The Emily Emmins Papers. Wells Carolyn
of my collection of tongue-tipped questions.
“But, sadly enough,” went on the Englishman, “it is a question that it is useless for me to answer you at present. An American must be in London for four years before he can believe the true solution of the cab-fee problem. The correct procedure is to give the cabby nothing beyond his legal fare. If you give him tuppence, he looks at you reproachfully; if you give him fourpence, he scowls at you fearfully; if you give him sixpence, he treats you to his verbal opinion of you in choice Billingsgate. Whereas, if you give him no gratuity, he assumes that you have lived here for four years, and lifts his hat to you with the greatest respect.”
“Why can’t I follow your rule at once?” I demanded.
“I do not know,” returned Mr. Travers. “Nobody knows; but the fact remains that you cannot. You think you believe the theory now, because you hear me set it forth with an air of authority; but it will take you at least four years to attain a true working knowledge of it. Moreover, you will ask every Englishman you meet regarding cab-fees, and so conflicting will be their advices that you will change your tactics with every hansom you ride in.”
“Then,” said I, with an air of independence, “I shall keep out of hansom-cabs, until I am fully determined what course to pursue in this regard.”
“But you can’t, my dear lady,” continued my instructor. “To be in London is to be in a hansom. They are inevitable.”
“Why not omnibuses?” I asked, eager for general information. “I have long wanted to ride in or on a London ’bus.”
Mr. Travers’s eyes twinkled.
“You have an American joke,” he said, “which cautions people against going into the water before they learn how to swim. I will give you an infallible rule for ’buses: never get on a London ’bus until you have learned to get on and off of them while they are in motion.”
“What waggery!” observed Mrs. Travers, in a calm, unamused tone, and I suddenly realized that I was in the midst of an English sense of humor.
The dinner progressed methodically through a series of specified courses, and when we had reached the vegetable marrow I had ceased to regard the green distance outside and gave my full attention to my lucky find of the Real Thing in English people.
Mr. Travers’s advice was always excellent and practical, though usually hidden in a jest of somewhat heavy persiflage.
We discussed the English tendency to elide letters or syllables from their proper names, falling back on the time-worn example of the American who complained that Englishmen spell a name B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p and pronounce it Chumley.
“But it’s better for an American,” said Mr. Travers, “to pronounce a name as it is spelled than to elide at his own sweet will. I met a Chicagoan last summer, who said he intended to run out to Win’c’s’le.”
“What did he mean?” I asked, in my ignorance.
“Windsor Castle,” replied Mr. Travers, gravely.
The mention of Chicago made me remember my companion in the parlor car, and I spoke of her as one type of the American tourist.
“I saw her,” said Mrs. Travers, with that inimitable air of separateness that belongs to the true Londoner; “she is not interesting. Merely a smart party who wears a hat.”
As this so competently described the lady from Chicago, I began to suspect, what I later came thoroughly to realize, that the English are wonderfully adept in the making of picturesque phrases.
During our animated conversation, Miss Travers had said almost nothing.
I had read of the mental blankness of the British Young Person, and was not altogether surprised at this.
But the girl was a delight to look at. By no means of the pink-cheeked, red-lipped variety immortalized in English novels, she was of a delicate build, with a face of transparent whiteness. Her soft light brown hair was carelessly arranged, and her violet eyes would have been pathetic but for a flashing, merry twinkle when she occasionally raised their heavy, creamy lids.
Remembering Mrs. Travers’s aptness in coining phrases of description, I tried to put Rosalind Travers into a few words, but was obliged to borrow from the Master-Coiner, and I called her “The Person of Moonshine.”
By the time I was having my first interview with real Cheddar cheese, the Traverses were inviting me to visit them, and I was gladly accepting their delightfully hospitable and unmistakably sincere invitation.
Scrupulously careful to bid good-bye to my Chicago friend before we reached London, alone I stepped from the train at Euston Station with a feeling of infinite anticipation.
Owing probably to an over-excited imagination, the mere physical atmosphere of the city impressed me as something quite different from any city I had ever seen. I felt as if I had at last come into my own, and had far more the attitude of a returning wanderer than a visiting stranger.
The hansom-cabs did not appear any different from the New York vehicles of the same name, but I climbed into one without that vague wonder as to whether it wouldn’t be cheaper to buy the outfit than to pay my fare.
My destination was a club in Piccadilly – a woman’s club, which I had joined for the sole purpose of using its house as an abiding-place.
The cab-driver was cordial, even solicitous about my comfort, but finally myself and my hand-luggage were carefully stowed away, the glass was put down, and we started.
It was after dark, and it was raining, two conditions which might appall an unescorted woman in a strange city. The rain was of that ridiculous English sort, where the drops do not fall, but play around in the air, now and then whisking into the faces of passers-by, but never spoiling their clothes. It was enough, though, to wet the asphalt, and when we swung into Piccadilly, and the flashing lights from everywhere dived down into the street, and rippled themselves across the wet blackness of the pavement, I suddenly realized that I was driving over one of the most beautiful things in the world.
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