“Mrs. Jarvis isn’t down yet,” said the footman, which was a relief, for we were late—ten minutes, according to Mrs. Jarvis’s clock. Nevertheless it did, as Graham said, make the perspiration dry up rather suddenly on the forehead. We were shown into a pleasant room with flowers in it, a large window, and a young man reading a newspaper. We have often wondered since who the young man was. He looked up from his newspaper as we came in, so we said “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” said he, and we saw that he had no wish to be uncivil. We were quite alone in the room and the clock was ticking. It was impossible to go on, with the young man reading a newspaper and the clock ticking like that, so I said: “It’s raining.”
“No—is it?” said he.
“Pouring,” I said pleasantly. “The horse we had ”
“I beg your pardon,” said the young man. I glanced at Graham, but he had walked to the window and was standing like a post, looking out of it.
“The horse ”
“Horse? Oh, yes, your horse ”
“The horse in our cab slipped all over the street.”
“Did he really!”
I don’t know what made me think of a waiting-room except perhaps—well, that was what it was, wasn’t it? And the way he fondled his newspaper. It seemed to me that it would be better manners to let him read and ignore the clock.
Presently he said of his own accord: “Here’s Mrs. Jerome now!” but it wasn’t Mrs. Jerome; it was a little girl and a little boy and the governess.
“Hullo, Patsy,” said the young man. “Hullo, John!” And they both replied: “Hullo, Andy!” but came straight up to Graham and me and held out their hands.
“My proper name is Patricia,” said the little girl; and the governess, who seemed to be dumb, smiled genially and nodded.
“Mother will be down in a minute,” Patricia explained. “Will you come in to lunch?”
So we went in to lunch under the wing of Patricia; and thinking of all the interesting and important people there were in London besides the Archbishop of Canterbury I did not dare to meet Graham’s eye.
“I think,” said Patricia to me, “you’d better sit by mother—when she comes. I don’t know where you’d better sit,” she said to Graham. “Perhaps you’d like to sit by John.”
“If you think we should get on,” said Graham, “I should like to sit by you;” and Andy said dejectedly: “I don’t suppose it matters where I sit.” I am sure Andy was nice, though he did seem to think so little of himself; but we shall never know.
Then the door opened, and Mrs. Jerome Jarvis came in, like an exclamation. She was quite nice-looking and energetic and thin and young, and there is no word to describe her self-possession. I have thought since that she was exactly like mercury—if you cut her up into a million little bits each bit would continue to revolve upon itself. Whatever she did you saw she would never apologise, and whatever she said would just have to go on its merits. It did not seem to matter to her in the least that two strangers and Andy had come to lunch; but she did shake hands with us both, and gave us each a vivacious smile.
“In happy time!” she said to me; and “Don’t get up, I pray!” to Graham, and “Morgen, Fräulein,” to the governess, who was thus shown to be not dumb but German only, and “I’m famishing, William!” to the butler, and nodded to Andy. Then she stood up suddenly in her place and shut her eyes and said: “For what I am about to receive the Lord make me truly thankful. Did you say that to-day, duckies?”
“Must we ought to?” asked John. “When there’s company?”
“But of course!” cried Mrs. Jarvis. “My life,” she turned to me, “is simply ravaged; but I do like to see that they say their little graces.”
“Never mind, mummie,” said Patricia, “we will afterwards.”
I could not think of anything to say, and neither, it seemed, could Graham, for he didn’t say it; and as to Andy he was simply lunching, and went on with it.
“So you come from Canada,” said Mrs. Jarvis. “John, son, do you know where Canada is?”
“No,” said John, son.
“I know,” said Patricia. “There are bears there. Are there bears there?”
“Beautiful bears!” said Graham.
“Ever get any?” asked Andy suddenly; but I don’t think Graham heard him, which was a pity, for Andy did not speak again, except to William.
“And you know the Fullertons?” continued Mrs. Jarvis.
“Yes,” I said, “we do. Does—does Patricia know the Fullertons?”
“I do if John does,” said Patricia.
“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Jarvis. “They’re grown-ups. How can babies know grown-ups? Julia Fullerton is intelligent but superficial, and Alfred Fullerton deep but dull, don’t you think?”
I said the stupidest possible thing. “I think they think you like them,” I said.
“Oh, so I do!” but Mrs. Jarvis’s eye wandered away from the subject, down the table to Patricia. I saw it soften as she looked at Patricia, and I do not agree with Graham, who said that she looked at Patricia in order that it should soften.
“Angel,” she said, “what are you having? Have you got what you like?”
“No,” replied Patricia. “I’d like some ham.”
“Ham, sweetheart? So bad for the—for the—what is ham bad for? I’m sure it is bad for something. Just the tiniest scrap, then, William. And did you both have your sleeps, sweetmeats?”
“We didn’t sleep a wink,” said John, letting the milk-pudding run out of his suspended spoon, “and we both had the awfullest dreams.”
“Oh, I say!” said Andy, so he did speak once again.
“How could you possibly have dreams if you didn’t sleep?” asked Mrs. Jarvis, and winked delightedly at Graham. “Tell us your dreams.”
“Well, p’raps we slept a little bit. I’ve forgot my dream, but it was about an efalun—no, that was my night-before-last dream. It was worse than an efalun, but I forget it.”
“Your memory seems to be going early,” said Mrs. Jarvis. “Who says motor for this afternoon?”
“I say motor. Can we take Bowser?” asked Patricia. “And you, too, darling?”
“Not Bowser, he makes you jump about too much. And not me, indeed. I’m going to pay visits in the carriage at a quarter-past three.”
Our hostess said it very distinctly, looking at the flowers in the middle of the table.
“What are you pouting those pretty lips for, Muggins?” she asked Patricia. “She named herself Muggins, after a nurse she loved with all her little soul,” Mrs. Jarvis said to me. “Nurse died.”
“I want some soda-water,” said Muggins.
“Oh, not soda-water! So lowering!”
“What’s ‘lowering,’ darling?” asked John.
“Lowering is going down, down, down till you can’t see yourself without a microscope,” his mother told him. “Not a drop of soda-water, my heart. But you may have five drops of Malvern.”
“Six,” said Muggins; and Mrs. Jarvis looked at me with a smile of enjoyment, and said:
“Greedy girl!”
It seemed to me by that time that if nothing was done to prevent it Mrs. Jerome Jarvis would have an extraordinary recollection of our lunch with her, and I looked hopelessly over at Graham, who evidently felt the same thing, for he made a violent plunge into conversation by asking her what she thought of the new Imperialism.
“Mostly rot!” said Mrs. Jarvis. “I’ve no patience with the Colonies, wanting this, that, and the other thing, telling us what to do. Teaching their grandmothers to suck eggs! Andy, how can you let her have cheese?”
Andy said nothing, and we, too, recognised, though rather late, that it was not necessary for anybody to say anything. I saw the perception pass over Graham’s face, and received it telepathically. All would have been over almost immediately then; but Andy unfortunately took an apple.
“Now, duckies,” continued Mrs. Jarvis, who had not paused, “who do you
think asked about you last night? Whoever, ever, ever do you think? Guess!”
They guessed happily for some time. John among other persons guessed Bowser, at which Mrs. Jarvis said to me: “He is going to be a genius, don’t you think?”
“Quite wrong—wrong—wrong! The Queen! The sweet, gracious, beautiful Queen! And she remembered your name, Patricia—think of that!”
I hope Patricia thought of it; we did, certainly. It was charming, Graham afterwards admitted, to be lunching with a little girl whose name the Queen had remembered. It gave me a funny little thrill, as if one had stepped by accident quite near the Royal heart of England, which had always before beaten for us in a fairy tale far away. But it was impossible to tell Mrs. Jerome Jarvis such a thing as that; she might have said it was rot. So we sat as silent as before, and I am afraid our hostess must have thought Canada a country which produces very dull people.
Before Andy finished his apple Mrs. Jarvis mentioned the carriage again and a quarter-past three, so she must have thought them rather stupid, too. Yet she seemed quite surprised when we said good-bye as quickly as we could in the hall. “Aren’t you coming up to have some coffee?” she said, “and see Patricia do her little dance?” but of course how could we? It was five minutes past three then. She really meant to be kind, however. When I thanked her for having us to lunch, she said: “Delighted! All in the day’s work,” most cordially; Graham could not deny it. And she accompanied us to the door herself, and said we could always catch her at lunch; we had only to drop her a postcard the day before, and blew us a kiss as we went down the steps.
“That’s something to remember,” said Graham to me in the cab, “if ever we are in need of a meal.”
We were silent for some time as we went along among the horses’ heads past the Park, thinking about our experience, and whether—at least I was—whether it was common.
“What a lively person—Mrs. Jarvis,” I ventured at last.
“Highly kinetic over a limited area,” replied Graham absently. “Like things that dance over ponds. But what I am wondering is why ”
“Matthew Arnold?” I divined.
“Exactly. And why ?”
“Herbert Spencer ?”
“Well, why?” said Graham.
“Oh, I don’t know!” I replied, and indeed I did not. “Perhaps neither of them really did, or perhaps they didn’t particularly mean it. But she is a character.”
“Oh, yes!” said Graham.
“And I can perfectly understand her picture being in the papers,” I went on—“especially, somehow, in the New York Sunday ones.”
“I know what you mean,” said Graham. “But—have we any more introductions, Mary, to characters?”
“I don’t know,” I said; “but if we have ”
“Let’s lose them,” said Graham, which, of course, was the merest foolish impulse on his part; and nothing would have induced me to do it.
CHAPTER VI
THE moral of Mrs. Jerome Jarvis was, of course, that while introductions are as useful and delightful in England as anywhere else, it is better not to have them to people who are already too much engaged, or too prominent for any reason. Much better. Otherwise it gives one a last straw kind of feeling which there is no necessity, as one goes through life, Graham says, ever to have. There is a good deal of champagne in London, and people like Mrs. Jarvis seem to the observer the very bubbles of it. Nobody ought to burden a bubble; it was meant just to explode and begin again. One can drink it, of course, but there are better forms of appreciation and more important things to appreciate. I cannot stay among our introductions; the even more interesting things beckon me on so; but the fruit of them was very various. My brother Graham is a keen politician, and had carried Minnebiac for the Conservatives in a bye-election just two months before we started. He is Vice-President, too, of the Dominion Club, which pleases father fearfully, as it is rather a compliment to so young a man. Nevertheless, it was rather astounding to be asked to dine and meet very serious people indeed, like Professor Byng, who wrote the standard book upon Off-Shoots of the British Race, and Earl Watchett, the Colonial Under-Secretary, and be expected, as Graham certainly was, to contribute something valuable to the collections of facts these gentlemen were making. (He said afterwards that he found them pathetically anxious to be informed, and hated his own incompetence, in view of the opportunity; but anybody who knows Graham would be quite sure he told them things after dinner that were useful for them to learn, and did it nicely, too.) Against that, in case we were inclined to think too well of ourselves, we might put the attention paid us by some people father had been able to be of use to in Ottawa, and who had been quite charmed with Minnebiac. We were unfortunate in meeting these people—never, indeed, did meet them; they were always just going out of town; but they very kindly sent us tickets for Madame Tussaud’s. We felt distantly treated, but Graham insisted on going; he said it was full of characters, and he wanted to compare them with Mrs. Jarvis.
But it is along the ordinary ways of life and among the people one would naturally know that the really most interesting things happen to one; the others are piquant and high-coloured, and their being hard to come by makes them seem wonderfully quotable when one gets home; but they are as adventitious and irrelevant as the circus used to be in Minnebiac, and soon fade away because one has no proper relation to them. We were having tea at Stewart’s in Bond Street after a Winter Exhibition, I know, simply having tea, or rather paying for it, when we met Evelyn Dicey, whose father owns any number of the Thousand Islands (in the River St. Lawrence), and usually lived on one of them in the summer, though Mr. Dicey’s home was in Troy, N.J.
Minnebiac is not far from those parts; and we used sometimes to talk about buying an island or two ourselves; but father said no, a small portion of the mainland on the right side, under the Crown, was good enough for him, and he never would. We used to exchange visits with the Diceys, which began in a business connection and ended in our thinking them a charming family, especially Evelyn. Still, she was not a person you wrote to or were able to keep track of; she just appeared and disappeared on our northern banks, like certain summer birds and flowers; and we were all immensely astonished to meet at Stewart’s.
“What are you doing here?” we naturally exclaimed as we rushed together. I have noticed that people from our side always say that when they meet unexpectedly, as if nobody had any business to be in Great Britain but themselves. I had that feeling just for a minute unaccountably towards Evelyn. For us what could be more right or proper?—but there was she, and not in the least with the air of a foreigner.
“So you are having a look at the dear old Kingdom, too!” Miss Dicey went on, exactly as if she had shares in it.
“Yes,” said Graham. “It’s nice of them, isn’t it, to let the public in?”
So Graham felt as I did. I don’t think Evelyn missed it, but she only looked at him and smiled.
“It just does my heart good to hear you talk. I’ve been among these sweet British for two solid months now, and they are darlings; but they don’t exactly catch on, do they?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Graham. “Mary and I sometimes feel, in conversation over here, as if we belonged to the period of Alfred the Great. Don’t we, Mary?”
“Oh, well! I don’t know, of course, who you’ve been meeting. But now you are to come right back and have tea with me,” said Evelyn.
We said we would come right back, but we couldn’t have tea because we had already had it, and we sat down again with our American friend.
“The people of these islands,” said Graham, “are certainly degenerating, and no libel. They talk now with great fluency, whereas few and short were the words they used to say; they now indulge themselves in all sorts of jammy things like these, whereas at the noblest period of their history one is taught that they were content with a simple currant bun.”
“Yes, isn’t it heavenly!” said Evelyn, as her order, consisting mostly of co
ffee-icing, was placed before her. “We can’t do a great deal more than this in New York; and then how much better the climate is over here for a tea appetite! I love the old climate myself, when I can see through it; and it does make you adore your tea. And really and truly I’m getting fond of the English. They have their qualities, you can take it from me.”
“We have always thought so,” said I.
“Well, this little one had to find it out. Oh, Mary! but didn’t your American friend here land in a good old British bog! Wales, my ticket took me to—distant relatives in Wales. They lived in a castle with a moat; and it was only because Cromwell was careless that they didn’t have a title; and I had just yearned over those relatives in Wales ever since I could understand. Well, the castle was there, and the moat was there all right—perfectly unnecessary. I used to look at the place sometimes and think, ‘You poor old thing; aren’t you ashamed of having a moat when nobody would take you as a gift?’ And the relations were there inside, too, all up to description in size and number; but, honey, I nearly died. There wasn’t a thing to do in that place but learn to spell it and forget again; and the time came when you couldn’t forget. No, my children, Wales is a romantic country, but if you haven’t time to see it don’t lie awake worrying. There was a little church three miles off, and the minister was the nearest neighbour. He preached against motoring, because, he said, the poor might often be in our way, but we had no right to destroy them. Oh, dear!”
“Good man,” said Graham.
“The modern use of a moat round a place like that,” continued Evelyn, “is to keep people from getting out of it. But I did get out, by the connivance of a Mr. Ap-Williams, who drove me to the station in his dogcart. I believe he thought I was going to elope with him, he looked so disappointed when I said good-bye out of the car-window; but all I wanted, of course, was to get over the ground. Most of the family, you see, had gone for the week-end to a kind of second cousin castle where there was a funeral, taking all the horses that could walk; and the Pollens from New York heard about my case that very day and telegraphed for me. And now I’m right in it, and the prospect brightens every hour. There is a lot of difference between many places and Wales. Now relate, please, exactly what you have been doing in this sweet old realm of Edward’s. I won’t say another word.”
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