[Illustration:
_Lilian Bell_
Duogravure
From the Painting by Oliver Dennett Grover]
Abroad with the Jimmies
BY
LILIAN BELL,
AUTHOR OF
"THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID," "THE EXPATRIATES," ETC.
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO _My Dear Father_, WHOSE HIGH TYPE OF
PATRIOTISM, STEADFAST LOYALTY TO THE GOVERNMENT, AND DEVOTION TO HIS
FAMILY HAVE TAUGHT ME WHEREIN LIE THE IDEALS OF LIFE.
Preface
If the critical public had cared to snub Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, I,
who am a fighting champion of theirs, would never have run the risk of
boring it by a further chronicle of their travels. But from a careful
survey of my mail, I may say that the present volume of their doings and
undoings is a direct result of the friendships they formed in "As Seen
by Me," and has almost literally been written by request.
With which statement, as the flushed and nervous singer, who responds to
friendly clappings, comes forward, bows, sings, and retires, so do I,
and the curtain falls on the Jimmies and Bee and me, all kissing our
hands to the gallery.
Contents
CHAPTER
I. Our House-boat at Henley
II. Paris
III. Strasburg and Baden-Baden
IV. Stuttgart, Nuremberg, and Bayreuth
V. The Passion Play
VI. Munich to the Achensee
VII. Dancing in the Austrian Tyrol
VIII. Salzburg
IX. Ischl
X. Vienna
XI. My First Interview with Tolstoy
XII. At one of the Tolstoy Receptions
XIII. Shopping Experiences
CHAPTER I
OUR HOUSE-BOAT AT HENLEY
It speaks volumes for an amiability I have always claimed for myself
through sundry fierce disputes on the subject with my sister, that, even
after two years of travel in Europe with her and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie,
they should still wish for my company for a journey across France and
Germany to Russia. Bee says it speaks volumes for the tempers of the
Jimmies, but then Bee is my sister, or to put it more properly, I am
Bee's sister, and what woman is a heroine to her own sister?
In any event I am not. Bee thinks I am a creature of feeble intelligence
who must be "managed." Bee loves to "manage" people, and I, who love to
watch her circuitous, diplomatic, velvety, crooked way to a straight
end, allow myself to be so "managed;" and so after safely disposing of
Billy in the grandmotherly care of Mamma for another six months, Bee and
I gaily took ship and landed safely at the door of the Cecil, having
been escorted up from Southampton by Jimmie.
While repeated journeys to Europe lose the thrill of expectant
uncertainty which one's first held, yet there is something very pleasing
about "_going back_." And so we were particularly glad again to join
forces with our friends the Jimmies and travel with them, for they, like
Bee and me, travel aimlessly and are never hampered with plans.
Everybody seems to know that we do not mean business, and nobody has
ever dared to ask whether our intentions were serious or not.
In this frame of mind we floated over to England and had a fortnight of
"the season" in London. But this soon palled on us, and we fell into the
idle mood of waiting for something to turn up.
One Sunday morning Bee and Mrs. Jimmie and I were sitting at a little
table near the entrance to the Cecil Hotel, when Jimmie came out of a
side door and sat down in front of us, leaning his elbows on the table
and grinning at us in a suspicious silence. We all waited for him to
begin, but he simply sat and smoked and grinned.
"Well! Well!" I said, impatiently, "What now?"
You would know that Jimmie was an American by the way he smokes. He
simply eats up cigars, inhales them, chews them. The end of his cigar
blazes like a danger signal and breathes like an engine. He can hold his
hands and feet still, but his nervousness crops out in his smoking.
Finally, exasperated by his continued silence, Bee said, severely:
"Jimmie, have you anything up your sleeve? If so, speak out!"
"Well!" said Jimmie, brushing the cigar ashes off his wife's skirt, "I
thought I'd take you all out to Henley this morning to look at the
house-boat."
"House-boat!" shrieked Bee and I in a whisper, clutching Jimmie by the
sleeve and lapel of his coat and giving him an ecstatic shake.
"Are we going to have a house-boat?" asked Bee.
"We!" said Jimmie. "_I_ am going to have a house-boat, and I am going to
take my wife. If you are good perhaps she will ask you out to tea one
afternoon."
"How many staterooms are there, Jimmie? Can we invite people to stay
with us over night?" demanded Bee.
"You cannot," said Jimmie, firmly. "I said a house-boat, not a house
party."
"I shall ask the duke," said Bee, clearing her throat in a pleased way.
"Can't I, Mrs. Jimmie?"
"Certainly, dear. Ask any one you like."
"If you do," growled Jimmie, who hates the duke because he wears gloves
in hot weather, "I'll invite the chambermaid and the head-waiter of this
hotel."
"We ought to be starting," said Mrs. Jimmie, pacifically, and we started
and went and arrived.
As we were driving to the station I noticed all the way along, and I had
noticed them ever since we had been in London, large capital H's on a
white background, posted on stone walls, street corners, lampposts, and
occasionally on the sidewalks.
"What are those H's for, Jimmie?" I asked. To which he replied with
this record-breaking joke:
"Those are the H's that Englishmen have been dropping for generations,
and being characteristic of this solid nation, they thus ossified them."
I forgave Jimmie a good deal for that joke.
At the pier at Henley a man met us with a little boat and rowed us up
the river, past dozens of house-boats moored along the bank.
The river had been boomed off for the races, which were to begin the
next day, with little openings here and there for small boats to cross
and recross between races. Private house-boat flags, Union Jacks,
bunting, and plants made all the house-boats gay, except ours, which
looked bare and forlorn and guiltless of decoration of any sort. It was
fortunately situated within plain view of where the races would finish,
and by using glasses we could see the start.
Several crews were out practising. One shell which flashed past us held
a crew in orange and black sweaters. We had previously noticed that
there was no American flag on any of the house-boats.
Orange and black! We nearly stood up in our excitement.
"What's your college?" yelled Jimmie, hoping they were Americans.
"Princeton!" they yelled back.
With that Jimmie ripped open a long pole he was carrying, and the stars
and stripes floated out over our shell. The Princeton crew shipped their
oars, snatched off their caps, and responded by giving their college
yell, ending with "Old Glo-ree! Old Glo-ree!! Old Glo-ree!!!" yelled
three times with all the strength of their deep lungs.
That little glimpse of America made Bee and me shiver as if with ague,
while Jimmie's chin quivered and he muttered something about "darned
smoke in his eyes."
"Jimmie," I said, excitedly, "they are rowing toward us to let us speak
if we want to."
Jimmie waved his hand to them and they pulled up alongside. We exchanged
enthusiastic "How-do-do's" with them, although we had never seen one of
them before.
"Are you going to row to-morrow?" asked Jimmie.
"If you are we will decorate the house-boat with orange and black," I
said.
Their faces fell.
"We are only the Track Team," said one. "Princeton has no crew, you
know."
"No crew," I cried. "Why not?"
"Well, we haven't any more water than we need to wash in, and we cannot
row on the campus."
"Too many trees," said another.
"No water," I cried, "then won't you ever have a crew?"
"Not until some one gives us a million dollars to dam up a natural
formation that is there and turn the river into it," said one.
"I'd give it to you in a minute, if I had it, the way I feel now," said
Jimmie.
"Well, don't we send crews over here to row?" asked Bee.
"Cornell sent one, but they were beaten," said the Captain with a grin.
"But you wouldn't be beaten," said Bee, decidedly, with her eye on the
Captain.
"Come to dinner, all of you, to-morrow night," I said, genially.
Mrs. Jimmie looked frightened, but Bee and Jimmie so heartily seconded
my generosity with Jimmie's boat that she resigned herself.
"Wear your sweaters," commanded Bee.
"To dinner?" they said.
"Certainly!" said Bee, decidedly. "That's the only way people will know
we are in it. We'll wear shirt-waists to keep you in countenance."
They accepted with alacrity and we parted with mutual esteem.
"I wonder what their names are," said Mrs. Jimmie, reproachfully.
"And they don't know our boat," I added.
"Hi, there!" Jimmie shouted back, "that's our boat yonder--the _Lulu_."
And with that they all struck up "Lu, Lu, How I love my Lu," at which
Bee blushed most unnecessarily, I thought, and murmured:
"How well a handsome athlete looks with bare arms."
"And bare legs," added Jimmie, genially.
We found so much to do on the house-boat, and Jimmie had brought so much
bunting and so many flags, that Bee volunteered to go back to the Cecil
and have our clothes packed up by Mrs. Jimmie's maid, while we
decorated the house-boat.
The next morning bright and early we rowed down to the landing for Bee.
Such a change had taken place on the Thames in twenty-four hours! There
were hundreds upon hundreds of row-boats bearing girls in duck and men
in flannels, and a funny sight it was to Americans to see fully half of
them with the man lying at his ease on cushions at the end of the boat,
while the girls did the rowing. English girls are very clever at
punting, and look quite pretty standing up balancing in the boats and
using the long pole with such skill.
It may be sportsmanlike, but it cannot fail to look unchivalrous,
especially to the Southern-born of Americans, to see how willing
Englishmen are to permit their women to wait upon them even _before_
they are married!
American women are not very popular with English women, possibly because
we get so many of their Englishmen away from them, and we are popular
with only certain of Englishmen, perhaps the more susceptible, possibly
the more broad-minded, but certain it was that as we rowed along we
heard whispers from the English boats of "Americans" in much the same
tone in which we say "Niggers."
The river was literally alive with these small craft, going up and down,
gathering their parties together and paying friendly little visits to
the neighbouring house-boats, while gay parasols, striped shirt-waists,
white flannels, sailor hats, house-boat flags, and gay coloured boat
cushions, made the river flash in the sunshine like an electric lighted
rainbow.
Jimmie had spared no expense in illuminating and decorating the
house-boat. He had the American shield in electric lights surmounted by
the American Eagle holding in his beak a chain of electric bulbs which
were festooned on each side down to the end of the boat and running down
the poles to the water's edge. A band of red, white, and blue electric
lights formed the balustrade of the upper deck, with a row of brilliant
scarlet geraniums on the railing. The house-boat next to ours was called
"The Primrose," and when they saw our American emblem they sent over a
polite note asking where we got it, and at once ordered a St. George
and the Dragon in electric lights, which never came until the Friday
following, when all the races were over. Another house-boat, three boats
from ours, was owned by a wealthy brewer and had a pavilion built on the
land back of where it was moored and connected by a broad gangplank with
the boat. They used this pavilion for dancing and vaudeville, but
although it was very nice and we were immensely entertained, still we
all decided that it was not much like a house-boat to be so much of the
time on land.
Each morning we would be wakened by the lapping of the water between the
boat and the bank, caused by the early swims of the men from the
neighbouring boats. The weather was just cool enough and just warm
enough to be delightful. They told us that it generally rained during
Henley week, but some one must have been a mascot, and we, with our
usual becoming modesty, announced that it must have been our Eagle. The
English, however, did not take kindly to that little pleasantry, and
only said, "Fancy" whenever we got it off.
The dining-room was too small to hold such a large dinner as we gave
the night we entertained the Princeton Track Team, so we had the table
spread on the upper deck in plain view of the craft on the river and our
neighbours on each side. Jimmie had the piano brought up too, when he
heard that two of them belonged to the Glee Club and could sing.
It seemed such a simple thing to us to take up an upright baby grand
piano that we never thought we were doing anything out of the common,
until we looked down over the railing and saw that no less than fifty
boats had ranged themselves in front of our house-boat, with as much
curiosity in our proceedings as if we were going to have a trained
animal exhibit. There were two English women dining with us, and I
privately asked one of them what under the sun was the matter.
"Oh! It is nothing much," she replied. "We cannot help thinking that you
Americans are so queer."
"Queer, or not!" I replied, stoutly, "we have things just as we want
them wherever we go. If we wanted to bring the punt up here and put it
on the dining-table filled with flowers, Jimmie would let us," to which
she replied, "Fancy!"
The table was very pretty that night. We had orange and black satin
ribbon down the middle of it and across the sides, finishing in big
bows. The centrepiece was made of black-eyed Susans. We women wore
orange and black wherever we could, and the men wore their sweaters as
they had been instructed. The dinner was slow in coming on, so between
courses we got up and danced. Then the men sang college songs, much to
the scandalisation of our English friends on the next boats, who seemed
to regard dinner as a sacrament. Peters, the butler, would lie in wait
for us while we were dancing, to whisper as we careered past him:
"Miss, the fowl is getting cold," or "Miss, the ice cream is getting
warm," but he did it once too often, so Bee waltzed on his foot. Whereat
he limped off and we saw no more of him.
Soon the professional entertainers who ply up and down the river during
Henley week discovered the "Ammurikins," as they called us, and we had
our first encounter that night with the Thames nigger, a creature
painfully unlike that delightful commodity at home. The Thames nigger is
generally a cockney covered with blackening, which only alters his skin
and does not change his accent. To us it sounded deliciously funny to
hear this self-styled African call us "Leddies," and say "Halways" and
say "'Aven't yer, now?" They sang in a very indifferent manner, but were
rather quick in their retorts.
Our large uninvited, but welcome audience, who had drawn so near that
they could not use their oars and only pulled their boats along by the
gunwales of the other boats, laughed at these witticisms rather
inquiringly. Always slightly unconvinced, they seemed to have no inward
desire to laugh, but yielded politely to the requirements, owing to the
niggers' harlequin costume and blackened face.
To the student of human nature there is nothing so exquisitely
ridiculous on the face of the globe as the typical British audience, at
a show which appeals humourously to the intellect rather than to the
eye. For this reason the Princetonians were indefatigable in their
conversation with the niggers, for the electric lights of the _Lulu_
illuminated the faces of our audience, which soon, in addition to the
strolling craft of the river, numbered many canoes from the neighbouring
house-boats, who were attracted by the gaiety and lights, thus forming a
typical river audience, thoroughly mixed, seemingly on pleasure bent,
good humoured, well behaved, polite, stolid, British.
Jimmie is hospitable to the core of his being, and nothing pleased him
better than to keep "open house-boat" for the entire floating population
of the Thames during Henley week. Every afternoon it was particularly
the custom about tea time for boats containing music hall quartettes or
a boatload of Geisha girls to pull up in front of the house-boat and
regale the occupants with the latest music hall songs.
In one end of their boat is a little melodion apparently built for river
travel, for I never saw one anywhere else. They have in addition velvet
collection-boxes on long poles whereby to reach the upper decks of the
house-boat for our coins. These things look for all the world like the
old-fashioned collection-boxes which the deacons used to pass in church.
There was one set of Geisha girls who were masked below the eyes, one of
whom sang what she fondly imagined was a typical American song
calculated to captivate her American audience. She sang through her
nose, the better to imitate the nasal voices which to the British mind
is the national characteristic of the American, and her song had the
refrain beginning "For I am an Ammurikin Girl," telling how this
"Ammurikin Girl" had come to England to marry a title and had finally
secured an Earl, and ending with the statement that she had done all
this "like the true Ammurikin Girl." This song, especially the nasal
part, was received with such ill-concealed joy by our usual stolid river
audience that one afternoon I took it upon myself to avenge our
house-boat family for these truly British politenesses. So I went to the
railing after our audience had thoroughly collected and said through my
nose:
"Won't you please sing that pretty song of yours about the 'Ammurikin
Girl?' You know we are 'Ammurikin girls,' and we do so love the way you
take off our 'Ammurikin' voices."
At the same time I dropped a lot of small silver into their boat without
waiting for the collection-box. I was delighted to see that some of it
went overboard, for their consternation at that and at my having turned
the tables on them put them into such a flutter that they couldn't sing
at all, and they pulled away, saying that they would be back in half an
hour. Our audience, too, suddenly remembered urgent business a mile or
two up the river, and scattered as if by magic.
Jimmie was deeply pleased by this _rencontre_, for the prejudice of the
middle-class Britons (for the sake of occasionally being moderate, I
will say middle class) against all classes of Americans is just about as
deeply rooted and ineradicable as the prejudice of middle-class
Americans against everything that flies the Union Jack. The travelled
upper classes are inclined to be more moderate in their prejudice and to
see fit either for political or social reasons to affect a friendship.
But seriously I myself question if there is a nation more thoroughly
foreign to America than the English.
This, I take it, is because the middle classes of both countries are not
abreast of the times, and take little notice of the trend of events.
They are still influenced by the prejudice engendered by the wars of a
century ago, which has partly been inherited and partly enhanced by
marriages with England's hereditary foes, who take refuge with us in
such numbers.
However, the people could be influenced through their sympathies, and in
the to-be-expected event of the death of England's queen, or a calamity
of national importance on our own shores, the sympathy which would be
extended from each to each, through the medium of the press, would do
more to educate the masses along lines of sympathy between the two great
English-speaking nations than any amount of statecraft or diplomacy. The
people must be taught by the way of the heart, and touched by their
emotions. Their brains would follow.
As it is, the differences still exist. Take, for instance, their
language, from which ours has so far departed and become so much more
pure English, and has been enriched by so many clean-cut and descriptive
adjectives that certain sentences in English and in American will be
totally unintelligible to each other. On one occasion, going with a
party of eight English people to the races, Bee looked out of the car
window at the landscape, and said:
"How thoroughly finished England is. Here we are running through a hill
country where they are so complete and so neat in their landscape that
they even sod the cuts. It is like going through a terraced garden."
It may be that the phrase she used was academic, but I am at least
reasonable in thinking that the average American would know what she
meant. Not one of those eight English people caught even the shadow of
her meaning, and when she explained what she meant by "sod your cuts,"
they said that she meant "turf your cuttings." She replied that
"cutting" with us was a greenhouse term and meant a part clipped from a
plant or a tree. They said the word "cut" meant a cut of beef or
mutton, to which she retorted that we might also use the term "cut" in a
butcher shop, but when travelling in a hill country and looking out of
the train window it meant the mountain cut. They said they never heard
of the word sod, except used as a noun. She replied that she never heard
the word "turf" used as a verb. We continued in an amiable wrangle which
finally brought out the fact which even the most obstinate of them was
obliged to admit, and that is that when traced to its proper root, the
Americans speak purer English than the English.
House-boat hospitality we discovered to be conducted on a very irregular
plan, for it appeared that the casual afternoon caller always meant tea
and sometimes dinner. This is all very well if the people happen to be
agreeable and the food holds out, but even I, the least conservative of
the three women, am conservative about invitations to guests, nothing
being more offensive to me than to be politely forced into a dinner
invitation to people I don't want. Another thing, it kept us constantly
scurrying for more to eat, as house-boat provisions are all furnished
by firms in town, and house-boat owners are expected to let the
purveyors know beforehand how many guests to provide for at each meal.
I like English people very much, but I cannot help observing that some
who are very well born and are supposed to be exceedingly well bred,
take advantage of American hospitality in a way in which they would
never dream of pursuing with their English hosts. For instance,
Americans were very free in remaining so dangerously close to the dinner
hour that we were pushed into inviting them to remain, but never once
did they make it obligatory to invite them to remain over night, while
no less than half a dozen times during Henley week our English friends
said to Jimmie:
"I say, old man, beastly work getting back to town. Can't you put us up
for the night?"
As this occurred when every stateroom was filled, even Bee's sacred duke
being among the number of our guests, these self-invited ones remained
in every instance when they knew that it would force Jimmie to sleep
upon a bench in the dining-room and be seriously inconvenienced. Toward
the end of the week this supreme selfishness which I have noticed so
often in otherwise worthy English gentlemen annoyed me to such an extent
that with one Englishman who had thus insisted upon dispossessing Jimmie
for the second time I resolved to make a test. So I said to him:
"Of course it's a little hard on Jimmie, your way of turning him out of
his stateroom to sleep on the table, so, as turn about is fair play, if
you've quite decided to remain over night, my sister and I will let you
have our room and we will sleep on the benches in the dining-room.
Jimmie doesn't get much sleep you know--we keep it up so late, and of
course you always wake him up when you turn out for your swim at six
o'clock in the morning, so if you will promise not to disturb us until
seven, and go out through the kitchen for your swim, you can have our
room for to-night."
"Oh, I say!" he replied, "that's awfully jolly of you. It _is_ a beastly
shame to turn the old man out of his bed two nights in one week, but
your boat is the only one on the river where a fellow feels at home, you
know. Besides that, I couldn't get back to town before ten o'clock
to-night if I started now, and where would I get my dinner? And if I
wait to get my dinner here, I'd either have to sleep at Henley or be
half the night in getting home. So you see I've got to stay, and thanks
awfully for letting me have your room."
Bee, who was standing near, pushed her veil up and cleared her throat.
She looked at me.
"Did you ever in all your life?" she said.
"No, I never did," I said. "I never, never did."
"Never did what?" said the English gentleman.
"I never saw anybody like you in a book or out of it, but I suppose
there are ten thousand more just as good-looking as you are; just as
tall and well built and selfish."
"Selfish," he blurted out with a very red face. "What is there selfish
about me, I should like to know? You offered me your room, didn't you?"
"Yes, she offered it," said Bee, sitting on a little table and tucking
her feet on a chair. "She offered it to you just to see if you'd take
it--just to see how far you _would_ go. You haven't known my sister very
long, have you? Why, she'd no more let you have her room than I would
let Jimmie turn himself out a second time for you. If you stay to-night
_you'll_ be the one to sleep in the dining-room on that narrow bench."
"Oh, I say," he said, turning still redder, "I can't do that, you know.
It would be so very uncomfortable. It is very narrow."
"You can lie on your side," said Bee. "You aren't too thick through that
way, and we three women have decided to allow Jimmie to go to bed early
to-night. We'll make it as comfortable as we can for you, and you'll get
fully three hours' sleep, perhaps four. It is all Jimmie would get if he
slept there."
"Why, I don't believe that the old man will let me sleep there. I think
he'd rather I had his room. He and his wife were so awfully good to me
when I was in America. I stayed two months at their place and they
entertained me royally."
"Where's your wife?" I said, suddenly.
"She's in our town house," he answered.
"And that's in Upper Brooke Street?" said Bee.
"And where's your sister, the Honourable Eleanor?" I said.
"What's that got to do with it?" said our friend.
"Nothing," I said. "I just wondered if you'd noticed that, every single
time we have been in London for the past two years, neither your sister
nor your wife has ever called on Mrs. Jimmie; although, as you have just
admitted, you stayed two months with them in America. All that you have
done in return for the mountain trip that Jimmie arranged for you,
taking you in a private car to hunt big game, taking you fishing and
arranging for you to see everything in America that you wanted, when you
know that Jimmie isn't rich judged by the largest fortunes in
America--all, all I say, that you have done for him in return for
everything he did for you was to put him up at your club and take them
to the races twice, and even though you saw your wife at a distance you
never introduced them, although once you stopped and spoke to her. Now,
what do you think of yourself?"
"I think--I think," he stammered.
"No, you don't think," said Bee. "You flatter yourself."
He stared at us helplessly, but we were enjoying ourselves too
maliciously to let up on him.
"I never was talked to so in my life," he said.
"No, perhaps not," I said, pleasantly. "But it has done you good, hasn't
it? Confess now, don't you feel a little better?"
His face, which was very red at all times, grew a little more claret
coloured, and he evidently wanted very much to get angry, but Bee and I
were so very cheerful, almost affectionate in our manner of mentally
skinning him, that he couldn't seem to pull himself together.
"He'll never stay after that," said Bee, complacently, to me afterward.
But he _did_ stay, and although Jimmie was furious, he had every
intention of letting him have his bedroom again, which Bee and I so
fiercely resented that we locked Jimmie in his stateroom, where, after a
few feeble pounds on the door, he resigned himself to his fate and got
the only night's sleep that he had in the eight days of Henley.
Whether the Honourable Edwardes Edwardes slept on his side on the bench
or on his back on the dinner-table, or stood up all night, we never
knew. He was a little cross at breakfast, and complained of feeling "a
bit stiff." But nobody petted or sympathised with him or ran for the
liniment. So by luncheon time he was drinking Jimmie's champagne again
with the utmost good humour.
One of the most amusing things we did was to go after dinner in little
boats and form part of the river audience in front of some other
house-boat where something was going on,--crowded in between other
boats, having to ship our oars and pull ourselves along by our
neighbours' gunwales, getting locked for perhaps half an hour, until
suddenly our Geisha girls or niggers would start the cry "Up river,"
when away we would all go, entertainers and entertained, pulling up the
river to the lights of another house-boat, enjoying the music for a few
minutes and then slipping away in the darkness toward the lights of
Henley village, or perhaps back to the _Lulu_.
Once or twice a boat would capsize, giving the occupants a severe
wetting, but as river costumes are always washable and the river is not
deep, no harm ever seemed to come of these aquatic diversions. Once,
however, it was brought near home in this wise.
Jimmie invited his wife to go canoeing. I went canoeing once on the
Kennebunk River with an Indian to paddle, and after watching the
manoeuvres of the paddlers on the Thames and the antics of those
wretched little boats, I made the solemn promise with myself never to
trust any one less skilled than an Indian again. But Jimmie, while he is
not more conceited than most people, is what you might call confident,
and he would have been all right in this instance, if he had noticed
that a race had just been rowed and that the swell from the racers was
just rippling over the boom and creeping gently toward the house-boat.
The canoe was still at the house-boat steps. They were both seated
comfortably and just about to paddle away when a swell came alongside
and tilted the canoe in such a succession of little unexpected rolls
that our two friends, in their anxiety to hold on to something which
was not there to hold on to, overbalanced, and the canoe shipped enough
water to submerge their legs entirely, giving them a nice cold hip bath.
Mrs. Jimmie screamed, and we all rushed down and fished her out of the
boat dripping like a mermaid and thoroughly chilled. Bee took her in to
warm her with a brandy and to hurry her into dry clothes, while I
remained to see what I could do for Jimmie, who was very wet, very mad,
and very uncommunicative.
"What a pity," I remarked, pleasantly, "that you are so thin. Shall I
come down and hold the boat still while you get out? Wet flannel has
such a clinging effect."
Jimmie is a good deal of a gentleman, so he made no reply. I was just
turning away, resolving in a Christian spirit to order him a hot Scotch,
when I heard a splash and a remark which was full of exclamation points,
asterisks, and other things, and looking down I saw the canoe bottom
upwards, with Jimmie clinging to it indignantly blowing a large quantity
of Thames water from his mouth in a manner which led me to know that the
sooner I got away from there the better it would be for me. I kept out
of his way until dinner-time, and only permitted him to suspect that I
saw his disappearance by politely ignoring the fact that all his and
Mrs. Jimmie's lingerie, to speak delicately, was floating about, hanging
from pegs in unused portions of the house-boat. My silence was so
suspicious that finally Jimmie could stand it no longer.
"Did you see me go down?" he demanded.
"I did not," I answered him, firmly, whereat he released my elbow and I
edged around to the other side of the table.
"But I saw you come up," I said, pleasantly, "and I saw what you said."
"Saw?" said Jimmie. "Saw what I said?"
"Certainly! There was enough blue light around your remarks for me to
have seen them in the dark."
"Well, what have you got to say about it?" he said, resigning himself.
"Only this, and that is that this afternoon's performance in that canoe
was the only instance in my life where I thoroughly approved of the
workings of Providence. Ordinarily the good die young and the guilty
one escapes."
"Is that all?" growled Jimmie.
"Yes," I said, hesitatingly, "I think it is. Did I mention before that I
thought you were thin?"
"You certainly did," said Jimmie.
"Your legs," I went on, but just then I was interrupted by the
reappearance of a little German musician, who had floated up the river
two days before in a white flannel suit without change of linen and who
played accompaniments of our singers so well that Jimmie permitted him
to stay on without either actually inviting him or showing him that his
presence was not any particular addition to our enjoyment.
Jimmie objected violently to some of his sentiments, which the German
was tactless enough to keep thrusting in our faces. He was as offensive
to our English friends on the subject of England as he was to us
concerning America, but one of the Englishmen sang and couldn't play a
note, so Jimmie let the German stay, because Miss Wemyss wanted him to.
Although secretly I think Jimmie and I hated him, we are sometimes
polite enough not to say everything we think, but at any rate there
never was a moment when Jimmie and I wouldn't leave off attacking each
other, hoping for an opportunity for a fight with the German, which thus
far he had escaped by the skin of his teeth.
"Your sister sent me to tell you that there is a house-boat up near the
Island flying the American flag and we are all going up there to see it.
Would you like to go?"
"Thanks so much for your invitation," said Jimmie, "but I've got some
guests coming in half an hour, so I can't go."
"I'll go. Just wait until I get my hat."
One boat contained Bee, Mrs. Jimmie, and two Princeton men, and the
other Miss Wemyss, the German, Miss Wemyss' fiancé, Sir George, and me.
Side by side the two skiffs pulled up the river to the Island, where on
a very small house-boat named the _Queen_ a large American flag was
flying and beneath it were crossed a smaller American flag and the Union
Jack.
Sir George, who is one of the nicest Englishmen we ever met, pulled off
his cap and cried out:
"All hats off to the Stars and Stripes!"
In an instant every hat was whipped off, ours included, although there
was some wrestling with hat-pins before we could get them off. All, did
I say? All--all except the German! He folded his arms across his breast
and kept his hat on.
"Didn't you hear Sir George?" I said to him.
He had a nervous twitching of the eye at all times, and when he was
excited the muscles of his face all jerked in unison like Saint Vitus'
dance. At my question every muscle in his face, as the Princeton man in
Bee's boat said, "began working over time."
"Yes, I heard him. Of course I heard him," he said.
"Then take your hat off!" said Miss Wemyss.
"Yes, take your hat off!" came in a roar from all the others, none being
louder and more peremptory than the Englishman's.
"I will not take my hat off to that dirty rag," he said. "It means
nothing to me. The flag of any country means nothing to me. I can go
into a shop and buy that red, white, and blue! That is only a rag--that
flag."
Sir George leaned over with blazing eyes and took him by the collar.
"Don't do that, George," said Miss Wemyss, excitedly. "His linen is not
fit to touch."
"Let's duck him," said the Princeton man.
But Mrs. Jimmie interfered, saying in a quiet voice, although her hands
were trembling:
"Don't do anything to him until we take him back to the house-boat.
Remember he is my guest."
At this the German smiled with such insolence and pulled his hat further
down on his brow with such a vicious look of satisfaction that I had all
I could do to hold myself in. The boats flew back to the house-boat as
if on wings.
"You see, miss," he leaned forward and said to me in low tones. "You do
not like me. You love your flag. Ah, ha, I revenge myself."
"Just wait till I tell Jimmie," I said.
"Ah, ha, he will do nothing! I play for his concert to-night."
As the boats pulled up to the steps of the house-boat, Jimmie met us
with his two friends, who had come during our absence. We had never seen
them before.
"What do you think, Jimmie?" stammered Bee, stumbling up the steps in
her excitement.
"And Jimmie, he wouldn't take his hat off to the flag!"
"And Jimmie, I wish you had been there, you'd have drowned him!" came
from all of us at once.
"What's that?" cried Jimmie in a rage at once, and:
"What's that?" came from the men behind him. "Wouldn't take off his hat
to the flag? Who wouldn't?"
"That nasty little German!" cried Miss Wemyss.
We were all out of the boats by that time except the unhappy object of
our wrath, whose countenance by this time was working into patterns like
a kaleidoscope.
"Mr. Jimmie," he said, coming to the end of the boat with every
intention of stepping out, "I apologise to you. I am very sorry."
"Get back in that boat!" thundered Jimmie.
"But, sir! Your concert to-night! I play for you!"
"You go to the devil," said Jimmie. "You'll not put your foot on board
this boat again. Off you go! Take him down to Henley!" he ordered the
boatman.
"Very well! Very well!" said the German, "I go, but I do not take my hat
off to your flag."
"Ah! Don't you?" cried the Princeton man, making a grab for the German's
sailor hat with his long arm, just as the boat shot away. He stooped and
took it up full of Thames water and flung it thus loaded squarely in the
little wretch's face, while the man at the oars dexterously tossed it
overboard, where it floated bottom upwards in the river, and the boat
shot out toward Henley with the bareheaded and most excited specimen of
the human race it was ever our lot to behold.
Then Jimmie introduced his friends. Bee has just looked over this
narrative of the pleasantest week we ever spent in England and she says:
"You haven't said a word about the races."
"So I haven't."
But they were there.