lamp, the insufficient rays of which brought out effective high lights
on the bald head of one audibly slumbering German on our side of the
compartment, and on the heavy face of a stout Frenchwoman who sat
opposite him, next to the old lady upon whom I was concentrating my
attention. The latter, obviously an American, the two foreigners, and
ourselves, were the sole occupants of the compartment; and certainly in
the appearance of none of her four fellow-passengers was there
justification of the wide-awake intentness of the kind old eyes that
now beamed on us through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles. Pensively, as
befitted the weary wanderer, I marvelled. How could she look so alive,
so wide awake, so energetic, at one o'clock in the morning?
The bald-headed man slept on. The stout woman removed a shell comb from
her back hair and composed herself for deeper slumber. Jessica
presented to my lambent gaze a visage which besought unspoken sympathy,
and mutely breathed a protest against travel in general and this phase
of it in particular. Jessica in the "still small hours" was never
really gay. It was dimly comforting to one of my companionable nature
to turn from her to the little old woman opposite me. In figure and
dress she might have posed for one of Leech's drawings of ancient
dames, so quaintly prim was she, so precise in their folds were her
little black mantle and her simple black gown, so effective a frame to
her wrinkled face was the wide black bonnet she wore. On her hands,
demurely crossed in her lap, were black lace mitts. Moreover, she was
enveloped, so to speak, in a dim aroma of peppermint, the source of
which was even then slightly distending one faded cheek. Irrepressibly
I smiled at her, and at once a long-drawn sigh of pleasure floated
across to me. In spontaneous good-fellowship she leaned forward.
"It's a real comfortable journey, ain't it?" she whispered, so
evidently torn between a passionate desire to talk and consideration
for the sleepers that my heart went out to her.
"Well, if you mean this especial journey--" I hesitated.
"Yes, I do," she insisted. "The seats are real comfortable. Everything
is." She threw out her mittened hands with a gesture that seemed to
emphasize a demand for approval. "I wouldn't change a single thing.
Some say it's hot; I don't think 'tis. I wouldn't mind, though, if
'twas. We're gettin' a nice draught."
I looked through the open window at the French landscape, bathed in the
glory of an August moon.
"That, at least, is very satisfactory," I admitted, cheerfully.
She looked a little blank as she glanced around, and a queer expression
of responsibility settled over her features, blurring their brightness
like a veil.
"I see," she said, slowly. "You mean France. Yes, 'tis nice, an' they's
certainly a great deal to see in it." She hesitated a moment, and then
went on more rapidly. "You know," she continued, in her high-keyed,
sibilant whisper, "it's some different with me from what 'tis with you.
You can speak French. I heard you talkin' to the conductor. An' I
suppose you've been here often, an' like it. But this is the first time
_I've_ come over to Europe. I've always meant to, sometime, but things
ain't been just so's I _could_ come. Now't I'm here, I can't stay long,
an' I must say I feel kind of homesick. There's so much to see it jest
makes my head swim. I come for a purpose--a purpose of my own--but
now't I'm here, I want to do my duty an' see things. I declare," she
added, shamefacedly, "I most hate to go to sleep nights, I'm so afraid
I'll miss something an' hear about it when I git back."
I asked a conventional question, which evoked a detailed report of her
journeyings. By this time Jessica had opened one eye; the two
foreigners slept on peacefully. She had landed at Naples, the old lady
told me; and from her subsequent remarks I gathered that she had found
the Italians as a people deficient in the admirable qualities of
cleanliness and modesty. She lamented, also, an over-preponderance of
art galleries, and the surprising slowness of the natives to grasp
intelligent remarks made in the English tongue. Aside from these
failings, however, she had found Italy somewhat interesting, and she
mentioned especially the grotto at Capri and the ascent of Vesuvius.
She added, casually, that few of her fellow-tourists had made this
latter excursion, as it was just after the severest eruptions, and the
air had been full of dust and cinders. Jessica opened the other eye. I
began to experience vivid interest in the conversation.
Rome, she further revealed, meant to her the Campagna and the
Catacombs. On the former she had taken walks, and in the very bowels of
the latter she had seemingly burrowed for days, following some
mysterious purpose of her own. Her favorite time for a promenade on the
Campagna, and one she paused to recommend to me, was at dusk, the place
then being quiet and peaceful, owing to the fact that tourists,
foolishly fearing the fever, kept away from it after sunset.
At this point Jessica sat up, arranged a pillow comfortably behind her
back, and gave her undivided attention to the monologue. At last she
put a question. Was the lady travelling alone? The lady hastened to
explain that she was not.
"My, no," she said, briskly. "I'm a tourist--that's what they call 'em,
you know, when they're with a man. They's eighteen in our party, and
the man that is takin' us is Mr. James George Jackson. He's real nice.
He's in one of the other cars on this train, an' they's three gentlemen
with him that belong to us, too. All the rest stayed in Paris because
they was tired. You see," she added, explanatorily, "we done Lourdes in
two days, an' we took it off our time in Paris. We ain't got much time
in Paris, anyhow, so we went an' come back at night. I s'pose the rest
thought it might be tryin' in the heat, so they stayed behind an' went
to Fontingblow yesterday an' up the Seen to-day. But I saw the Black
Forest when we was in Germany, an' the Rhine, too, an' some of us
walked from Binjen to Cooblens, so's we could git the view real well.
So I thought I'd let the French river an' forest go, an' see Lourdes
instead."
Jessica interrupted here.
"I beg your pardon," she asked, earnestly, "but--have you really been
travelling two nights and sight-seeing two days in that fearful crush
at Lourdes without any sleep?"
Our new friend nodded slowly, as one to whose attention the matter had
just been directed. "Why, yes, that's so," she conceded. "But I ain't a
bit tired. Old folks don't need much sleep, you know, an' I'm pretty
old. I was eighty-one last June."
Jessica dropped her pillow and sat up very straight, a slight flush
upon her face. Our new friend prattled on until the lights of Paris
appeared in the distance, and Jessica and I began to collect the
impressive array of impedimenta with which we had thoughtfully
multiplied the discomfort of travel. As we pulled down packages of rugs
and tightened various straps the bright eyes of the little old woman
watched us unswervingly through her spectacles. Grasping firmly a stout
and serviceable umbrella, she was ready to disembark. If she had
brought any baggage with her, which I doubted, it was evidently in the
fostering care of Mr. James George Jackson.
"What hotel are you goin' to?" she asked, suddenly. "I know a real good
one."
I told her it was the St. James et D'Albany, and her wrinkled face grew
radiant.
"Well, now, I declare," she cried, heartily, "ain't that nice! That's
jest where we're stayin', an' I'm as comfor'ble as I can be. I got a
room with a window that looks right into the Twilry Gardens. Mr.
Jackson says that I must have the best they is, because I'm the oldest.
'Age before beauty,' he says, an' none of the other ladies minds a bit.
They certainly are good to me. Of course, I don't say 't I wouldn't
like a more relishin' breakfast, because I would; an' I ain't got used
to that waiter man comin' right into my room with his trays before I'm
out of my bed, an' I never expect to. But _'tis_ a good hotel, an' the
lady that runs it is real nice, if she _is_ French."
The train swung into the great station as she spoke, and a round,
perspiring, and very grimy masculine face presented itself at the door
of our compartment.
"Well, Aunt Nancy," said the owner of this, with a sprightly effort at
cheerfulness, "you alive yet? The rest of us are dead. You come right
along with me now, and I'll whisk you up to the hotel in a cab. And if
you take my advice, you'll go to bed and stay there for two days, after
this experience."
He tucked the old lady under his arm as he spoke, and she trotted off
with him in high good-humor, turning several times to nod and smile at
us as she departed.
At eight o'clock the following morning I was awakened by Jessica, who
stood at my bedside light-heartedly reminding me of my self-imposed
duty of going early to the station to attend to the luggage, which we
had omitted to do the night before. My replies to this suggestion,
while they held Jessica's awe-struck attention for five minutes, would
be of no interest here. Bitterly I rose, reluctantly and yawningly I
dressed. At nine I stood at the entrance of our hotel signalling
sleepily for a cab, and wilting already under the heat of the August
sun. While I waited, a tourist coach drew up at the curb. It was
gorgeous with red paint and conspicuous with large signs bearing the
lettering "A VERSAILLES." The driver remained on the box. The guide,
evidently there by appointment and sharply on time, leaped to the
sidewalk, glanced at his watch, snapped the case shut with a satisfied
nod, and stood with his eyes on the hotel entrance. One tiny black
figure came forth, greeted him with a blithe "Bongjure," and intrepidly
began the perilous ascent of the ladder he hastened to place against
the side of the coach for her convenience. It was Aunt Nancy, dressed
as she had been the night before, but immaculately neat, and reflecting
in her face the brightness of the morning. I greeted her, and in her
glad surprise at seeing me again she remained suspended between earth
and heaven to talk to me, incidentally revealing the whole of two
serviceable gaiters, the tiny ruffle of an alpaca petticoat, and a
long, flat section of gray-striped cotton hose.
"Well, well," she beamed. "Ain't this nice? Yes, I'm goin'. The rest
ain't ready yet, but I've been awake sence five, so I thought I'd come
right down an' watch the coach fill up. The men ain't goin'--they're so
tired, poor dears. Onri, my waiter, says every last one of 'em is in
bed yit. But some of the ladies that went up the Seen yesterday is
comin', so I guess we'll have a real nice party. We're goin' to see the
palace an' the Treenon first, an' then I'm goin' to the fair in the
village. Mr. Jackson says a French fair is real interestin', but he
ain't goin'. He said last night he had a great deal of work to do in
his room to-day, an' he guessed we wouldn't none of us see him till
dinner. Do you know"--she lowered her voice mysteriously and cast an
apprehensive eye about her as she went on--"Onri says Mr. Jackson's
asleep this very minute, an' it's most nine o'clock in the mornin'!"
These startling revelations were checked by the appearance of two of
her fellow-tourists, and I seized the opportunity afforded by this
interruption to depart upon my uncongenial task.
We did not see Aunt Nancy again until the morning of our third day in
Paris, when I ran across her in the galleries of the Luxembourg. She
was settled comfortably in a bright-red upholstered seat near the main
entrance, and on her wrinkled face was an expression of perfect peace.
"Well, I'm glad to see you resting at last," was my greeting.
"Yes, I'm restin'," she conceded. "I always do in the art galleries,"
she added, simply, as I sat down beside her. "They've got the
comfort'blest chairs here of any, I think, though they was some nice
ones in Florence, too; an' in one of the places in Rome they was a long
seat where you could 'most lay down. I took a real nice nap there. You
see," she continued, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle out of one lace
mitt, "I don't know much about pictures, _anyway_, but I come right
along with the others, an' when I git here I jest set down an' rest
till they git through lookin' at 'em. I don't know what's Michelangelo
an' what _ain't_, an' 't seems to me it's too late to find out now."
Jessica appeared at this moment, and further revelations were checked
by greetings, followed almost immediately by our reluctant departure to
keep an appointment. Before we left, however, we learned that the day
at Versailles had been followed by an evening "at one of them French
kafes where women sing," and that fourteen hours of sight-seeing in
Paris itself had dispelled the threatened ennui of the second day.
Late that evening Mr. James George Jackson tottered to the side of
Jessica in the corridor of the Hotel D'Albany and addressed her, wiping
his brow as he did so.
"It's the old lady," he said--"Aunt Nancy Wheeler, you know. She asked
me to ask you two ladies if you wouldn't like to join us in a drive
this evening. She wants to see how Paris looks at night, an' I've got
to show her."
He swayed languidly against a pillar when we had accepted the
invitation, and groaned in reply to Jessica's tribute to the old lady's
activity.
"She's active all right," he remarked, grimly. "If there's anything
left of _me_ after she gets through, it'll be because I've inherited an
iron constitution from my mother. She's worn out every other man in the
party weeks ago. The worst of it is that I don't know why she does it.
She really doesn't care about anything; I'm sure of that. But she's got
some object; so she goes from early morn till dewy eve, and of course
some one's got to go with her; we can't let her wander around alone.
Besides, what I'm afraid of is that she'll go all to pieces some
day--like the deacon's one-horse shay, you know, and there won't be
anything left but a little heap of alpaca clothes and congress gaiters.
She's worn out six pair of gaiters since we started," he added, with a
wail. "I know, because I've had to buy them. _She_ hasn't had time." He
shook his head mournfully as he wandered away.
Jessica and I bade Aunt Nancy an affecting farewell that night, as we
were leaving Paris the next day. For several weeks we heard no more of
her, but in Scotland we crossed her trail again. The Highlands were
full of rumors of an intrepid old dame who had "done" the lakes and the
Trossachs as apparently they had never been done before. Was she an
American? She was. Eighty years old, dressed in black, with a big
bonnet, steel-rimmed spectacles, and gaiters? All was correct but the
gaiters. Seemingly the gaiter supply had been exhausted by the constant
demand. She wore shoes with heavy soles and, our informant added,
happily, gray, striped stockings. From the rumors of her achievements
on land and water, Jessica and I glanced apprehensively over the
surface of Scotland, fearing to see it strewn with exhausted boatmen,
guides, and drivers; but apparently all her victims had survived,
though they bore as a souvenir of their experience with her a haggard
and hunted look which Jessica declared she could detect from the top
seat of the loftiest coach.
Drifting down through Ireland we heard another echo of Aunt Nancy. She
had ridden on horseback through the Gap of Dunloe, no difficult feat in
itself, and one achieved daily during Kallarney's tourist season by old
ladies of various countries and creeds. In Aunt Nancy's case, however,
it appeared that she had been able to enjoy that variety which is so
gratifying a feature of human experience. Notwithstanding the fact that
she had never been on the back of a horse in her life, she unerringly
selected the freshest and most frolicsome of the Irish ponies as her
mount. It appears further that she was finally lifted to the saddle of
this animal as the result of a distinct understanding between Mr. James
George Jackson and her guide that the latter gentleman was not only to
accompany the lady every foot of the route, but was meantime to cling
valiantly to the bridle with both hands. Unfortunately, this
arrangement, so deeply satisfying to all, was not ratified by the
mettlesome Irish pony; the result being that, after the guide had been
swept off his feet by a sudden and unexpected lift of the animal's
forelegs, Aunt Nancy and the pony continued the excursion alone.
Judging from the terse words of one of the observers, it must have been
an exciting spectacle while it lasted, though it passed all too rapidly
beyond the line of the beholder's longing vision.
"Ye c'u'dn't tell," remarked this gentleman, sadly, in relating the
accident, "which was the harse an' which the auld lady, an' which the
Gap of Dunloe!"
Excited pursuers did not "catch 'em," as they were urged to do by the
frenzied Mr. Jackson, but they were rewarded by finding various
portions of Aunt Nancy's wearing apparel scattered along the trail.
Items: one black bonnet, one cape, one handkerchief, one pair of
steel-rimmed spectacles. Apparently only those garments securely
fastened in place, such as shoes and lace mitts, had survived the
experience. Apparently, also, Aunt Nancy had made in almost unbroken
silence her exciting mountain ride. The exception seemingly occurred
somewhere in the Dark Valley, where a mountain woman, seeing her fly
by, had thoughtlessly urged her to stop and buy a glass of goat's milk.
The woman's memory of the encounter was slightly vague, it having ended
so abruptly, but she retained the impression that Aunt Nancy had
expressed an unusual degree of regret at being unable to accept her
invitation.
"'Twasn't till thin I saw the poor harse was crazy wid fright, an' the
auld lady's close blowin' over his eyes," added the mountain woman,
sympathetically. "An' I couldn't do nathin', becuz, begorra, whin I
lifted me v'ice to call me big bye, the auld woman an' the harse was
half-way down the valley."
Fortunately, five or six miles of this stimulating pace had a blighting
effect on the wild Hibernian spirits of the pony, with the result that
he and his rider ambled at a most sedate gait into the space where the
row-boats were waiting their passengers for Ross Castle, and where the
remaining members of the party were expected to meet. The remaining
members of the party, for obvious reasons, were not yet there; and the
long delay before their arrival gave Aunt Nancy time to replace the
missing articles of her apparel with garments borrowed from the woman
at the refreshment booth, and to eat a hearty luncheon. Thus refreshed,
she was ready for the fourteen-mile journey in a row-boat to Ross
Castle, which was the next item on the programme of the day; and she
made it that afternoon, notwithstanding the almost hysterical
expostulations of Mr. James George Jackson.
It was not until we sailed for America that we looked again into Aunt
Nancy's dauntless eyes. She was the first passenger we saw when we
reached the deck of the Columbia, and her joy in the encounter was as
deep as our own. We chatted for a moment, and then she darted off to
greet various members of her party from whom side excursions had
temporarily separated her.
The sea was slumberously calm, bathed in hazy autumnal sunshine.
Light-hearted men and women in white linen and pale flannel costumes
strolled about the decks explaining to one another what good sailors
they were, and how they hoped the sea would not remain monotonously
smooth.
"One wants a little life and swing on a ship," explained one fat, blond
man on whose face we were even then looking, though we knew it not, for
the last time in seven sad days. To a unit the passengers poured into
the dining-saloon at the first call for luncheon. To a unit they
consumed everything on the bill of fare. All was peace and appetite.
That afternoon the sea roused herself drowsily, turned over, and
yawned. The blue waves of the morning were gone. In their place were
huge, oily, black swells, which lazily lifted the _Columbia_, held her
suspended for a long minute, and then with slow, shuddering reluctance
let her down, down, down. An interesting young Scotchman who was
sitting by Jessica's side on deck stopped suddenly in the midst of an
impassioned tribute to the character of Robert Brace, looked in her
face for an instant with eyes full of a horrible fear, and hastily
joined a stout German in a spirited foot-race to the nearest
companionway. A High-church English divine, who had met me half an hour
before and had hastened to spare me future heartaches by explaining at
once that he was married, rose abruptly from his chair beside me and
wobbled uncertainly to the deck-rail, where he hung suspended in an
attitude of pathetic resignation. Thus recalled to the grim realities
of life, Jessica and I looked up and down the deck. It was
deserted--deserted save for a little black figure that trotted rapidly
past us, clutching occasionally at the empty air for support as she was
hurled from one side to the other of the glistening deck, but cheerful,
undaunted, and happy.
"I got to have some exercise," panted Aunt Nancy, as she reclined for
an instant in my lap, where a lurch of the ship had deposited her; "so
I'm takin' a little walk." She was still walking when Jessica and I
retreated hurriedly to our cabin.
The days that followed are too sad to be described by the most
sympathetic pen. The sea, moved to her uttermost depths as she had not
been in twenty-five years, resented fiercely the presence of the
Columbia on her disturbed bosom. Madly she cast her from her; with
feline treachery she drew her back again, and sought to tear apart her
mighty timbers. Groaningly, agonizingly, pluckily, the Columbia bore
all--and revenged herself on her passengers. She stood on her head, and
sent them, so to speak, into her prow. She rose up on her stern, and
scattered them aft. She stood still and shuddered. She lay down on her
left side until she had imperilled the heart action of every person on
board; she rolled over on her right side and started briskly toward the
bottom of the sea. She recovered herself, leaped up and down a few
times to prove that she was still intact, and did it all over again.
Meanwhile the passengers, locked below and sternly commanded to keep to
their cabins, held fast to the sides of their berths and prayed
fervently for death.
Neither Jessica nor I was actively ill, but Jessica's indifference to
food and social intercourse was marked in the extreme. Stretched on her
back in the berth opposite my own, she lay day and night with closed
eyes and forbidding demeanor, rousing herself only long enough to repel
fiercely any suggestion that she take nourishment. Also, she furnished
me with one life-long memory. From sheer ennui I ordered and devoured
at noon on the third day a large portion of steamed peach dumpling,
with hard sauce. The look which Jessica cast first upon this dish and
then upon me will always, I think, remain the dominant feature of my
most troubled dreams.
During this time I had not forgotten Aunt Nancy, though I am sure
Jessica had. Her cabin, however, while on the same deck as our own, was
at the other end of the ship, and I had grave doubts of my ability to
cover safely the distance between. Finally I attempted it, and, aside
from the slight incidents of blacking one eye in an unexpected
diversion to the rail, and subsequently being hurled violently against
the back of an axe nailed to the wall, I made the passage in safety.
Aunt Nancy was not in her cabin, but a hollow groan from the upper
berth betrayed the fact that her room-mate was. From this lady I was
unfortunately unable to extract any information. She seemed to feel
that I was mercifully sent to chloroform her out of existence, and her
disappointment over my failure to play this Samaritan role was so
bitter that I was forced to withdraw lest she should utter things
unbefitting a gentlewoman.
Down the long corridor, as I groped my way back, something blew toward
me like a wraith from the sea. It wore a gray, woolly bathrobe, a tiny
wisp of white hair fastened precariously with one hair-pin, and a pair
of knitted bedroom slippers. It was Aunt Nancy, and we executed then
and there an intricate pas de deux in our common efforts to meet.
Finally the Columbia ceased her individual evolutions long enough to
enable us to grasp the passage-rail.