I
The Doctor closed the book with an angry gesture and handed it to me
as I lay in my steamer chair, my eyes on the tumbling sea. He had read
every line in it. So had P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, whose
property it was, and who had announced himself only a moment before as
heartily in sympathy with the pessimistic views of the author,
especially in those chapters which described domestic life in America.
The Doctor, who has a wrist of steel and a set of fingers steady
enough to adjust a chronometer, and who, though calm and silent as a
stone god when over an operating table, is often as restless and
outspoken as a boy when something away from it touches his
heartstrings, turned to me and said:--
"There ought to be a law passed to keep these men out of the United
States. Here's a Frenchman, now, who speaks no language but his own,
and after spending a week at Newport, another at New York, two days at
Niagara, and then rushing through the West on a 'Limited,' goes home
to give his Impressions of America. Read that chapter on Manners," and
he stretched a hand over my shoulder, turning the leaves quickly with
his fingers. "You would think, to listen to these fellows, that all
there is to a man is the cut of his coat or the way he takes his soup.
Not a line about his being clean and square and alive and all a
man,--just manners! Why, it is enough to make a cast-iron dog bite a
blind man."
It would be a waste of time to criticise the Doctor for these
irrelevant verbal explosives. Indefensible as they are, they are as
much parts of his individuality as the deftness of his touch and the
fearlessness of his methods are parts of his surgical training.
P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, looked at the Doctor with a slight
lifting of his upper lip and a commiserating droop of the eyelid,--an
expression indicating, of course, a consciousness of that superior
birth and breeding which prevented the possibility of such outbreaks.
It was a manner he sometimes assumed toward the Doctor, although they
were good friends. P. Wooverman and the Doctor are fellow townsmen and
members of the same set, and members, too, of the same club,--a most
exclusive club of one hundred. The Doctor had gained admission, not
because of his ancestors, etc. (see Log of the Mayflower), but because
he had been the first and only American surgeon who had removed some
very desirable portions of a gentleman's interior, had washed and
ironed them and scalloped their edges, for all I know, and had then
replaced them, without being obliged to sign the patient's death
certificate the next day.
P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, on the other hand, had gained
admission because of--well, Todd's birth and his position (he came of
an old Salem family who did something in whale oil,--not fish or
groceries, be it understood); his faultless attire, correct speech,
and knowledge of manners and men; his ability to spend his summers in
England and his winters in Nice; his extensive acquaintance among
distinguished people,--the very most distinguished, I know, for Todd
has told me so himself,--and--well, all these must certainly be
considered sufficient qualifications to entitle any man to membership
in almost any club in the world.
P. Wooverman Shaw Todd, Esquire, I say, elevated his upper lip and
drooped his eyelid, remarking with a slight Beacon Street accent:--
"I cawn't agree with you, my dear Doctor,"--there were often traces of
the manners and the bearing of a member of the Upper House in Todd,
especially when he talked to a man like the Doctor, who wore
turned-down collars and detached cuffs, and who, to quote the
distinguished Bostonian, "threw words about like a coal heaver,"--"I
cawn't agree with you, I say. It isn't the obzervar that we should
criticise; it is what he finds." P. Wooverman was speaking with his
best accent. Somehow, the Doctor's bluntness made him over-accentuate
it,--particularly when there were listeners about. "This French critic
is a man of distinction and a member of the most excloosive circles in
Europe. I have met him myself repeatedly, although I cawn't say I know
him. We Americans are too sensitive, my dear Doctor. His book, to me,
is the work of a keen obzervar who knows the world, and who sees how
woefully lacking we are in some of the common civilities of life," and
he smiled faintly at me, as if confident that I shared his opinion of
the Doctor's own short-comings. "This Frenchman does not lay it on a
bit too thick. Nothing is so mortifying to me as being obliged to
travel with a party of Americans who are making their first tour
abroad. And it is quite impossible to avoid them, for they all have
money and can go where they please. I remember once coming from Basle
to Paris, in a first-class carriage,--it was only larst summer,--with
a fellow from Indiana or Michigan, or somewhere out there. He had a
wife with him who looked like a cook, and a daughter about ten years
old, who was a most objectionable young person. You could hear them
talk all over the train. I shouldn't have minded it so much, but Lord
Norton's harf-brother was with me,"--and P. Wooverman Shaw Todd
glanced, as he spoke, at a thin lady with a smelling bottle and an air
of reserve, who always sat with a maid beside her, to see if she were
looking at him,--"and one of the best bred men in England, too, and a
man who"----
"Now hold on, Todd," broke in the Doctor, upon whom neither the thin
lady nor any other listener had made the slightest impression. "No
glittering generalities with me. Just tell me in so many plain words
what this man's vulgarity consisted of."
"Why, his manners, his dress, Doctor,--everything about him," retorted
Todd.
"Just as I thought! All you think about is manners, only manners!"
exploded the Doctor. "Your Westerner, no doubt, was a hard-fisted,
weather-tanned farmer, who had worked all his life to get money enough
to take his wife and child abroad. The wife had tended the dairy and
no doubt milked ten cows, and in their old age they both wanted to see
something of the world they had heard about. So off they go. If you
had any common sense or anything that brought you in touch with your
kind, Todd, and had met that man on his own level, instead of
overawing him with your high-daddy airs, he would have told you that
both the wife and he were determined that the little girl should have
a better start in life than their own, and that this trip was part of
her education. Do you know any other working people,"--and the Doctor
faced him squarely,--"any Dutch, or French, or English, Esquimaux or
Hottentots, who take their wives and children ten thousand miles to
educate them? If I had my way with the shaping of the higher education
of the country, the first thing I would teach a boy would be to learn
to work, and with his hands, too. We have raised our heroes from the
soil,--not from the easy-chairs of our clubs,"--and he looked at Todd
with his eyebrows knotted tight. "Let the boy get down and smell the
earth, and let him get down to the level of his kind, helping the
weaker man all the time and never forgetting the other fellow. When he
learns to do this he will begin to know what it is to be a man, and
not a manikin."
When the Doctor is mounted on any one of his hobbies,--whether it is a
new microbe, Wagner, or the rights of the working-man,--he is apt to
take the bit in his teeth and clear fences. As he finished speaking,
two or three of the occupants of contiguous chairs laid down their
books to listen. The thin lady with the smelling bottle and the maid
remarked in an undertone to another exclusive passenger on the other
side of her, in diamonds and white ermine cape,--it was raining at the
time,--that "one need not travel in a first-class carriage to find
vulgar Americans," and she glanced from the Doctor to a group of young
girls and young men who were laughing as heartily and as merrily, and
perhaps as noisily, as if they were sitting on their own front porches
at their Southern homes.
Another passenger--who turned out later to be a college
professor--said casually, this time to me, that he thought good and
bad manners were to be determined, not by externals, but by what lay
underneath; that neither dress, language, nor habits fixed or marred
the standard. "A high-class Turk, now," and he lowered his voice,
"would be considered ill bred by some people, because in the seclusion
of his own family he helps himself with his fingers from the common
dish; and yet so punctiliously polite and courteous is he that he
never sits down in his father's presence nor lights a cigarette
without craving his permission."
After this the talk became general, the group taking sides; some
supporting the outspoken Doctor in his blunt defense of his
countrymen, others siding with the immaculately dressed Todd, so
correct in his every appointment that he was never known, during the
whole voyage, to wear a pair of socks that did not in color and design
match his cravat.
* * * * *
The chief steward had given us seats at the end of one of the small
tables. The Doctor sat under the porthole, and Todd and I had the
chairs on either side of him. The two end seats--those on the
aisle--were occupied by a girl of twenty-five, simply clad in a plain
black dress with plainer linen collar and cuffs, and a young German.
The girl would always arrive late, and would sink into her revolving
chair with a languid movement, as if the voyage had told upon her.
Often her face was pale and her eyes were heavy and red, as if from
want of sleep. The young German--a Baron von Hoffbein, the passenger
list said--was one of those self-possessed, good-natured, pink-cheeked
young Teutons, with blue eyes, blond hair, and a tiny waxed mustache,
a mere circumflex accent of a mustache, over his "o" of a mouth. His
sponsors in baptism had doubtless sent him across the sea to chase the
wild boar or the rude buffalo, with the ultimate design, perhaps, of
founding a brewery in some Western city.
The manners of this young aristocrat toward the girl were an especial
source of delight to Todd, who watched his every movement with the
keenest interest. Whenever the baron approached the table he would
hesitate a moment, as if in doubt as to which particular chair he
should occupy, and, with an apologetic hand on his heart and a slight
bow, drop into a seat immediately opposite hers. Then he would raise a
long, thin arm aloft and snap his fingers to call a passing waiter. I
noticed that he always ordered the same breakfast, beginning with cold
sausage and ending with pancakes. During the repast the young girl
opposite him would talk to him in a simple, straightforward way, quite
as a sister would have done, and without the slightest trace of either
coquetry or undue reserve.
When we were five days out, a third person occupied a seat at one side
of the young woman. He was a man of perhaps sixty years of age, with
big shoulders and big body, and a great round head covered with a mass
of dull white hair which fell about his neck and forehead. The
newcomer was dressed in a suit of gray cloth, much worn and badly cut,
the coat collar, by reason of the misfit, being hunched up under his
hair. This gave him the appearance of a man without a shirt collar,
until a turn of his head revealed his clean starched linen and narrow
black cravat. He looked like a plain, well-to-do manufacturer or
contractor, one whose earlier years had been spent in the out of
doors; for the weather had left its mark on his neck, where one can
always look for signs of a man's manner of life. His was that of a man
who had worn low-collared flannel shirts most of his days. He had,
too, a look of determination, as if he had been accustomed to be
obeyed. He was evidently an invalid, for his cheeks were sunken and
pale, with the pallor that comes of long confinement.
Apart from these characteristics there was nothing specially
remarkable about him except the two cavernous eye sockets, sunk in his
head, the shaggy eyebrows arched above them, and the two eyes which
blazed and flashed with the inward fire of black opals. As these
rested first on one object and then on another, brightening or paling
as he moved his head, I could not but think of the action of some
alert searchlight gleaming out of a misty night.
As soon as he took his seat, the young woman, whose face for the first
time since she had been on board had lost its look of anxiety and
fatigue, leaned over him smilingly and began adjusting a napkin about
his throat and pinning it to his coat. He smiled in response as she
finished--a smile of singular sweetness--and held her hand until she
regained her seat. They seemed as happy as children or as two lovers,
laughing with each other, he now and then stopping to stroke her hand
at some word which I could not hear. When, a moment after, the von
Hoffbein took his accustomed seat, in full dress, too,--a red silk
lining to his waistcoat, and a red silk handkerchief tucked in above
it and worn liver-pad fashion,--the girl said simply, looking toward
the man in gray, "My father, sir;" whereupon the young fellow shot up
out of his chair, clicked his heels together, crooked his back, placed
two fingers on his right eyebrow, and sat down again. The man in gray
looked at him curiously and held out his hand, remarking that he was
pleased to meet him.
Todd was also watching the group, for I heard him say to the Doctor:
"These high-class Germans seldom forget themselves. The young baron
saluted the old duffer with the bib as though he were his superior
officer."
"Shouldn't wonder if he were," replied the Doctor, who had been
looking intently over his soup spoon at the man in gray, and who was
now summing up the circumflex accent, the red edges of the waistcoat,
the liver-pad handkerchief, and the rest of von Hoffbein.
"You don't like him, evidently, my dear Doctor."
"You saw him first, Todd--you can have him. I prefer the old duffer,
as you call him," answered the Doctor dryly, and put an end to the
talk in that direction.
Soon the hum of voices filled the saloon, rising above the clatter of
the dishes and the occasional popping of corks. The baron and the man
in gray had entered into conversation almost at once, and could be
distinctly heard from where we sat, particularly the older man, who
was doubtless unconscious of the carrying power of his voice. Such
words as "working classes," "the people," "democracy," "when I was in
Germany," etc., intermingling with the high-keyed tones of the baron's
broken English, were noticeable above the din; the young girl
listening smilingly, her eyes on those of her father. Then I saw the
gray man bend forward, and heard him say with great earnestness, and
in a voice that could be heard by the occupants of all the tables near
our own:--
"It is a great thing to be an American, sir. I never realized it until
I saw how things were managed on the other side. It must take all the
ambition out of a man not to be able to do what he wants to do and
what he knows he can do better than anybody else, simply because
somebody higher than he says he shan't. We have our periods of unrest,
and our workers sometimes lose their heads, but we always come out
right in the end. There is no place in the world where a man has such
opportunities as in my country. All he wants is brains and some little
horse sense,--the country will do the rest."
Our end of the table had stopped to listen; so had the occupants of
the tables on either side; so had Todd, who was patting the Doctor's
arm, his face beaming.
"Listen to him, Doctor! Hear that voice! How like a traveling
American! There's one of your ex_traw_d'nary clay-soiled sons of toil
out on an educating tour: aren't you proud of him? Oh, it's too
delicious!"
For once I agreed with Todd. The peculiar strident tones of the man in
gray had jarred upon my nerves. I saw too, that one lady, with
slightly elevated shoulder, had turned her back and was addressing her
neighbor.
The Doctor had not taken his eyes from the gray man, and had not lost
a word of his talk. As Todd finished speaking, the daughter, with all
tenderness and with a pleased glance into her father's eyes, arose,
and putting her hand in his helped him to his feet, the baron standing
at "attention." As the American started to leave the table, and his
big shaggy head and broad shoulders reached their full height, the
Doctor leaned forward, craning his head eagerly. Then he turned to
Todd, and in his crisp, incisive way said: "Todd, the matter with you
is that you never see any further than your nose. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself. Look at his empty sleeve; off at the shoulder,
too!"