Poppa said he didn't know that he had been relying much on the poplar feature of the scenery, and returned to his weary search for American telegrams in a London daily paper.
"Dear me," momma ejaculated, "I never supposed I should see them doing it! And right along the line of the railway, too!"
"See them doing it!" I repeated, searching the landscape.
"The women working in the fields, darling love. Garnering the grain, all in that nice moderate shade of blue-electric, shouldn't you call it? There—there's another! No, you can't see her now. France is fascinating!"
Poppa abruptly folded the newspaper. "I've learnt a great deal more than I wanted to know about Madagascar," said he, "and I understand that there's a likelihood of the London voter being called to arms to prevent High Church trustees introducing candles and incense into the opening exercises of the public schools. I've read eleven different accounts of a battle in Korea, and an article on the fauna and flora of Beluchistan, very well written. And I see it's stated, on good authority, that the Queen drove out yesterday accompanied by the Princess Beatrice. I don't know that I ever got more information for two cents in my life. But for news—Great Scott! I know more news than there is in that paper! The editor ought to be invited to come over and discover America."
"Here's something about America," I protested, "from Chicago, too. A whole column—'Movements of Cereals.'"
"Yes, and look at that for a nice attractive headline," responded the Senator with sarcasm. "'Movements of Cereals!' Gives you a great idea of pace, doesn't it? Why couldn't they have called it 'Grain on the Go'?"
"Did Mr. McConnell get in for Mayor, or Jimmy Fagan?" I inquired, looking down the column.
"They don't seem to have asked anybody."
"And who got the Post Office?"
"Not there, not there, my child!"
"Oh!" said momma at the window, "these little gray-stone villages are too sweet for words. Why talk of Chicago? Mr. McConnell and Mr. Fagan are all very well at home, but now that the ocean heaves between us, and your political campaign is over, may we not forget them?"
"Forget Mike McConnell and Jimmy Fagan!" replied the Senator, regarding a passing church spire with an absent smile. "Well, no, Augusta; as far as I'm concerned I'm afraid it couldn't be done—at all permanently. There's too much involved. But I see what you mean about turning the mind out to pasture when the grazing is interesting—getting in a cud, so to speak, for reflection afterwards. I see your idea."
The Senator is always business-like. He immediately addressed himself through the other window to the appreciation of the scenery, and I felt, as I took out my note-book to record one or two impressions, that he would do it justice.
"No, momma," I was immediately compelled to exclaim, "you mustn't look over my shoulder. It is paralysing to the imagination."
"Then I won't, dear. But oh, if you could only describe it as it is! The ruined chateaux, tree-embosomed——" Momma paused.
"The gray church spires, from which at eventide the Angelus comes pealing—or stealing," she continued. "Perhaps 'stealing' is better."
"Above all the poplars—the poplars are very characteristic, dear. And the women toilers in the sunset fields garnering up the golden grain. You might exclaim, 'Why are they always in blue?' Have you got that down?"
"They were making hay," poppa corrected. "But I suppose the public won't know the difference, any more than you did."
Momma leaned forward, clasping her smelling-bottle, and looked out of the window with a smile of exaltation.
"The cows," she went on, "the proud-legged Norman cows standing knee-deep in the quiet pools. Have you got the cows down, dear?"
The Senator, at the other window, looked across disparagingly, hard at work on his beard. He said nothing, but after a time abruptly thrust his hands in his pockets, and his feet out in front of him in a manner which expressed absolute dissent. When momma said she thought she would try to get a little sleep he looked round observantly, and as soon as her slumber was sound and comfortable he beckoned to me.
"See here," he said, not unkindly, argumentatively. "About those cows. In fact, about all these pointers your mother's been giving you. They're all very nice and poetic—I don't want to run down momma's ideas—but they don't strike me as original. I won't say I could put my finger on it, but I'm perfectly certain I've heard of the poplars and the women field labourers of Normandy somewhere before. She doesn't do it on purpose"—the Senator inclined his head with deprecation toward the sleeping form opposite, and lowered his voice—"and I don't know that I'd mention it to you under any other circumstances, but momma's a fearful plagiarist. She doesn't hesitate anywhere. I've known her do it to William Shakespeare and the Book of Job, let alone modern authors. In dealing with her suggestions you want to be very careful. Otherwise momma'll get you into trouble."
I nodded with affectionate consideration. "I'll make a note of what you say, Senator," I replied, and immediately, from motives of delicacy, we changed the subject. As we talked, poppa told me in confidence how much he expected of the democratic idea in Paris. He said that even the short time we had spent in England was enough to enable him to detect the subserviency of the lower classes there and to resent it, as a man and a brother. He spoke sadly and somewhat bitterly of the manners of the brother man who shaved him, which he found unjustifiably affable, and of the inexcusable abasement of a British railway porter if you gave him a shilling. He said he was glad to leave England, it was demoralising to live there; you lost your sense of the dignity of labour, and in the course of time you were almost bound to degenerate into a swell. He expressed a good deal of sympathy with the aristocracy on this account, concentrating his indignation upon those who, as it were, made aristocrats of innocent human beings against their will. It was more than he would have ventured to say in public, but in talking to me poppa often mentions what a comfort it is to be his own mouthpiece.
"The best thing about these tourists' tickets is," said the Senator as we approached Paris, "that they entitle you to the use of an interpreter. He is said to be found on all station platforms of importance, and I presume he's standing there waiting for us now. I take it we're at liberty to tap his knowledge of the language in any moment of difficulty just as if it were our own."
Ten minutes later the carriage doors were opening upon Paris, and the Senator's eagle eye was searching the crowded platform for this official. Our vague idea was that the interpreter would be a conspicuous and permanent object like a nickle-in-the-slot machine, automatically arranged to open his arms to tourists presenting the right tickets, and emit conversation. When we finally detected him, by his cap, he was shifting uneasily in the midst of a crowd of inquirers. His face was pale, his beard pointed, his expression that of a person constantly interrupted in many languages. The crowd was parting to permit him to escape, when we filled up the available avenue and confronted him.
"Are you the linguist that goes with our tickets?" asked the Senator.
"I am ze interpretare yes, but weez ze tickets I go not, no. All-ways I stay here in zis place, nowheres I go." He stood at bay, so to speak, frowning fiercely as he replied, and then made another bolt for liberty, but poppa laid a compelling hand upon his arm.
"If it's all the same to you," said poppa, firmly, "I've got ladies with me, and——"
"Yes certainly you get presently your tronks. You see zat door beside many people? Immediately it open you go and show ze customs man. You got no duty thing, it is all right. You call one fiacre—carriage—and go at your hotel."
"Oh," exclaimed momma, "is there any charge on nerve tincture, please? It's entirely for my personal use."
"It's only on cigars and eau-de-Cologne, isn't it?" I entreated.
"Which door did you say?" asked the Senator. "I'd be obliged if you would speak more slowly. There's no cause for excitement. From here I can see fourteen doors, and I saw our luggage go in by this door."
"You don't believe wat I say! Very well! All ze same it is zat door beside all ze people wat want zere tronks!"
"All right," said the Senator pacifically. "How you do boil over! I tell you one thing, my friend," he added, as the interpreter washed his hands of us, "you may be a necessity to the travelling public, but you're not a luxury, in any sense of the word."
The Senator, discovering to his surprise that the hotel clerk was a lady, lifted his hat. He did not appear to be surprised, that wasn't the Senator's way, but he forgot what he had to say, which proved it. While he was hesitating she looked at him humorously and said "Good evening, sir!" She was a florid person who wore this sense of humour between hard blue eyes and an iron jaw. Momma took a passionate dislike to her on the spot.
"Oh, then you do," said poppa. "You parlay Anglay. That's a good thing I'm sure, for I know mighty little Fransay. May I ask what sort of accommodation you can give Mrs. Wick, Miss Wick, and myself for to-night? Anything on the first floor?"
"What rooms you require are one double one single, yes? Certainly. Francois, trente-cinq et trente-huit." She handed Francois the keys and her sense of humour disappeared in a smile which told poppa that he might, if he liked, consider her a fine woman. He, wishing doubtless to bask in it to the fullest extent, produced his book of tickets.
"I expect you've seen these before," he said, apparently for the pleasure of continuing the conversation.
As her eye fell upon them a look of startled cynicism suddenly replaced the smile. Her cynicism was paradoxical, she was so large, and sound and wholesome, and the more irritating on this account.
"You 'ave the coupons!" she exclaimed. "Ah-a-ah!" in a crescendo of astonishment at our duplicity. "Then I 'ave made one mistake. Francois! Those first floor rooms they are already taken. But on the third floor are two good beautiful rooms. There is also the lift—you can use the lift."
"I can't dispute with a lady," said poppa, "but that is singular. I should prefer those first floor rooms which were not taken until I mentioned the coupons."
"Sare!"
The lady's eye was unflinching, and poppa quailed. He looked ashamed, as if he had been caught in telling a story. They made a picture, as he stood there pulling his beard, of American chivalry and Gallic guile, which was almost pathetic.
"Well," said he, "as it's necessary that Mrs. Wick should lie down as soon as possible you might show us those third floor rooms."
Then he recovered his dignity and glanced at Madame more in sorrow than in anger. "Certainly, sare," she said severely. "Will you use the lift? For the lift there is no sharge."
"That," said the Senator, "is real liberal." In moments of emotion poppa often dropped into an Americanism. "If it's a serious offer I think we will use the lift."
At a nod from Madame, Francois went away to seek the man belonging to the lift, and after a time returned with him. The lady produced another key, with which the man belonging to the lift unlocked the door of the brass cage which guarded it.
"You must find strangers very dishonest, madam," said the Senator courteously as we stepped inside, "to render such a precaution necessary."
But before we arrived at the third floor we were convinced that it was unnecessary. It was not an elevator that the most burglarious would have cared to take away.
So many Americans surrounded the breakfast table next morning that we might almost have imagined ourselves in Chicago. A small, young priest with furtive brown eyes cowered at one of the side tables, and at another a broad-shouldered, unsmiling lady, dressed in black, with brows and a slight moustache to match, dispensed food to a sallow and shrinking object of preternaturally serious aspect who seemed to be her husband, and a little boy who kept an anxious eye on them both. They were French, too, but all the people who sat up and down the long middle table belonged to the United States of America. They were there in groups and in families representing different localities and different social positions—as momma said, you had only to look at their shoulder seams; and each group or family received the advances of the next with the polite tolerance, head a little on one side, which characterises us when we don't know each other's business standing or church membership; but the tide of conversation which ebbed and flowed had a flavour which made the table a geographical unit. I say "flavour," because there was certainly something, but I am now inclined to think with Mr. Page that "accent" is rather too strong a word to describe it. At all events, the gratification of hearing it after his temporary exile in Great Britain almost brought tears to the Senator's eyes. There were only three vacant places, and, as we took them, making the national circle complete, a little smile wavered round the table. It was a proud, conscious smile; it indicated that though we might not be on terms of intimacy we recognised ourselves to be immensely and uniformly American, and considerably the biggest fraction of the travelling public. As poppa said, the prevailing feeling was also American. As he was tucking his napkin into his waistcoat, and ordering our various breakfasts, the gentleman who sat next to him listened—he could not help it—fidgetted, and finally, with some embarrassment, spoke.
"I don't know, sir," he said, "whether you're aware of it—I presume you're a stranger, like myself—but all they allow for what they call breakfast in this hotel is tea or coffee, rolls, and butter; everything else is charged extra."
Poppa was touched. As he said to me afterward, who but an American would have taken the trouble to tell a stranger a thing like that! Not an Englishman, certainly—he would see you bankrupt first! He disguised his own sophistication, and said he was very much obliged, and he almost apologised for not being able to take advantage of the information, and stick to coffee and rolls.
"But the fact is," he said in self-defence, "we may get back for lunch and we may not."
"That's all right," the gentleman replied with distinct relief. "I didn't mind the omelette or the sole, but when it came to fried chicken and strawberries I just had to speak out. You going to make a long stay in Paris?"
As they launched to conversation momma and I glanced at each other with mutual congratulation. It was at last obvious that the Senator was going to enjoy his European experiences; we had been a little doubtful about it. Left to ourselves, we discussed our breakfast and the waiters, the only French people we could see from where we sat, and expressed our annoyance, which was great, at being offered tooth-picks. I was so hungry that it was only when I asked for a third large roll that I noticed momma regarding me with mild disapproval.
"I fear," she said with a little sigh, "that you are thinking very little of what is past and gone, love."
"Momma," I replied, "don't spoil my breakfast." When momma can throw an emotional chill over anything, I never knew her to refrain. "I should like that garçon to bring me some more bread," I continued.
Momma sighed even more deeply. "You may have part of mine," she replied, breaking it with a gesture that said such callousness she could not understand. Her manner for the next few minutes expressed distinctly that she, at least, meant to do her duty by Arthur.
Presently from the other side of poppa came the words, "Not Wick of Chicago!"
"I guess I can't deny it," said poppa.
"Senator Wick?"
Poppa lowered his voice. "If it's all the same to you," he said, "not for the present. Just plain Joshua P. Wick. I'm not what you call travelling incognito, do you see, but, so far as the U.S. Senate is concerned, I haven't got it with me."
"Well, sir, I won't mention it again. But all the same, if I may be allowed to say so, I am pleased to meet you, sir—very pleased. I suppose they wired you that Mike McConnell's got the Post Office."
Poppa held out his hand in an instant of speechless gratitude. "Sir," he said, "they did not. Put it there. I said no wires and no letters, and I've been sorry for it ever since. Momma," he continued, "daughter, allow me to present to you Mr.?—Mr. Malt, who has heard by cablegram that our friend Mr. McConnell is Postmaster-General of Chicago."
Momma was grateful, too, though she expressed it somewhat more distantly. Momma has a great deal of manner with strangers; it sometimes completely disguises her real feeling toward them. I was also grateful, though I merely bowed, and kicked the Senator under the table. Nobody would have guessed from our outward bearing the extent to which our political fortunes, as a family, were mixed up with Mike McConnell's. Mr. Malt immediately said that if there was anything else he could do for us he was at our service.
"Well," said poppa, "I suppose there's a good deal of intrinsic interest in this town—relics of Napoleon, the Bon Marché, and so on—and we've got to see it. I must say," he added, turning to momma, "I feel considerably more equal to it now."
"It will take you a good long week," said Mr. Malt earnestly, "to begin to have an idea of it. You might spend two whole days in the Louvre itself. Is your time limited?"
"I don't need to tell any American the market value of it," said poppa smiling.
"Then you can't do better than go straight to the Louvre. I'd be pleased to accompany you, only I've got to go round and see our Ambassador—I've got a little business with him. I daresay you know that one of our man-of-war ships is lying right down here in the Seine river. Well, the captain is giving a reception to-morrow in honour of the Russian Admiral who happens to be there, too. I've got ladies with me and I wrote for four tickets. Did I get the four tickets—or two of them—or one? No, sir, I got a letter in the third person singular saying it wasn't a public entertainment! I wrote back to say I guessed it was an American entertainment, and he could expect me, all the same. He hadn't any sort of excuse—my name and business address were on my letter paper. Now I'm just going round to see what a United States Ambassador's for, in this connection."
Mr. Malt rose and the waiter withdrew his chair. "Thank you, garçon," said he. "I'm coming back again—do you understand? This is not my last meal," and the waiter bowed as if that were a statement which had to be acknowledged, but was of the least possible consequence to him personally. "Well, Mr. Wick," continued Mr. Malt, brushing the crumbs from his waistcoat, "I'll say good morning, and to your ladies also. I'm very pleased to have met you."
"Well," said momma, as he disappeared, "if every American in Paris has decided to go to that reception there won't be much room for the Russians."
"I suppose he's a voter and a tax-payer, and he's got his feelings," replied poppa. The Senator would defend a voter and a tax-payer against any imputation not actually criminal.
"I'm glad I'm not one of his lady-friends," momma continued. "I don't think I could make myself at home on that man-of-war under the circumstances. But I daresay he'll drag them there with him. He seems to be just that kind of a man."
"He's a very patriotic kind of a man," replied the Senator. "It's his patriotism, don't you see, that's giving him all this trouble. It's been outraged. Personally I consider Mr. Malt a very intelligent gentleman, and if he'd given me an opening as big as the eye of a needle I'm the camel that would have gone with him, Augusta."
This statement of the Senator's struck me as something to be acted upon. If there was to be a constant possibility of his going off with any chance American in regular communication with the United States, our European tour would be a good deal less interesting than I had been led to expect. While momma was getting ready for the Louvre, therefore, I stepped down to the office and wired our itinerary to his partner in Chicago. "Keep up daily communication by wire in detail," I telegraphed, "forward copies all important letters care Peters." Peters was the tourist agent who had undertaken to bless our comings and goings. I said nothing whatever to poppa, but I felt a glow of conscious triumph when I thought of Mr. Malt.
We stood and realised Paris on the pavement while the fiacre turned in from the road and drew up for us. I had every intention of being fascinated and so had momma. We had both heard often and often that good Americans when they die go to Paris, and that prepares one for a good deal in this life. We were so anxious to be pleased that we fastened with one accord upon the florist's shop under the hotel and said that it was uniquely charming, though we both knew places in Broadway that it couldn't be compared with. We looked amiably at the passers-by, and did our best to detect in the manner of their faces that esprit that makes the dialogue of French novels so stimulating. What I usually thought I saw when they looked at us was a leisurely indifferentism ornamented with the suspicion of a sneer, and based upon a certain fundamental acquisitiveness and ability to make a valuation that acknowledged the desirability of our presence on business grounds, if not on personal ones. It seemed to be a preconcerted public intention to make as much noise in a given space as possible—we spoke of the cheerfulness of it, stopping our ears. The cracking of the drivers' whips alone made a feu de joie that never ceased, and listening to it we knew that we ought to feel happy and elated. The driver of our fiacre was fat and rubicund, he wore a green coat, brass buttons, and a shiny top hat, and looked as if he drank constantly. His jollity was perfunctory, I know, and covered a grasping nature, but it was very well imitated, like everything in Paris. As he whirled us, with a whip-report like a pistol-shot, into the train of traffic in the middle of the street, we felt that we were indeed in the city of appearances; and I put down in my mind, not having my note-book, that Paris lives up to its photographs.
"We mustn't forget our serious object, dear," said momma, as we rolled over the cobblestones—"our literary object. What shall we note this morning? The broad streets, the elegant shops—do look at that one! Darling, is it absolutely necessary to go to the Louvre this morning? There are some things we really need."
Momma addressed the Senator. I mentioned to her once that her way of doing it was almost English in its demonstrativeness, and my other parent told me privately he wished I hadn't—it aggravated it so.
"Augusta," said poppa, firmly, "I understand your feeling. I take a human interest in those stores myself, which I do not expect this picture gallery, etc., to inspire in me. But there the Louvre is, you see, and it's got to be done. If we spent our whole time in this city in mere pleasure and amusement, you would be the first to reproach yourself, Augusta."
A few minutes later, when we had crossed the stone quadrangle and mounted the stairs, and stood with our catalogue in the Salle Lacaze, momma said that she wouldn't have missed it for anything. She sank ecstatic upon a bench, and gave to every individual picture upon the opposite wall the tribute of her intensest admiration. It was a pleasure to see her enjoying herself so much; and poppa and I vainly tried to keep up to her with the catalogue.
"Oh, why haven't we such things in Chicago!" she exclaimed, at which the Senator checked her mildly.
"It's a mere question of time," said he. "It isn't reasonable to expect Pre-Raphaelites in a new country. But give us three or four hundred years, and we'll produce old masters which, if you ladies will excuse the expression, will knock the spots out of the Middle Ages." Poppa is such an optimist about Chicago.
The Senator went on in a strain of criticism of the pictures perfectly moderate and kindly—nothing he wouldn't have said to the artists themselves—until momma interrupted him. "Don't you think we might be silent for a time, Alexander," she said.
Momma does call him Alexander sometimes. I didn't like to mention it before, but it can't be concealed for ever. She says it's because Joshua always costs her an effort, and every woman ought to have the right to name her own husband.
"Let us offer to all this genius," she continued, indicating it, "the tribute of sealing our lips."
The Senator will always oblige. "Mine are sealed, Augusta," he replied, and so we sat in silence for the next ten minutes. But I could see by his expression, in connection with the angle at which his hat was tipped, that he was comparing the productions before him with the future old masters of Chicago, and wishing it were possible to live long enough to back Chicago.
"How they do sink in!" said momma at last. "How they sink into the soul!"
"They do," replied the Senator. "I don't deny it. But I see by the catalogue, counting Salles and Salons and all, there's seventeen rooms full of them. If they're all to sink in, for my part I'll have to enlarge the premises. And we've been here three-quarters of an hour already, and life is short, Augusta."
So we moved on where the imperishable faces of Greuze and Velasquez and Rembrandt smiled and frowned and wondered at us. As poppa said, it was easy to see that these people had ideas, and were simply longing to express them. "You feel sorry for them," he said, "just as you feel sorry for an intelligent terrier. But these poor things can't even wag their tails! Just let me know when you've had enough, Augusta."
Momma declared, with an accent of reproach, that she could never have enough. I noticed, however, that we did not stay in the second room as long as in the first one, and that our progress was steadily accelerating. Presently the Senator asked us to sit down for a few minutes while he should leave us.
"There's a picture here Bramley said I was to see without fail," he explained. "It's called 'Mona Lisa,' and it's by an artist by the name of Leonardo da Vinci. Bramley said it was a very fine painting, but I don't remember just now whether he said it was what you might call a picture for the family or not. I'll just go and ascertain," said the Senator. "Judging from some of the specimens here, oil paintings in the Middle Ages weren't intended to be chromo-lithographed."
In his absence momma and I discussed French cookery as far as we had experienced it, in detail, with prodigious yawns for which we did not even apologise. Poppa was gone a remarkably short time and came back radiant. "I've found Mona," he exclaimed, "and—she's all right. Bramley said it was the most remarkable portrait of a woman in the world—looking at it, Bramley said, you become insensible to everything—forget all about your past life and future hopes—and I guess he's about right. Come and see it."
Momma arose without enthusiasm, and I thought I detected adverse criticism in advance in her expression.
"Here she is," said the Senator presently. "Now look at that! Did you ever see anything more intellectual and cynical, and contemptuous and sweet, all in one! Lookin' at you as much as to say, 'Who are you, anyhow, from way back in the State of Illinois—commercial traveller? And what do you pretend to know?'"
Momma regarded the portrait for a moment in calm disapprobation. "I daresay she was very clever," she said at length, "but if you wish to know my opinion I don't think much of her. And before taking us to see another female portrait, Mr. Wick, I should be obliged if you would take the precaution of finding out who she was."
After which we drove quietly home.
Poppa decided that we had better go to Versailles by Cook's four-in-hand. There were other ways of going, but he thought we might as well take the most distinguished. He was careful to explain that the mere grandeur of this method of transportation had no weight with him; he was compelled to submit to the ostentation of it for another purpose which he had in view.
"I am not a person," said poppa, "nor is any member of my family, to thrust myself into aristocratic circles in foreign lands; but when an opportunity like this occurs for observing them without prejudice, so to speak, I believe in taking it."
We went to the starting place early, so as to get good seats, for, as momma said, the whole of the Parisian élite with the President thrown in wouldn't induce her to ride with her back to the horses. In that position she would be incapable of observation.
The coaches were not there when we arrived, and presently the Senator discovered why. He told us with a slightly depressed air that they had gone round to the hotels. "Daughter," he said to me, "J.P. Wicks does hate to make a fool of himself, and this morning he's done it twice over. The best seats will go to the people who had the sense to stay at their hotels, and the fact that the coaches go round shows that they run for tourist traffic only. There won't be a Paris aristocrat among them," continued poppa gloomily, "nary an aristocrat."
When they came up we saw that there wasn't. The coaches were full of tourist traffic. It was mounted on the box seats very high up, where it looked conspicuously happy, and sounded a little hysterical; and it was packed, tight and warm and anticipant into every available seat. From its point of vantage, secured by waiting at the hotel for it, the tourist traffic looked down upon the Wick family on the pavement, in irritating compassion. As momma said, if we hadn't taken our tickets it was enough to have sent us to the Bon Marché.
A man in a black frock coat and white shirt cuffs came bareheaded from the office and pointed us out to the interpreter, who wore brass buttons. The interpreter appeared to mention it to the guide, who wiped his perspiring brows under a soft brown felt hat. A fiacre crawled round the corner and paused to look on, and the Senator said, "Now which of you three gentlemen is responsible for my ride to Versailles?"
The interpreter looked at him with a hostile expression, the guide made a gesture of despair at the volume of tourist traffic, and the man with the shirt cuffs said, "You 'ave took your plazes on ze previous day?"
"I took them from you ten minutes ago," poppa replied. "What a memory you've got!"
"Zen zare is nothings guaranteed. But we will send special carriage, and be'ind you can follow up," and he indicated the fiacre which had now drawn into line.
"I don't think so," said poppa, "when I buy four-in-hand tickets I don't take one-in-hand accommodation."
"You will not go in ze private carriage?"
"I will not."
"Mais—it is much ze preferable."
"I don't know why I should contradict you," said poppa, but at that moment the difficulty was solved by the Misses Bingham.
"Guide!" cried one of the Misses Bingham, beckoning with her fan, "Nous voulons à déscendre!"
"You want get out?"
"Oui!" replied the Misses Bingham with simultaneous dignity, and, as the guide merely wiped his forehead again, poppa stepped forward. "Can I assist you?" he said, and the Misses Bingham allowed themselves to be assisted. They were small ladies, dressed in black pongee silk, with sloping shoulders, and they each carried a black fan and a brocaded bag for odds and ends. They were not plain-looking, and yet it was readily seen why nobody had ever married them; they had that look of the predestined single state that you sometimes see even among the very well preserved. One of them had an eye-glass, but it was easy to note even when she was not wearing it that she was a person of independent income, of family, and of New York.
"We are quite willing," said the Misses Bingham, "to exchange our seats in the coach for yours in the special carriage, if that arrangement suits you."
"Bon!" interposed the guide, "and opposite there is one other place if that fat gentleman will squeeze himself a little—eh?"
"Come along!" said the fat gentleman equably.
"But I couldn't think of depriving you ladies."
"Sir," said one Miss Bingham, "it is no deprivation."
"We should prefer it," added the other Miss Bingham. They spoke with decision; one saw that they had not reached middle age without knowing their own minds all the way.
"To tell the truth," added the Miss Bingham without the eye-glass in a low voice, "we don't think we can stand it."
"I don't precisely take you, madam," said the Senator politely.
"I'm an American," she continued.
Poppa bowed. "I should have known you for a daughter of the Stars and Stripes anywhere," he said in his most complimentary tone.
Miss Bingham looked disconcerted for an instant and went on. "My great grandfather was A.D.C. to General Washington. I've got that much reason to be loyal."
"There couldn't have been many such officers," the Senator agreed.
"But when I go abroad I don't want the whole of the United States to come with me."
"It takes the gilt off getting back for you?" suggested poppa a little stiffly.
Miss Bingham failed to take the hint. "We find Europe infested with Americans," she continued. "It disturbs one's impressions so. And the travelling American invariably belongs to the very least desirable class."
"Now I shouldn't have thought so," said the Senator, with intentional humour. But it was lost upon Miss Bingham.
"Well, if you like them," said the other one, "you'd better go in the coach."
The Senator lifted his hat. "Madam," he said, "I thank you for giving to me and mine the privilege of visiting a very questionable scene of the past in the very best society of the present."
And as the guide was perspiring more and more impatiently, we got in.
For some moments the Senator sat in silence, reflecting upon this sentiment, with an occasionally heaving breast. Circumstances forbade his talking about it, but he cast an eye full of criticism upon the fiacre rolling along far in the rear, and remarked, with a fervor most unusual, that he hoped they liked our dust. We certainly made a great deal of it. Momma and I, looking at our fellow travellers, at once decided that the Misses Bingham had been a little hasty. The fat gentleman, who wore a straw hat very far back, and meant to enjoy himself, was certainly our fellow-citizen. So was his wife, and brother-in-law. So were a bride and bridegroom on the box seat—nothing less than the best of everything for an American honeymoon—and so was a solitary man with a short cut bristly beard, a slouch hat, a pink cotton shirt, and a celluloid collar. But there was an indescribable something about all the rest that plainly showed they had never voted for a president or celebrated a Fourth of July. I was still revolving it in my mind when the fat gentleman, who had been thinking of the same thing, said to his neighbour on the other side, a person of serious appearance in a black silk hat, apropos of the line he had crossed by, "I may be wrong, but I shouldn't have put you down to be an American."
"Oh, I guess I am," replied the serious man, "but not the United States kind."
"British North," suggested the fat gentleman, with a smile that acknowledged Her Majesty. "First cousin once removed," and momma and I looked at one another intelligently. We had nothing against Canadians, except that they generally talk as if they had the whole of the St. Lawrence river and Niagara Falls in a perpetual lease from Providence—and we had never seen so many of them together before. The coach was three-quarters full of these foreigners, if the Misses Bingham had only known; but as poppa afterwards said, they were probably not foreign enough. It may have been imagination, but I immediately thought I saw a certain meekness, a habit of deference—I wanted to incite them all to treat the Guelphs as we did. Just then we stopped before the church of St. Augustin, and the guide came swinging along the outside of the coach hoarsely emitting facts. Everybody listened intently, and I noticed upon the Canadian countenances the same determination to be instructed that we always show ourselves. We all meant to get the maximum amount of information for the price, and I don't think any of us have forgotten that the site of St. Augustin is three-cornered and its dome resembles a tiara to this day. For a moment I was sorry for the Misses Bingham, who were absorbing nothing but dust; but, as momma said, they looked very well informed.
It must be admitted that we were a little shy with the guide—we let him bully us. As poppa said, he was certainly well up in his subject, but that was no reason why he should have treated us as if we had all come from St. Paul or Kansas City. There was a condescension about him that was not explained by the state of his linen, and a familiarity that I had always supposed confined exclusively to the British aristocracy among themselves. He had a red face and a blue eye, with which he looked down on us with scarcely concealed contempt, and he was marvellously agile, distributing his information as open street-car conductors collect fares.
"They seem extremely careful of their herbage in this town," remarked the serious man, and we noticed that it was so. Precautions were taken in wire that would have dissuaded a grasshopper from venturing on it. It grew very neatly inside, doubtless with a certain chic, but it had a look of being put on for the occasion that was essentially Parisian. Also the trees grew up out of iron plates, which was uncomfortable, though, no doubt, highly finished, and the flowers had a cachet about them which made one think of French bonnets. As we rolled into the Bois it became evident that the guide had something special to communicate. He raised his voice and coughed, in a manner which commanded instant attention.
"Ladies—and genelmen," he said—he always added the gentleman as if they were an after-thought—"you are mos' fortunate, mos' locky. Tout Paris—all the folks—are still driving their 'orse an' carriage 'ere. One week more—the style will be all gone—what you say—vamoosed? Every mother's son! An' Cook's excursion party won't see nothin' but ole cabs goin' along!"
"Can't we get away from them?" asked the serious person. It was humorously intended—certainly a liberty, and the guide was down on it in an instant.
"Get away from them? Not if they know you're here!"
At which the serious man looked still more serious, and sympathy for him sprang up in every heart.
We passed Longchamps at a steady trot, and the guide's statement that the races there were always held on Sunday was received with a silence that evidently disappointed him. It was plain that he had a withering rejoinder ready for sabbatarians, and he waited anxiously, balanced on one foot, for an expression of shocked opinion. It was after we had passed Mont Valerien, frowning on the horizon, that the man in the pink cotton shirt began to grow restive under so much instruction. He told the serious person that his name was Hinkson of Iowa, and the serious person was induced to reply that his was Pabbley of Simcoe, Ontario. It was insubordination—the guide was talking about the shelling from Mont Valerien at the time, with the most patriotic dislocations in his grammar.
"You understan', you see?" he concluded. "Now those two genelmen, they don' understan', and they don' see. An' when they get back to the United States they won' be able to tell their wives an' sweethearts anythin' about Mont Valerien! All right, genelmen—please yourselves. Mais you please remember I am just like William Shekspeare—I give no repétition!"
It was then that the serious man demonstrated that Britons, even the North American kind, never, never would be slaves. Placing his black silk hat carefully a little further back on his head, he leaned forward.
"Now look here, mister," he said, "you're as personal as a Yankee newspaper. So far as I know, you're not the friend of my childhood, nor the companion of my later years, except for this trip only, and I'd just as soon you realised it. As far as I know, you're paid to point out objects of historical interest. Don't you trouble to entertain us any further than that. We'll excuse you!"
"Ladies—an' genelmen," continued the guide calmly, "in a lil' short while we shall be approached to the town of St. Cloud. At that town of St. Cloud will be one genelman will take the excellen' group—fotograff. To appear in that fotograff, you will please all keep together with me. Afterwards, you will look at the fountains, at the magnificent panorama de Paris, and we go on to Versailles. On the return journey, if you like that fotograff you can buy, if you don't like, you don' buy. An' if you got no wife an' no sweetheart all the same you keep your temper!"
But Mr. Pabbley had settled his hat in its normal position and did not intend to clear his brow for action again. All might have gone well, had it not been for the patriotic sensitiveness of Mr. Hinkson of Iowa.
"I think I heard you pass a remark about American newspapers, sir," said Mr Hinkson of Iowa. "Think you've got any better in Canada?"
Mr. Pabbley smiled. There may have been some fancied superiority in the smile.
"I guess they suit us better," he said.
"Got any circulation figures about you?"
"Not being an advertising agent, I don't carry them."
"I see!" Mr. Hinkson's manner of saying he saw clearly implied that there might have been other reasons why Mr. Pabbley declined to produce those figures. We were all listening now, and the guide had subsided upon the box seat. The Senator's face wore the judicial expression it always assumes when he has a difficulty in keeping himself out of the conversation. It became easier than ever to separate the Republican and the British elements on that coach.
"Well," said Mr. Hinkson, "don't you folks get pretty tired of paying Victoria taxes sometimes?"
The British contingent seemed to find this amusing. The Americans looked as if it were no laughing matter.
"I don't believe Her Majesty is much the richer for all she gets out of us," said Mr. Pabbley.
"Oh, I guess you send over a pretty good lump per annum, don't you?"
"Not a red cent, sir," said Mr. Pabbley decisively. "We run our own show."
"What about that aristocrat that rules the country up at Ottawa?"
"Oh, he hasn't got any say! We get him out and pay him a salary to save ourselves the trouble of electing a president. A presidential election's bad for business, bad for politics, bad for morals."
"You seem to know. Doesn't it ever make you tired to hear yourselves called subjects? Don't you ever want to be free and equal, like us? Trot out the truth now—the George Washington article!"
"Mister," said Mr. Pabbley, "I flatter myself that Canadians are a good deal like United States folks already, and I don't mind congratulating both our nations on the resemblance. But I'm bound to add that, while I would wish to imitate the American people in many ways still further, I wouldn't be like you personally, no, not under any circumstances nor in any respect."
At this moment it was necessary to dismount, and, as poppa and I both immediately became engaged in reconciling momma to the necessity of walking to the top of the plateau, I lost the rest of the conversation. Momma, when it was necessary to walk anywhere, always became pathetic and offered to stay behind alone. She declared on this occasion that she would be perfectly happy in the coach with the dear horses, and poppa had to resort to extreme measures. "Please yourself, Augusta," he said. "Your lightest whim is law to me, and you know it. But I'm going to hate standing up in that photograph all alone with my only child, like any widower."
"Alexander!" exclaimed momma at once. "What a dreadful idea! I think I might be able to manage it."
The photographer was there with his camera. The guide marshalled us up to him, falling back now and then to bark at the heels of the lagging ones, and, with the assistance of a bench and an acacia, we were rapidly arranged, the short ones standing up, the tall ones sitting down, everyone assuming his most pleasing expression, and the Misses Bingham standing alone, apart, on the brink, looking on under an umbrella that seemed to protect them from intimate association with the democracy in any form. We saw the guide approach them in gingerly inquiry, but, before simultaneous waves of their two black fans, he retired in disorder. The bride had slipped her hand upon her husband's shoulder, just to mark his identity; the fat gentleman had removed his hat and hurriedly put it on again, and the photographer had gone under his curtain for the third time, when Mr. Hinkson of Iowa, who sat in a conspicuous cross-legged position in the foreground, drew from his pocket a handkerchief and spread it carefully out over one knee. It was not an ordinary handkerchief, it was a pocket edition of the Stars and Stripes, all red, and blue, and white, and it attracted the instant attention of every eye. One of the eyes was Mr. Pabbley's, who appeared to clear the group at a bound in consequence.
"Ladies and gentlemen," exclaimed Mr. Pabbley with vehemence, "does anyone happen to have a Union Jack about him or her?"
They felt in their pockets, but they hadn't.
"Then," said Mr. Pabbley, who was evidently aroused, "unless the gentleman from Iowa will withdraw his handkerchief, I refuse to sit."
"I guess we aren't any of us annexationists," said a middle-aged woman from Toronto in a duster, and proceeded to follow Mr. Pabbley.
The rest of the Canadians looked at each other undecidedly for a moment and then slowly filed after the middle-aged woman. There remained the mere wreck of a group clustering round the national emblem on the leg of Mr. Hinkson. The guide was expostulating himself speechless, the photographer was in convulsions, the Senator saw it was time to interfere. Leaning over, he gently tapped the patriot from Iowa on the shoulder.
"Aren't you satisfied with the sixty million fellow-citizens you've got already," said poppa, "that you want to grab nine half-starved Canucks with a hand camera?"
"They're in the majority here," said Mr. Hinkson fiercely, "and I dare any one of 'em to touch that flag. Go along over there and join 'em if you like—they're goin' to be done by themselves—to send to Queen Victoria!"
But that was further than anybody would go, even in defence of cosmopolitanism. The Republic rallied round Mr. Hinkson's leg, while the Dominion with much dignity supported Mr. Pabbley. As momma said, human nature is perfectly extraordinary.
For the rest of the journey to Versailles there was hardly any international conversation. Mr. Hinkson tied his handkerchief round his neck, and the Canadians tried to look as if they had no objection. We passed through the villages of Montretout and Buze. I know we did because momma took down the names, but I fancy they couldn't have differed much from the general landscape, for I don't remember a thing about them. The Misses Bingham came and sat next us at luncheon, which flattered both momma and me immensely, though the Senator didn't seem able to see where the distinction came in, and during this meal they pointed out the fact that Mr. Hinkson was drinking lemonade with his roast mutton, and asked us how we could travel with such a combination. I remember poppa said that it was a combination that Mr. Hinkson and Mr. Hinkson only had to deal with, but momma and I felt the obloquy of it a good deal, though when we came to think of it we were no more responsible for Mr. Hinkson than the Misses Bingham were. After that, walking rapidly behind the guide, we covered centuries of French history, illustrated by chairs and tables and fire-irons and chandeliers and four-post beds. Momma told me afterwards that she was rather sorry she had taken me with the guide through Madame du Barry's fascinating Petit Trianon, the things he didn't say sounded so improper, but when I assured her that it was only contemporary scandal that had any effect on our morals, she said she supposed that was so, and somehow one never did expect people who wore curled wigs and knee-breeches to behave quite prettily. The rooms were dotted with groups of people who had come in fiacres or by tramway, which made it difficult for the guide to impart his information only to those who had paid for it. He generally surmounted this by saying, "Ladies and genelmen, I want you to stick closer than brothers. When you hear me a-talkin' don' you go turnin' over your Baedekers and lookin' out of the window. If I didn't know a great big sight more about Versailles than Baedeker does I wouldn't be here makin' a clown of myself; an' I'll show you the view out of the window all in good time. You see that lady an' two genelmen over there? They're listenin' all right enough because they don't belong to this party an' they want to get a little information cheap price. All right—I let 'em have it!" At which the lady and two gentlemen usually melted away looking annoyed.
We were fascinated with the coaches of state and much impressed with the cost of them. As momma said, it took so very little imagination to conjure up a Royal Philip inside bowing to the populace.
"What a pity we couldn't have had them over!" said poppa indiscreetly.
"Where you mean?" demanded the guide, "over to America? I know—for that ole Chicago show! You are the five hundred American who has said that to me this summer! Number five hundred! Nossir, we don't lend those carriage. We don't even drive them ourself."
"No more kings and queens nowadays," remarked Mr. Hinkson, "this century's got no use for them."
I think the guide was a Monarchist. "Nossir," he said, "you don't see no more kings an' queens of France, but you do see a good many people travellin' that's nothin' like so good for trade."
At which Mr. Pabbley's eye sought that of the guide, and expressed its appreciation in a marked and joyous wink.
In the Palace, especially in the picture rooms, there were generally benches along the walls. When momma observed this she arranged that she should go on ahead and sit down and get the impression, while poppa and I caught up from time to time with the guide and the information. The guide was quite agreeable about it, when it was explained to him.
He was either a very thoughtless or a very insincere person, however. Stopping before the portrait of an officer in uniform, he drew us all together. The Canadians, headed by Mr. Pabbley, were well to the fore, and it was to them in particular that he appeared to address himself when he said, "Take a good look at this picture, ladies and genelmen. There is a man wat lives in your 'istory an', if I may say, in your 'art—as he does in ours. There's a man, ladies and genelmen, that helped you on to liberty. Take a good look at 'im, you'll be glad to remember it afterward."
And it was General Lafayette!
It was after dinner and we were sitting in the little courtyard of the hotel in the dark without our hats—that is, momma and I; the Senator was seldom altogether without his hat. I think he would have felt it to be a little indecent. The courtyard was paved, and there were flowers on the stand in the middle of it, natural palms and artificial begonias mixed with the most annoying cleverness, and little tables for coffee cups or glasses were scattered about. Outside beyond the hotel vestibule one could see and hear Paris rolling by in the gaslight. It was the only place in the hotel that did not smell of furniture, so we frequented it. So did Mr. Malt and Mrs. Malt, and Emmeline Malt, and Miss Callis. That was chiefly how we made the acquaintance of the Malt party. You can't very well sit out in the dark in a foreign capital with a family from your own State and not get to know them. Besides poppa never could overcome his feeling of indebtedness to Mr. Malt. They were taking Emmeline abroad for her health. She was the popular thirteen-year-old only child of American families, and she certainly was thin. I remember being pleased, sometimes, considering her in her typical capacity, that I once had a little brother, though he died before I was born.
The two gentlemen were smoking; we could see nothing but the ends of their cigars glowing in their immediate vicinity. Momma was saying that the situation was very romantic, and Mr. Malt had assured her that it was nothing to what we would experience in Italy. "That's where you get romance," said Mr. Malt, and his cigar end dropped like a falling star as he removed the ash. "Italy's been romantic ever since B.C. All through the time the rest of the world was inventing Magna Chartas and Doomsday Books, and Parliaments, and printing presses, and steam engines, Italy's gone right on turning out romance. Result is, a better quality of that article to be had in Italy to-day than anywhere else. Further result, twenty million pounds spent there annually by tourists from all parts of the civilised world. Romance, like anything else, can be made to pay."
"Are we likely to find the beds——" began Mrs. Malt plaintively.
"Oh dear yes, Mrs. Malt!" interrupted momma, who thought everything entomological extremely indelicate. "Perfectly. You have only to go to the hotels the guide-books recommend, and everything will be quite propre."
"Well," said Emmeline, "they may be propre in Italy, but they're not propre in Paris. We had to speak to the housemaid yesterday morning, didn't we, mother? Don't you remember the back of my neck?"
"We all suffered!" declared Mrs. Malt.
"And I showed one to her, mother, and all she would say was, 'Jamais ici, mademoiselle, ici, jamais!' And there it was you know."
"Emmeline," said her father, "isn't it about time for you to want to go to bed?"
"Not by about three hours. I'm going to get up a little music first. Do you play, Mis' Wick?"
Momma said she didn't, and Miss Malt disappeared in search of other performers. "Don't you go asking strangers to play, Emmeline," her mother called after her. "They'll think it forward of you."
"When Emmeline leaves us," said her father, "I always have a kind of abandoned feeling, like a top that's got to the end of its spin."
There was silence for a moment, and then the Senator said he thought he could understand that.
"Well," continued Mr. Malt, "you've had three whole days now. I presume you're beginning to know your way around."
"I think we may say we've made pretty good use of our time," responded the Senator. "This morning we had a look in at the Luxembourg picture gallery, and the Madeleine, and Napoleon's Tomb, and the site of the Bastile. This afternoon we took a run down to Notre Dame Cathedral. That's a very fine building, sir."
"You saw the Morgue, of course, when you were in that direction," remarked Mr. Malt.
"Why no," poppa confessed, "we haven't taken much of liking for live Frenchmen, up to the present, and I don't suppose dead ones would be any more attractive."
"Oh, there's nothing unpleasant," said Mrs. Malt, "nothing that you can notice."
"Nothing at all," said Mr. Malt. "They refrigerate them, you know. We send our beef to England by the same process——"
"There are people," the Senator interrupted, "who never can see anything amusing in a corpse."
"They don't let you in as a matter of course," Mr. Malt went on. "You have to pretend that you're looking for a relation."
"We had to mention Uncle Sammy," said Mrs. Malt.
"An uncle of Mis' Malt's who went to California in '49 and was never heard of afterward," Mr. Malt explained. "First use he's ever been to his family. Well, there they were, seven of 'em, lying there looking at you yesterday. All in good condition. I was told they have a place downstairs for the older ones."
"Alexander," said momma faintly, "I think I should like a little brandy in my coffee. Were there—were there any ladies among them, Mr. Malt?"
"Three," Mr. Malt responded briskly, "and one of them had her hair——"
"Then please don't tell us about them," momma exclaimed, and the silence that ensued was one of slight indignation on the part of the Malt family.
"You been seeing the town at all, evenings?" Mr. Malt inquired of the Senator.
"I can't say I have. We've been seeing so much of it in the daytime, we haven't felt able to enjoy anything at night except our beds," poppa returned with his accustomed candour.
"Just so. All the same there's a good deal going on in Paris after supper."
"So I've always been told," said the Senator, lighting another cigar.
"They've got what you might call characteristic shows here. You see a lot of life."
"Can you take your ladies?" asked the Senator.
"Well of course you can, but I don't believe they would find it interesting."
"Too much life," said the Senator. "I guess that settles it for me too. I daresay I'm lacking in originality and enterprise, but I generally ask myself about an entertainment, 'Are Mrs. and Miss Wick likely to enjoy it?' If so, well and good. If not, I don't as a rule take it in."
"He's a great comfort that way," remarked momma to Mrs. Malt.
"Oh, I don't frequent them myself," said Mr. Malt defensively.
"Talking of improprieties," remarked Miss Callis, "have you seen the New Salon?"
There was something very unexpected about Miss Callis; momma complained of it. Her remarks were never polished by reflection. She called herself a child of nature, but she really resided in Brooklyn.
The Senator said we had not.
"Then don't you go, Mr. Wick. There's a picture there——"
"We never look at such pictures, Miss Callis," momma interrupted.
"It's so French," said Miss Callis.
Momma drew her shawl round her preparatory to withdrawing, but it was too late.
"Too French for words," continued Miss Callis. "The poet Lamartine, with a note-book and pencil in his hand, seated in a triumphal chariot, drawn through the clouds by beautiful Muses."
"Oh," said momma, in a relieved voice, "there's nothing so dreadfully French about that."
"You should have seen it," said Miss Callis. "It was simply immoral. Lamartine was in a frock coat!"
"There could have been nothing objectionable in that," momma repeated. "I suppose the Muses——"
"The Muses were not in frock coats. They were dressed in their traditions," replied Miss Callis, "but they couldn't save the situation, poor dears."
Momma looked as if she wished she had the courage to ask Miss Callis to explain.
"In picture galleries," remarked poppa, "we've seen only the Luxembourg and the Louvre. The Louvre, I acknowledge, is worthy of a second visit. But I don't believe we'll have time to get round again."
"We've got to get a hustle on ourselves in a day or two," said Mr. Malt, as we separated for the night. "There's all Italy and Switzerland waiting for us, and they're bound to be done, because we've got circular tickets. But there's something about this town that I hate to leave."
"He doesn't know whether it's the Arc de Triomphe on the Bois de Boulogne or the Opera Comique, or what," said Mrs. Malt in affectionate criticism. "But we've been here a week over our time now, and he doesn't seem able to tear himself away."
"I'll tell you what it is," exclaimed Mr. Malt, producing a newspaper, "it's this little old New York Herald. There's no use comparing it with any American newspaper, and it wouldn't be fair to do so; but I wonder these French rags, in a foreign tongue, aren't ashamed to be published in the same capital with it. It doesn't take above a quarter of an hour to read in the mornings, but it's a quarter of an hour of solid comfort that you don't expect somehow abroad. If the New York Herald were only published in Rome I wouldn't mind going there."
"There's something," said poppa, thoughtfully, as we ascended to the third floor, "in what Malt says."
Next day we spent an hour buying trunks for the accommodation of the unattainable elsewhere. Then poppa reminded us that we had an important satisfaction yet to experience. "Business before pleasure," he said, "certainly. But we've been improving our minds pretty hard for the last few days, and I feel the need of a little relaxation. D.V. and W.P., I propose this afternoon to make the ascent of the Eiffel Tower. Are you on?"
"I will accompany you, Alexander, if it is safe," said momma, "and, if it is unsafe, I couldn't possibly let you go without me."
Momma is naturally a person of some timidity, but when the Senator proposes to incur any danger, she always suggests that he shall do it over her dead body.
I forget where we were at the time, but I know that we had only to walk through the perpetual motion of Paris, across a bridge, and down a few steps on the other side, to find the little steamer that took us by the river to the Tower. We might have gone by omnibus or by fiacre, but if we had we should never have known what a street the Seine is, sliding through Paris, brown in the open sun, dark under the shadowing arches of the bridges, full of hastening comers and goers from landing-place to landing-place, up and down. It gave us quite a new familiarity with the river, which had been before only a part of the landscape, and one of the things that made Paris imposing. We saw that it was a highway of traffic, and that the little, brisk, business-like steamers were full of people, who went about in them because it was the cheapest and most convenient way, and not at all for the pleasure of a trip by water. We noticed, too, a difference in these river-going people. Some of them carried baskets, and some of them read the Petit Journal, and they all comfortably submitted to the good-natured bullying of the mariner in charge. There were elderly women in black, with a button or two off their tight bodices, and children with patched shoes carrying an assortment of vegetables, and middle-aged men in slouch hats, smoking tobacco that would have been forbidden by public statute anywhere else. They all treated us with a respect and consideration which we had not observed in the Avenue de l'Opera, and I noticed the Senator visibly expanding in it. There was also a man and a little boy, and a dog, all lunching out of the same basket. Afterward, on being requested to do so, the dog performed tricks—French ones—to the enjoyment and satisfaction of all three. There was a great deal of politeness and good feeling, and if they were not Capi and Remi and Vitalis in "Sans Famille," it was merely because their circumstances were different.
As we stood looking at the Eiffel Tower, poppa said he thought if he were in my place he wouldn't describe it. "It's old news," he said, "and there's nothing the general public dislike so much as that. Every hotel-porter in Chicago knows that it's three hundred metres high, and that you can see through it all the way up. There it is, and I feel as if I'd passed my boyhood in its shadow. That way I must say it's a disappointment. I was expecting it to be more unexpected, if you understand."
Momma and I quite agreed. It had the familiarity of a demonstration of Euclid, and to the non-engineering mind was about as interesting. The Senator felt so well acquainted with it that he hesitated about buying a descriptive pamphlet. "They want to sell a stranger too much information in this country," he said. "The meanest American intelligence is equal to stepping into an elevator and stepping out again." But he bought one nevertheless, and was particularly pleased with it, not only because it was the cheapest thing in Paris at five cents, but because, as he said himself, it contained an amount of enthusiasm not usually available at any price.
The Senator thought, as we entered the elevator at the first story, that the accommodation compared very well indeed with anything in his experience. He had only one criticism—there was no smoking-room. We had a slight difficulty with momma at the second story—she did not wish to change her elevator. Inside she said she felt perfectly secure, but the tower itself she knew must waggle at that height when once you stepped out. In the end, however, we persuaded her not to go down before she had made the ascent, and she rose to the top with her eyes shut. When we finally got out, however, the sight of numbers of young ladies selling Eiffel Tower mementoes steadied her nerves. She agreed with poppa that business premises would never let on anything but the most stable basis.
"It's exactly as Bramley said," remarked the Senator. "You're up so high that the scenery, so far as Paris is concerned, becomes perfectly ridiculous. It might as well be a map."
"Don't look over, Alexander," said momma. "It will fill you with a wild desire to throw yourself down. It is said always to have that effect."
"'The past ends in this plain at your feet,'" quoted poppa critically from the guide-book, "'the future will there be fulfilled.' I suppose they did feel a bit uppish when they'd got as high as this—but you'd think France was about the only republic at present doing business, wouldn't you?"
I pointed out the Pantheon down below and St. Etienne du Mont, and poppa was immediately filled with a poignant regret that we had spent so much time seeing public buildings on foot. "Whereas," said he, "from our present point of view we could have done them all in ten minutes. As it is, we shall be in a position to say we've seen everything there is to be seen in Paris. Bramley won't be able to tell us it's a pity we've missed anything. However," he continued, "we must be conscientious about it. I've no desire to play it low down on Bramley. Let us walk round and pick out the places of interest he's most likely to expect to catch us on, and look at them separately. I should hate to think I wasn't telling the truth about a thing like that."
We walked round and specifically observed the "Ecole des Beaux Arts," the "Palais d'Industrie," "Liberty Enlightening the World," and other objects, poppa carefully noting against each of them "seen from Eiffel Tower." As we made our way to the river side we noticed four other people, two ladies and two gentlemen, looking at the military balloon hanging over Meudon. They all had their backs to us, and there was to me something dissimilarly familiar about three of those backs. While I was trying to analyse it one of the gentlemen turned, and caught sight of poppa. In another instant the highest elevation yet made by engineering skill was the scene of three impetuous American handclasps, and four impulsive American voices were saying, "Why how do you do!" The gentleman was Mr. Richard Dod of Chicago, known to our family without interruption since he wore long clothes. Mr. Dod had come into his patrimony and simultaneously disappeared in the direction of Europe six months before, since when we had only heard vaguely that he had lost most of it, but was inalterably cheerful; and there was nobody, apparently, he expected so little or desired so much to see in Paris as the Senator, momma and me. Poppa called him "Dick, my boy," momma called him "my dear Dicky," I called him plain "Dick," and when this had been going on for, possibly, five minutes, the older and larger of the two ladies of the party swung round with a majesty I at once associated with my earlier London experiences, and regarded us through her pince nez. There was no mistaking her disapproval. I had seen it before. We were Americans and she was Mrs. Portheris of Half Moon-street, Piccadilly. I saw that she recognised me and was trying to make up her mind whether, in view of the complication of Mr. Dod, to bow or not. But the woman who hesitates is lost, even though she be a British matron of massive prejudices and a figure to match. In Mrs. Portheris's instant of vacillation, I stepped forward with such enthusiasm that she was compelled to take down her pince nez and hold out a superior hand. I took it warmly, and turned to my parents with a joy which was not in the least affected. "Momma," I exclaimed, "try to think of the very last person who would naturally cross your mind—our relation, Mrs. Portheris. Poppa, allow me to introduce you to your aunt—Mrs. Portheris. Your far distant nephew from Chicago, Mr. Joshua Peter Wick.
It was a moment to be remembered—we all said so afterwards. Everything hung upon Mrs. Portheris's attitude. But it was immediately evident that Mrs. Portheris considered parents of any kind excusable, even commendable! Her manner said as much—it also implied, however, that she could not possibly be held responsible for transatlantic connections by a former marriage. Momma was nervous, but collected. She bowed a distant Wastgaggle bow, an heirloom in the family, which gave Mrs. Portheris to understand that if any cordiality was to characterise the occasion, it would have to emanate from her. Besides, Mrs. Portheris was poppa's relation, and would naturally have to be guarded against. Poppa, on the other hand, was cordiality itself—he always is.
"Why, is that so?" said poppa, looking earnestly at Mrs. Portheris and firmly retaining her hand. "Is this my very own Aunt Caroline?"