Loitering in Pleasant Paths. Marion Harland
favors. We were grateful and satisfied. We were in a mood to be in love with England—“our old home;” still walked her soil as in a blessed dream, haunted only by sharp dreads of awakening to the knowledge that the realization of the hopes, and longings, and imaginings of many years was made of such stuff as had been our cloud-pictures. We were in process of an experience we were ashamed to speak of until we learned how common it was with other voyagers, whose planning and pining had resembled ours in kind and degree. None of us was willing to say how much time was given to a comical weighing of the identity question, somewhat after the fashion of poor Nelly on the roadside in the moonlight:—If this were England, who then were we? If these pilgrims were ourselves—veritable and unaltered—could it be true that we were here? If I do not express well what was as vague as tormenting, it is not because the system of spiritual and mental acclimation was not a reality.
The Palace of St. James, a range of brick and dinginess, stretched before us as we returned to the starting-point of the walk around the park, taking in the Bird-cage Walk, where Charles II. built his aviaries and lounged, Nelly Gwynne, or the Duchess of Portsmouth, at his side, a basket of puppies hung over his lace collar and ruffled cravat. It is not a palatial pile—even to eyes undried from the juice of Puck’s “little western flower.”
“It would still be a very decent abode for the horses of royalty—hardly for their grooms,” said Caput, critically. “And it is worth looking at when one remembers how long bloody Mary lay there, hideous, forsaken, half dead, the cancerous memories of Calais and Philip’s desertion consuming her vitals. There lived and died the gallant boy who was the eldest son of James I. If he had succeeded to the throne his brother Charles would have worn his head more comfortably and longer upon his shoulders. That is, unless, as in the case of Henry VIII., the manhood of the Prince of Wales had belied the promise of early youth.”
“It was in St. James’s Palace that Charles spent his last night,” I interrupted. It takes a long time for the novice to become accustomed to the strange thrill that vibrates through soul and nerves when such reminiscences overtake him, converting the place whereon he stands into holy ground. I was a novice, and rushed on impetuously. “The rooms in which he slept and made his toilet for the scaffold were in the old Manor-house, a wing of the palace since torn down. Why can’t they let things alone? But the park is here, and—” glancing dubiously along the avenues—“it is just possible—altogether possible—that some of these oldest trees may be the same that stood here then. On that morning, when—you remember?—the ground being covered lightly with snow, the king walked with a quick step across the park to Whitehall, calling to the guard, ‘Step on apace, my good fellows!’ ”
Measuring with careful eye an air line between the palace and a building with a cupola, on the St. James Street side of the park, we turned our steps along this. The dying leaves rustled under our feet, settling sighingly into the path behind us. The “light snow” had muffled the ring of the “quick step” more like the impatient tread of a bridegroom than that of a doomed man shortening the already brief space betwixt him and fate. Within the shadow of Whitehall, we paused.
“The scaffold was built just without the window of the banqueting-hall,” we reminded each other. “As late as the reign of William and Mary, the king’s blood was visible upon the window-sill. Jacobites made great capital of the insensibility of his granddaughter, who held her drawing-rooms in that very apartment. The crowd must have been densest about here, and spread far into the park. But how can we know just where the scaffold stood? It was low, for the people leaped upon it after the execution and dipped handkerchiefs in the blood, to be laid away as precious relics. Those windows are rather high!” glancing helplessly upward. “And which is the banqueting-hall?”
“Baldeker’s London” was then in press for the rescue of the next season’s traveller from like pits of perplexity. Not having it, and the “hand-books” we had provided ourselves with proving dumb guides in the emergency, the simplest and most natural road out of ignorance was to ask a question or two of some intelligent native-born Londoner.
In this wise, then, we first made the acquaintance of the Average Briton—a being who figured almost as often in our subsequent wanderings as did the travelling American. I do not undertake to say which was the more ridiculous or vexatious of the two, according as our purpose at the time of meeting them chanced to be diversion or information.
The Average Briton of this Sabbath-day was smug and rotund; in complexion, rubicund; complacent of visage, and a little rolling in gait, being duck-legged. A child trotted by him upon a pair of limbs cut dutifully after the paternal pattern, swinging upon the paternal hand. Upon the other side of the central figure, arrayed in matronly black silk and a velvet hat with a white plume, walked a lady of whom Hawthorne has left us a portrait:
“She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Without anything positively salient, or actually offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four gun ship in time of peace.” I had ample time to remember and to verify each line of the picture during the parley with her husband that succeeded our encounter. A citizen of London-town was he. We were so far right in our premises. One who had attended “divine service” in the morning; partaken of roast mutton and a pint of half-and-half at an early dinner; who would presently go home from this stretch of the legs, with good appetite and conscience to a “mouthful of somethink ’ot with his tea,” and come up to time with unflagging powers to bread, cheese, cold meat, pickles, and ale, at a nine o’clock supper. Our old home teems with such. Heaven send them length of days and more wit!
Caput stepped into the path of the substantial pair; lifted his hat in recognition of the lady’s presence and apology for the interruption.
“Excuse me, sir—”
I groaned inwardly. Had I not drilled him in the omission of the luckless monosyllable ever since we saw the Highlands of Navesink melt into the horizon? How many times had I iterated and reiterated the adage?—“In England one says ‘sir’ to prince, master, or servant. It is a confession of inferiority, or an insult.” Nature and (American) grace were too strong for me.
“Excuse me, sir! But can you tell me just where the scaffold was erected on which Charles the First was executed?”
The Average Briton stared bovinely. Be sure he did not touch his hat to me, nor echo the “sir,” nor yet betray how flatteringly it fell upon his unaccustomed ear. Being short of stature, he stared at an angle of forty-five degrees to gain his interlocutor’s face, unlocked his shaven jaws and uttered in a rumbling stomach-base the Shibboleth of his tribe and nation:
“I really carnt say!”
Caput fell back in good order—i.e., raising his hat again to the Complete British Matron, whose face had not changed by so much as the twitch of an eyelid while the colloquy was in progress. She paid no attention whatever to the homage offered to the sex through “the muchness of her personality,” nor were the creases in her lord’s double chin deepened by any inclination of his head.
“The fellow is an underbred dolt!” said Caput, looking after them as they sailed along the walk.
“In that case it is a pity you called him ‘sir,’ and said ‘erected’ and ‘executed,’ ” remarked I, with excruciating mildness. “Here comes another! Ask him where King Charles was beheaded.”
No. 2 was smugger and smoother than No. 1. He had silvery hair and mutton-leg whiskers, and a cable watch-chain trained over a satin waistcoat, adjuncts which imparted a look of yet intenser respectability. There was a moral and social flavor of bank-directorships and alder-manic expectations about him, almost warranting the “sir” which slipped again from the incorrigible tongue.
We had the same answer to a word and intonation. The formula must