caress their own Italian
mantlepieces, their cases of majolica, and their collection of
Wedgwood--when these are safely decorating their lake-shore
homes--but what Europe keeps for herself they scorn.
"'Bah! I don't see anything so swell about St. Mark's--nor St.
Doge's either!' I heard one emit this morning. 'But, old man,
you just ought to see the champagne glasses I bought last year
in Venice. The governor dined with me the other night, and he
said----' etc.
"Then, there's another sort of Philistine, who goes all over
the Old World eating his lunch off places where men have
suffered, died, or invented pendulums.
"'That confounded Leaning Tower _does_ feel like it's wiggling
as you go up, but pshaw! it's perfectly safe! Why, I stayed on
top long enough to eat three sandwiches and drink a bottle of
that red ink you get for half a dollar in Florence!'
"This doesn't create much of a stir, however, because there's
always one better.
"'Nice little tower down there in Pisa--and you really have to
have something like that to relieve your constitution of the
pictorial strain in Florence--but you see, after you've eaten
hard-boiled eggs on top of _Cheops_, climbing the Leaning Tower
is not half so exciting as riding a sapling was when you were a
boy!'
"'And oh, speaking of hard-boiled eggs--have you ever been to
Banff, Mr. Smith?' one of the women in the crowd speaks up.
'Yes, the scenery in the Canadian Rockies is all right, of
course, but just to _think_ of having your eggs perfectly hot
and well done in the waters of Banff!'
"There are other women on board, however, whose thoughts are
not on food. They are more amusing by far to watch than the
innocent creatures who love Banff. They manage to stay well out
of view by strong daylight, then come into the lounge at night,
dressed in plumes and diamonds like Cinderella's stepsisters,
and select the husbands of sea-sick wives to ask advice about
focusing a kodak or going to Gibraltar to buy a mandarin coat!
"But, as I have said, the men for the greater part are much
more interesting than the women--still I have never aspired to
a nautical flirtation, for a month after one is past you can't
recall the principal's name. You do well if you can remember
his nationality."
The entry broke off with this piece of sarcasm, which, after all, is
actual truth. A friend of mine had such an experience. A month after a
bitter parting on a moonlit deck one night she came face to face with
the absent one in a church in Rome--and all she could stammer was:
"Oh--you _Canadian_!"
The fourth day--after the last vestige of the gulls had been left
behind--I began to grow impatient. The "meanwhile" aspect of life in
general was beginning to press down.
"I wish mother had named me 'Patience,' for I love a joke!" I
wrote frantically--with the same feeling of suffocation which
caused Lady Frances Webb to rush out to the rose garden where
the sun-dial stood, to keep from hearing the clock tick.
"To me, the inertia which a woman is supposed to exhibit is
the hardest part of her whole earthly task! And I don't know
what it's for, either, unless to prepare her for a future
incarnation into a camel!
"Yet, if you're a woman, you just must stay still and let
your heart's desire slip through your fingers--even if you
have to lock yourself up into your bedroom closet to
accomplish it!"
And yet, even as I wrote, I wondered what I'd do when I should be back
in America. Somehow, I didn't exactly fancy myself getting a ticket
home from New York with stop-over privileges at Pittsburgh--where I
could spend an exciting time looking up a city directory!
And so the remaining days of the voyage passed. The Montgomery family
planned to have me go home with them, after a day in London, and
declared that I could find as much interesting news to write home for
the _Herald_ from Lancashire as from any other portion of the United
Kingdom, since one never knew where a fire would be started or a bomb
discovered through the playful antics of the women who have changed
the "clinging" sex into the _flinging_ sex; and I had accepted
fervently--when, on the trip from Liverpool down to London, these
arrangements were abruptly upset.
We were a little late in landing, and rushed straight to the train,
where a tea-basket, operated in the compartment which we had to
ourselves, was giving me the assurance that surely, next to a hayloft
on a rainy morning, a private compartment in a British train is the
coziest spot on the face of the earth, when Mr. Montgomery suddenly
dropped the sheet of newspaper he had been eagerly scanning.
"My _word_!" he said.
His exclamation was so insistent that I immediately felt in my pocket
to see if I had his word, and his wife glanced up from the lamp which
she was handling lovingly.
"Yes, Herbert?"
"But I say--Lord Erskine is dead!"
"Herbert!"
Her tone was accusing, but her husband nodded, with a pleased look of
assurance.
"You may read it for yourself, I'm sure--if you don't believe me!"
He handed the paper over to her, and she received it gingerly, after
looking to the tea-basket with a housewifely air, and placing the
lamp quite to one side, out of harm's way. Then she turned to the
article indicated, reading slowly, while her daughter looked over her
shoulder.
"Why, he's _been_ dead!"
She glanced up suddenly, toward me, with a shamefaced look.
"He was dead at the very time you were telling Grace all those
atrocious things about him!" Hilda reminded her, smiling at the look
of discomfiture which had crept over the kindly, wrinkled little face.
"Yes! It's--extraordinary!"
"And it makes us both feel--a little uncomfortable, eh?"
Her husband's tone was tormenting, but she turned on him seriously.
"I'm sure, Herbert, dear, you said quite as much as I did!" she
declared, evidently finding relief in the knowledge. "Still--this news
does rather make one--think."
The girl rattled the sheet of paper excitedly.
"I'm thinking!" she announced, her eyes wide. "I'm thinking of Colmere
Abbey! What a chance for some rich decent American! Somebody that one
could easily endure, you understand!"
"Hilda!"
She waved aside the reprimand.
"Grace understands me--and what I think of Americans," she answered
quickly. "But, mother, this _is_ a problem! What Englishman would buy
the place--with its haunting tales--and monstrous value? Nobody would
be rich enough except one of the millionaires who owns a dozen homes
already. And the next-of-kin will inherit nothing along with the place
to keep it up!"
"Hilda! This is neither respectful nor neighborly," her mother
remonstrated again, then she turned to her husband. "Shall you write
to the new Lord Erskine from London, Herbert?"
Her tone was one of foregone conclusion, conventional enough, but very
kindly, and her husband nodded obediently.
"Oh, to be sure, my dear," he chirruped in a dutiful way. "I shall
wire his lawyers immediately and----"
"And ask for the pleasure of putting him up while he's in the
country?"
"Certainly! Certainly!"
"It will be unpleasant--this period of mourning that we shall have to
affect--for his sake," she went on, "but it is out of respect for the
neighborly proprieties, after all."
Mrs. Montgomery was looking at us all in turn, in some little
perplexity, when a sudden recollection came to me of how difficult it
is sometimes to amalgamate guests--no matter how many rooms there are
to one's house.
"And I'll defer my visit until later?" I suggested.
She instantly smiled across at me.
"Just a few days--if you don't mind, dear," she said. "I had planned
so many delightful things for _your_ stay--and I know that you
wouldn't enjoy the period of mourning."
"Not so much as you would if you had known Lord Erskine!" her husband
put in wickedly. "And I'm determined to mourn only the briefest time
possible."
"Not an hour later than Saturday!" his wife promised generously--and a
few hours afterward when they put me down at Charing Cross and sent me
whirling away to a lady-like hotel in Bloomsbury, it was with spoken,
written and pantomime directions as to which trains, and what-timed
trains--and _how many_ trains I was to take toward the end of the week
to get to Bannerley.
In the meanwhile I knuckled down devotedly to London--and sent my
deductions home across seas, in neatly typed packets, to _The Oldburgh
Herald_.