The train for London came round the bend, and drew up, panting, beside
the platform. The airman and his little companion glanced into four
compartments which were completely filled, and, hearing the admonition
of the guard, were forced to enter a first-class carriage containing
five occupants, who glared at the intruders with that triumph of
rudeness found only on an English railroad.
"Sorry," murmured the airman, and added something unintelligible about
the train being full. A fierce-looking gentleman looked up from the
_Morning Post_ and lowered the window to its fullest extent. An anemic
woman opposite sneezed and fixed a devastating stare on the fierce
gentleman. A very young officer of the Guards felt his lip, and stroked
that portion of it which was pregnant with promise of mustache, while
his mind wandered into the future. Would he cut Lady Dazzrymple's
beastly dance, and content himself with only three that evening? Or,
dash it all! should he go the whole works? What a bore!... A young
woman with a face of deep intensity read the _New Statesman_, every now
and then looking up from its pages (as a horse drinking at a trough
will raise its head between draughts), apparently defying any one to
challenge her on anything.
With his hands lazily in his coat-pockets, an Australian captain leant
back in his corner and took in the freshness and winsomeness of the
French girl, with an admiring frankness that inspired sudden doubt in
the airman's mind whether it was really desirable to maintain a huge
Empire.
For ten minutes, in a funereal silence, the train hurried towards the
Metropolis, while the temperature of the compartment, both actually and
temperamentally, dropped to freezing-point. Once, as an unusually
pretty meadow met her eye (and where are there such meadows as one sees
in England?), Pippa emitted an exclamation of delight and clapped her
hands.
A look of horror from the fierce gentleman caromed off the _Morning
Post_ to the face of the offender. The anemic woman stopped blowing her
nose, and concentrated all her energies on a disdainful sniff. The very
young Guardsman brought his eyes out of the future, and stared right
through the girl--rotten form, what! The intense young woman frowned
and made a mental note that she would write an article on "The Girl of
To-day"--or, perhaps, a letter to the _New Statesman_ would be more
effective. One never knew, these degenerate times, if an author was
writing from conviction or merely writing for a living.
The Australian smiled generously, and burrowed his hands deeper into
his capacious pockets.
Very timidly the erring daughter of France shifted closer to her
protector, and her hand reached appealingly for his, which caused all
eyes but the Australian's to disappear like the legs of a troupe of
Japanese acrobats from a cross-bar.
"Your Majesty----" she said.
"Hush, Pippa. You must call me just 'monsieur.'"
"But why?"
"Well--you see, a prince is very important, and----"
"Then that is why these people are so solemn? They know you are a
prince, yes?"
The airman tapped the bridge of his nose meditatively. "N-not exactly,"
he said.
"But they are so sad."
"They are," he agreed; "but my countrymen sink to their greatest
melancholy when they travel."
"But why, monsieur?"
"That," he said, "I cannot tell you. Perhaps traveling on a train
reminds them of the brief journey of life itself. At any rate, all
really well-bred people who travel resent others doing the same thing."
"What are well-bred people?"
He gazed at an advertisement for pyjamas.
"Well-bred people," he said sententiously, "are those who base their
superiority on such intangible things that they leave nothing on which
one can contest it. Do you understand me?"
"No," said Pippa frankly; "but I like your voice."
"Thank you, little one. It was one of the first things I learned at
Harrow--to say something well rather than something worth hearing."
"I wonder if Louis had his breakfast," said she, at a tangent.
"I think so," he said, with a man's vagueness towards domestic economy;
"but, to finish my definition of well-bred people----"
"Louis will be angry at my leaving him," she said musingly.
"Pippa, you must listen to me," he said gravely.
"But may I not talk as well?"
"Really charming women only listen."
"_Tiens!_ What a droll country! Do these people understand what we
say?"
"I don't think so, youngster. Most Britishers look on foreign languages
as immoral."
The fierce gentleman, who had been growing bluer with cold every
minute, suddenly endeavored to suppress a sneeze by smothering his face
in a large handkerchief, with the result that he produced a combustive
cohesion of sounds, which caused a gurgle of delight from the miller's
niece. Violently blowing his nose, the irate one resumed his newspaper,
first turning his coat-collar about his ears as the bracing April air
blew full against him, and looking as genuinely bad-tempered as his
somewhat immobile features would permit.
"But he is amusing, is he not?" cried the little French girl, then
shrank back as the New Statesmanist fixed her with a look of ineffable
and disapproving intellectuality. "Monsieur, why is it she looks at me
so?"
The aviator transferred his scrutiny from pyjamas to a picture of
Canterbury Cathedral.
"She is the New Woman," he said; "and all New Women resent the Old."
"I am old?--but no!"
He lowered his eyes from the cathedral to her happy, flushed face.
"Pippa," he said, "you are as old as Cleopatra."
"Cleo-patra. How many years has she?"
"Oh, about two thousand."
She pretended to be offended, and ended by looking such a thoroughly
engaging little figure, with her dark hair and innocently intriguing
eyes, that the airman resumed his study of architecture from sheer
self-defense, and the Australian contemplated the odds against his
knocking the student of cathedrals on the head, and, _à la_ caveman of
old, eloping forcibly with the damsel.
Chimney-pots! Hundreds of them--thousands of them.
Chimney-pots! Standing like regiments in stiff and orderly array,
waiting for a review that never took place.
Chimney-pots! Short ones, stout ones, crumbling ones; gray, blue, and
indigo ones; pots of no color at all, and just as little character.
Chimney-pots! Racing by, mile after mile; industrious fellows, some of
them, puffing out black smoke as though the mist over London were their
private and personal concern.
Chimney-pots!
"Waterloo!" yelled a dozen voices, and the bewildered Pippa heard a
stamping of feet, a rattling of trucks, the din of two porters in a
semi-religious discussion concerning the right of way, the din being
aided and abetted by a young gentleman possessed of a voice which had
recently broken, who howled, alternately in a deep bass and a shrill
treble (giving the general effect of a Swiss yodeler running amok),
that, in exchange for coin of the realm, he was willing to barter light
refreshment--very light refreshment indeed--in the shape of small
biscuits or popular magazines. A slim girl porter, far too weak for her
task, dragged a trunk from the van for a vigorous indispensable, who
stood by with sixpence in his hand. A sailor kissed a rosy-cheeked
woman with moist heartiness.... A taxi-driver, outside the station,
took a sudden and violent dislike to a horse-cabby, casting loud
aspersions on the latter's respectability, and hinting at a doubtful
pedigree; to which the other replied simultaneously, his remarks being
quite unintelligible, but apparently giving himself the greatest
personal satisfaction. Down the road a street-piano burst forth into
"The Lost Chord."
"Pippa," said the airman, opening the door, "we have arrived. The
Prince with the Golden Key welcomes you to London."
"_Mon Dieu_," said that young person, "what a noise!"