At dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone mentioned
in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little table
in a far corner, where we'd never been before. Not being considered of
any importance they put us sometimes in one place and sometimes in
another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed most of the
other people had, and I was looking around to see if anybody was ever
coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an awful noise.
I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never
heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness
of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to
sway and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining,
for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters
who was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a
curb bit. I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in
his chair, as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to
myself that if he hadn't heard anything he must have been struck deaf,
and I was just on the point of jumping up and shouting to him, "Fly,
before the walls and roof come down upon us!" when that awful noise
occurred again. My blood stood frigid in my veins, and as I started
back I saw before me a waiter, his face ashy pale, and his knees
bending beneath him. Some people near us were half getting up from
their chairs, and I pushed back and looked at Jone again, who had not
moved except that his mouth was open. Then I knew what it was that I
thought was an earthquake--it was Jone giving an order to the waiter.
[Illustration: Jone giving an order]
I bit my lips and sat silent; the people around kept on looking at us,
and the poor man who was receiving the shock stood trembling like a
leaf. When the volcanic disturbance, so to speak, was over, the waiter
bowed himself, as if he had been a heathen in a temple, and gasping,
"Yes, sir, immediate," glided unevenly away. He hadn't waited on us
before, and little thought, when he was going to stride proudly pass
our table, what a double-loaded Vesuvius was sitting in Jone's chair. I
leaned over the table and said to Jone that if he would stick to that
we could rent a bishopric if we wanted to, and I was so proud I could
have patted him on the back. Well, after that we had no more trouble
about being waited on, for that waiter of ours went about as if he had
his neck bared for the fatal stroke and Jone was holding the cimeter.
The head waiter came to us before we was done dinner and asked if we
had everything we wanted and if that table suited us, because if it did
we could always have it. To which Jone distantly thundered that if he
would see that it always had a clean tablecloth it would do well
enough.
[Illustration: The Carver]
Even the man who stood at the big table in the middle of the room and
carved the cold meats, with his hair parted in the middle, and who
looked as if he were saying to himself, as with a bland dexterity and
tastefulness he laid each slice upon its plate, "Now, then, the
socialistic movement in Paris is arrested for the time being, and here
again I put an end to the hopes of Russia getting to the sea through
Afghanistan, and now I carefully spread contentment over the minds of
all them riotous Welsh miners," even he turned around and bowed to us
as we passed him, and once sent a waiter to ask if we'd like a little
bit of potted beef, which was particularly good that day.
Jone kept up his rumblings, though they sounded more distant and more
deep under ground, and one day at luncheon an elderly woman, who was
sitting alone at a table near us, turned to me and spoke. She was a
very plain person, with her face all seamed and rough with exposure to
the weather, like as if she had been captain to a pilot boat, and with
a general appearance of being a cook with good recommendations, but at
present out of a place. I might have wondered at such a person being at
such a hotel, but remembering what I had been myself I couldn't say
what mightn't happen to other people.
"I'm glad to see," said she, "that you sent away that mutton, for if
more persons would object to things that are not properly cooked we'd
all be better served. I suppose that in your country most people are so
rich that they can afford to have the best of everything and have it
always. I fancy the great wealth of American citizens must make their
housekeeping very different from ours."
Now I must say I began to bristle at being spoken to like that. I'm as
proud of being an American as anybody can be, but I don't like the home
of the free thrown into my teeth every time I open my mouth. There's no
knowing what money Jone and I have lost through giving orders to London
cabmen in what is called our American accent. The minute we tell the
driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance
from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's
rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British
chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that
before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear
American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the
waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose neck
was sliced through and who didn't know it until he sneezed and his head
fell off.
"Yes, ma'am," said I, answering her with as much of a wearied feeling
as I could put on, "our wealth is all very well in some ways, but it is
dreadful wearing on us. However, we try to bear up under it and be
content."
"Well," said she, "contentment is a great blessing in every station,
though I have never tried it in yours. Do you expect to make a long
stay in London?"
As she seemed like a civil and well-meaning woman, and was the first
person who had spoken to us in a social way, I didn't mind talking to
her, and I told her we was only stopping in London until we could find
the kind of country house we wanted, and when she asked what kind that
was, I described what we wanted and how we was still answering
advertisements and going to see agents, who was always recommending
exactly the kind of house we did not care for.
"Vicarages are all very well," said she, "but it sometimes happens, and
has happened to friends of mine, that when a vicar has let his house he
makes up his mind not to waste his money in travelling, and he takes
lodgings near by and keeps an eternal eye upon his tenants. I don't
believe any independent American would fancy that."
"No, indeed," said I; and then she went on to say that if we wanted a
small country house for a month or two she knew of one which she
believed would suit us, and it wasn't a vicarage either. When I asked
her to tell me about it she brought her chair up to our table, together
with her mug of beer, her bread and cheese, and she went into
particulars about the house she knew of.
"It is situated," said she, "in the west of England, in the most
beautiful part of our country. It is near one of the quaintest little
villages that the past ages have left us, and not far away are the
beautiful waters of the Bristol Channel, with the mountains of Wales
rising against the sky on the horizon, and all about are hills and
valleys, and woods and beautiful moors and babbling streams, with all
the loveliness of cultivated rurality merging into the wild beauties of
unadorned nature." If these was not exactly her words, they express the
ideas she roused in my mind. She said the place was far enough away
from railways and the stream of travel, and among the simple peasantry,
and that in the society of the resident gentry we would see English
country life as it is, uncontaminated by the tourist or the commercial
traveller.
I can't remember all the things she said about this charming cottage in
this most supremely beautiful spot, but I sat and listened, and the
description held me spell-bound, as a snake fascinates a frog; with
this difference, instead of being swallowed by the description, I
swallowed it.
When the old woman had given us the address of the person who had the
letting of the cottage, and Jone and me had gone to our room, I said to
him, before we had time to sit down:
"What do you think?"
"I think," said he, "that we ought to follow that old woman's advice
and go and look at this house."
"Go and look at it?" I exclaimed. "Not a bit of it. If we do that, we
are bound to see something or hear something that will make us hesitate
and consider, and if we do that, away goes our enthusiasm and our
rapture. I say, telegraph this minute and say we'll take the house, and
send a letter by the next mail with a postal order in it, to secure the
place."
Jone looked at me hard, and said he'd feel easier in his mind if he
understood what I was talking about.
"Never mind understanding," I said. "Go down and telegraph we'll take
the house. There isn't a minute to lose!"
"But," said Jone, "if we find out when we get there--"
"Never mind that," said I. "If we find out when we get there it isn't
all we thought it was, and we're bound to do that, we'll make the best
of what doesn't suit us because it can't be helped; but if we go and
look at it it's ten to one we won't take it."
"How long are we to take it for?" said Jone.
"A month anyway, and perhaps longer," I told him, giving him a push
toward the door.
"All right," said he, and he went and telegraphed. I believe if Jone
was told he could go anywhere and stay for a month he'd choose that
place from among all the most enchanting spots on the earth where he
couldn't stay so long. As for me, the one thing that held me was the
romanticness of the place. From what the old woman said I knew there
couldn't be any mistake about that, and if I could find myself the
mistress of a romantic cottage near an ancient village of the olden
time I would put up with most everything except dirt, and as dirt and
me seldom keeps company very long, even that can't frighten me.
When I saw the old woman at luncheon the next day and told her what we
had done she was fairly dumfounded.
"Really! really!" she said, "you Americans are the speediest people I
ever did see. Why, an English person would have taken a week to
consider that place before taking it."
"And lost it, ten to one," said I.
She shook her head.
"Well," said she, "I suppose it's on account of your habits, and you
can't help it, but it's a poor way of doing business."
[Illustration: "You Americans are the speediest people"]
Now I began to think from this that her conscience was beginning to
trouble her for having given so fairy-like a picture of the house, and
as I was afraid that she might think it her duty to bring up some
disadvantages, I changed the conversation and got away as soon as I
could. When we once get seated at our humble board in our rural cot I
won't be afraid of any bugaboos, but I didn't want them brought up
then. I can generally depend upon Jone, but sometimes he gets a little
stubborn.
We didn't see this old person any more, and when I asked the waiter
about her the next day he said he was sure she had left the hotel, by
which I suppose he must have meant he'd got his half-crown. Her fading
away in this fashion made it all seem like a myth or a phantasm, but
when, the next morning, we got a receipt for the money Jone sent, and a
note saying the house was ready for our reception, I felt myself on
solid ground again, and to-morrow we start, bag and baggage, for
Chedcombe, which is the name of the village where the house is that we
have taken. I'll write to you, madam, as soon as we get there, and I
hope with all my heart and soul that when we see what's wrong with
it--and there's bound to be something--that it may not be anything bad
enough to make us give it up and go floating off in voidness, like a
spider-web blown before a summer breeze, without knowing what it's
going to run against and stick to, and, what is more, probably lose the
money we paid in advance.
_Letter Number Four_