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Pomona's Travels, a fiction by Frank R Stockton |
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Letter Number Two |
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_ LONDON When Jone gave the remarkable order mentioned in my last letter I did not correct him, for I wouldn't do that before servants without giving him a chance to do it himself; but before either of us could say another word the boy was gone. "Mercy on us," I said, "what a stupid blunder! You meant four-wheeler." [Illustration: The Landlady with an "underdone visage"] "Of course I did," he said; "I was a little mad and got things mixed, but I expect the fellow understood what I meant." "You ought to have called a hansom any way," I said, "for they are a lot more stylish to go to a hotel in than in a four-wheeler." "If there was six-wheelers I would have ordered one," said he. "I don't want anybody to have more wheels than we have." At this moment the landlady came into the room with a sarcastic glimmer on her underdone visage, and, says she, "I suppose you don't understand about the vehicles we have in London. The four-in-hand is what the quality and coach people use when--" As I looked at Jone I saw his legs tremble, and I know what that means. If I was a wanderin' dog and saw Jone's legs tremble, the only thoughts that would fill my soul would be such as cluster around "Home, Sweet Home." Jone was too much riled by the woman's manner to be willing to let her think he had made a mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft and gummy. "If you want to take a drive in a four-in-hand coach, sir," she said, "there's two or three of them starts every morning from Trafalgar Square, and it's not too late now, sir, if you go over there immediate." "Go?" said Jone, throwing himself into a chair, "I said, order one to come. Where I live that sort of vehicle comes to the door for its passengers." The woman looked at Jone with a venerative uplifting of her eyebrows. "I can't say, sir, that a coach will come, but I'll send the boy. They go to Dorking, and Seven Oaks, and Virginia Water--" "I want to go to Virginia Water," said Jone, as quick as lightning. "Now, then," said I, when the woman had gone, "what are you going to do if the coach comes?" "Go to Virginia Water in it," said Jone, "and when we come back we can go to the hotel. I made a mistake, but I've got to stand by it or be called a greenhorn." I was in hopes the four-in-hand wouldn't come, but in less than ten minutes there drove up to our door a four-horse coach which, not having half enough passengers, was glad to come such a little ways to get some more. There was a man in a high hat and red coat, who was blowing a horn as the thing came around the corner, and just as I was looking into the coach and thinking we'd have it all to ourselves, for there was nobody in it, he put a ladder up against the top, and says he, touching his hat, "There's a seat for you, madam, right next the coachman, and one just behind for the gentleman. 'Tain't often that, on a fine morning like this, such seats as them is left vacant on account of a sudden case of croup in a baronet's family." I looked at the ladder and I looked at that top front seat, and I tell you, madam, I trembled in every pore, but I remembered then that all the respectable seats was on top, and the farther front the nobbier, and as there was a young woman sitting already on the box-seat, I made up my mind that if she could sit there I could, and that I wasn't going to let Jone or anybody else see that I was frightened by style and fashion, though confronted by it so sudden and unexpected. So up that ladder I went quick enough, having had practice in hay-mows, and sat myself down between the young woman and the coachman, and when Jone had tucked himself in behind me the horner blew his horn and away we went. [Illustration: "I looked at the ladder and at the top front seat"] I tell you, madam, that box-seat was a queer box for me. I felt as though I was sitting on the eaves of a roof with a herd of horses cavoorting under my feet. I never had a bird's-eye view of horses before. Looking down on their squirming bodies, with the coachman almost standing on his tiptoes driving them, was so different from Jone's buggy and our tall gray horse, which in general we look up to, that for a good while I paid no attention to anything but the danger of falling out on top of them. But having made sure that Jone was holding on to my dress from behind, I began to take an interest in the things around me. Knowing as much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn--there doesn't seem to be any end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what looked like it, and the next thing we knew we'd be in another whirl of omnibuses and cabs, with people and shops everywhere; and we'd go on and through this and then come to another handsome village with country houses, and the street would end in another busy town; and so on until I began to think there was no real country, at least, in the direction we was going. It is my opinion that if London was put on a pivot and spun round in the State of Texas until it all flew apart, it would spread all over the State and settle up the whole country. At last we did get away from the houses and began to roll along on the best made road I ever saw, with a hedge on each side and the greenest grass in the fields, and the most beautiful trees, with the very trunks covered with green leaves, and with white sheep and handsome cattle and pretty thatched cottages, and everything in perfect order, looking as if it had just been sprinkled and swept. We had seen English country before, but that was from the windows of a train, and it was very different from this sort of thing, where we went meandering along lanes, for that is what the roads look like, being so narrow. Just as I was getting my whole soul full of this lovely ruralness, down came a shower of rain without giving the least notice. I gave a jump in my seat as I felt it on me, and began to get ready to get down as soon as the coachman should stop for us all to get inside; but he didn't stop, but just drove along as if the sun was shining and the balmy breezes blowing, and then I looked around and not a soul of the eight people on the top of that coach showed the least sign of expecting to get down and go inside. They all sat there just as if nothing was happening, and not one of them even mentioned the rain. But I noticed that each of them had on a mackintosh or some kind of cape, whereas Jone and I never thought of taking anything in the way of waterproof or umbrellas, as it was perfectly clear when we started. [Illustration: "DOWN CAME A SHOWER OF RAIN"] I looked around at Jone, but he sat there with his face as placid as a piece of cheese, looking as if he had no more knowledge it was raining than the two Englishmen on the seat next him. Seeing he wasn't going to let those men think he minded the rain any more than they did, I determined that I wouldn't let the young woman who was sitting by me have any notion that I minded it, and so I sat still, with as cheerful a look as I could screw up, gazing at the trees with as gladsome a countenance as anybody could have with water trickling down her nose, her cheeks dripping, and dewdrops on her very eyelashes, while the dampness of her back was getting more and more perceptible as each second dragged itself along. Jone turned up the hood of my coat, and so let down into the back of my neck what water had collected in it; but I didn't say anything, but set my teeth hard together and fixed my mind on Columbia, happy land, and determined never to say anything about rain until some English person first mentioned it. But when one of the flowers on my hat leaned over the brim and exuded bloody drops on the front of my coat I began to weaken, and to think that if there was nothing better to do I might get under one of the seats; but just then the rain stopped and the sun shone. It was so sudden that it startled me; but not one of those English people mentioned that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, and so neither did Jone or I. We was feeling mighty moist and unhappy, but we tried to smile as if we was plants in a greenhouse, accustomed to being watered and feeling all the better for it. I can't write you all about the coach drive, which was very delightful, nor of that beautiful lake they call Virginia Water, and which I know you have a picture of in your house. They tell me it is artificial, but as it was made more than a hundred years ago, it might now be considered natural. We dined at an inn, and when we got back to town, with two more showers on the way, I said to Jone that I thought we'd better go straight to the Babylon Hotel, which we intended to start out for, although it was a long way round to go by Virginia Water, and see about engaging a room; and as Jone agreed I asked the coachman if he would put us down there, knowing that he'd pass near it. He agreed to this, would be an advertisement for his coach. When we got on the street where the Babylon Hotel was he whipped up his horses so that they went almost on a run, and the horner blew his horn until his eyes seemed bursting, and with a grand sweep and a clank and a jingle we pulled up at the front of the big hotel. Out marched the head porter in a blue uniform, and out ran two under-porters with red coats, and down jumped the horner and put up his ladder, and Jone and I got down, after giving the coachman half-a-crown, and receiving from the passengers a combined gaze of differentialism which had been wholly wanting before. The men in the red coats looked disappointed when they saw we had no baggage, but the great doors was flung open and we went straight up to the clerk's desk. When we was taken to look at rooms I remembered that there was always danger of Jone's tendency to thankful contentment getting the better of him, and I took the matter in hand myself. Two rooms good enough for anybody was shown us, but I was not going to take the first thing that was offered, no matter what it was. We settled the matter by getting a first-class room, with sofas and writing-desks and everything convenient, for only a little more than we was charged for the other rooms, and the next morning we went there. When we went back to our lodgings to pack up, and I looked in the glass and saw what a smeary, bedraggled state my hat and head was in, from being rained on, I said to Jone, "I don't see how those people ever let such a person as me have a room at their hotel." "It doesn't surprise me a bit," said Jone; "nobody but a very high and mighty person would have dared to go lording it about that hotel with her hat feathers and flowers all plastered down over her head. Most people can be uppish in good clothes, but to look like a scare-crow and be uppish can't be expected except from the truly lofty." "I hope you are right," I said, and I think he was. We hadn't been at the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to do. He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said. "Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and a dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with waiters enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all in French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona--" "Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away forever." "Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble." [Illustration: "Ask the waiter what the French words mean"] "The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that dining-room. A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be overbearing and supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at one of those tables you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair, and when the waiter gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the French words mean, and then he looks down on you as if he was a superior Jove contemplating a hop-toad, and he tells you that this one means beef and the other means potatoes, and brings you the things that are easiest to get. And you look as if you was thankful from the bottom of your heart that he is good enough to give you anything at all. All the airs I put on are no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I don't want this French thing--when I don't know what it is--and he must bring me some of the other--which I never heard of--and when it comes I eat it, no matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used to it, but generally had it better cooked. But, as I said before, it is of no use--your humbleness is too much for me. In a few days they will be bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted for other people." "Well," said Jone, "I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I go into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some of them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that they are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty scorn for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but I'll try what I can do. As far as I am able, I'll hold up my end of the social boom." You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next number; but when I've written as much as I think two foreign stamps will carry--for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter--I generally stop. _ |
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