A Voyage of Consolation by Sara Jeannette Duncan

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VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION

BOOKS BY MRS. EVERARD COTES
(SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN).

UNIFORM EDITION.

* * * * *

A Voyage of Consolation.
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

His Honour, and a Lady.
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

The Story of Sonny Sahib.
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.

Vernon's Aunt.
With many Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.

A Daughter of To-Day.
A Novel. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

A Social Departure.
HOW ORTHODOCIA AND I WENT ROUND THE WORLD BY OURSELVES.
With 111 Illustrations by F.H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75
cents; cloth, $1.75.

An American Girl in London.
With 80 Illustrations by F.H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Paper, 75
cents; cloth, $1.50.

The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib.
With 37 Illustrations by F.H. TOWNSEND. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

* * * * *

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.

[Illustration: "Jamais!" (see Page 156.)]

A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION

(BEING IN THE NATURE OF A SEQUEL TO THE EXPERIENCES OF "AN AMERICAN GIRL
IN LONDON")

BY

SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN (MRS. EVERARD COTES)

AUTHOR OF

A SOCIAL DEPARTURE, AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON, A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY,
VERNON's AUNT, THE STORY OF SONNY SAHIB, HIS HONOUR AND A LADY, ETC.

[Illustration]

_ILLUSTRATED_

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1898

Copyright, 1897, 1898,

BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FACING
PAGE

"Jamais!" _Frontispiece_

Momma was enjoying herself 36

"I expect you've seen these before" 45

Breakfast with Dicky Dod 99

"Are you paid to make faces?" 140

We followed the monks 169

Dicky shouted till the skeletons turned to listen 189

We were sitting in a narrow balcony 194

"I'm not a crowned head!" 208

"Do you see?" 256

Fervent apologies 265

"Whom _are_ you going to marry?" 322

A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION.

CHAPTER I.

It seems inexcusable to remind the public that one has written a book.
Poppa says I ought not to feel that way about it--that he might just as
well be shy about referring to the baking soda that he himself
invented--but I do, and it is with every apology that I mention it. I
once had such a good time in England that I printed my experiences, and
at the very end of the volume it seemed necessary to admit that I was
engaged to Mr. Arthur Greenleaf Page, of Yale College, Connecticut. I
remember thinking this was indiscreet at the time, but I felt compelled
to bow to the requirements of fiction. I was my own heroine, and I had
to be disposed of. There seemed to be no alternative. I did not wish to
marry Mr. Mafferton, even for literary purposes, and Peter Corke's
suggestion, that I should cast myself overboard in mid-ocean at the mere
idea of living anywhere out of England for the future, was
autobiographically impossible even if I had felt so inclined. So I
committed the indiscretion. In order that the world might be assured
that my heroine married and lived happily ever afterwards, I took it
prematurely into my confidence regarding my intention. The thing that
occurred, as naturally and inevitably as the rain if you leave your
umbrella at home, was that within a fortnight after my return to Chicago
my engagement to Mr. Page terminated; and the even more painful
consequence is that I feel obliged on that account to refer to it again.

Even an American man has his lapses into unreasonableness. Arthur
especially encouraged the idea of my going to England on the ground that
it would be so formative. He said that to gaze upon the headsman's block
in the Tower was in itself a liberal education. As we sat together in
the drawing-room--momma and poppa always preferred the sitting-room when
Arthur was there--he used to gild all our future with the culture which
I should acquire by actual contact with the hoary traditions of Great
Britain. He advised me earnestly to disembark at Liverpool in a
receptive and appreciative, rather than a critical and antagonistic,
state of mind, to endeavour to assimilate all that was worth
assimilating over there, remembering that this might give me as much as
I wanted to do in the time. I remember he expressed himself rather
finely about the only proper attitude for Americans visiting England
being that of magnanimity, and about the claims of kinship, only once
removed, to our forbearance and affection. He put me on my guard, so to
speak, about only one thing, and that was spelling. American spelling,
he said, had become national, and attachment to it ranked next to
patriotism. Such words as "color," "program," "center," had obsolete
English forms which I could only acquire at the sacrifice of my
independence, and the surrender of my birthright to make such
improvements upon the common language as I thought desirable. And I know
that I was at some inconvenience to mention "color," "program," and
"center," in several of my letters just to assure Mr. Page that my
orthography was not in the least likely to be undermined.

Indeed, I took his advice at every point. I hope I do not presume in
asking you to remember that I did. I know I was receptive, even to penny
buns, and sometimes simply wild with appreciation. I found it as easy as
possible to subdue the critical spirit, even in connection with things
which I should never care to approve of. I shook hands with Lord
Mafferton without the slightest personal indignation with him for being
a peer, and remember thinking that if he had been a duke I should have
had just the same charity for him. Indeed, I was sorry, and am still
sorry, that during the four months I spent in England I didn't meet a
single duke. This is less surprising than it looks, as they are known to
be very scarce, and at least a quarter of a million Americans visit
Great Britain every year; but I should like to have known one or two. As
it was, four or five knights--knights are very thick--one baronet, Lord
Mafferton, one marquis--but we had no conversation--one colonel of
militia, one Lord Mayor, and a Horse Guard, rank unknown, comprise my
acquaintance with the aristocracy. A duke or so would have completed the
set. And the magnanimity which I would so willingly have stretched to
include a duke spread itself over other British institutions as amply as
Arthur could have wished. When I saw things in Hyde Park on Sunday that
I was compelled to find excuses for, I thought of the tyrant's iron
heel; and when I was obliged to overlook the superiorities of the titled
great, I reflected upon the difficulty of walking in iron heels without
inconveniencing a prostrate population. I should defy anybody to be more
magnanimous than I was.

As to the claims of kinship, only once removed, to our forbearance and
affection, I never so much as sat out a dance on a staircase with Oddie
Pratte without recognising them.

It seems almost incredible that Arthur should not have been gratified,
but the fact remains that he was not. Anyone could see, after the first
half hour, that he was not. During the first half hour it is, of course,
impossible to notice anything. We had sunk to the level of generalities
when I happened to mention Oddie.

"He had darker hair than you have, dear," I said, "and his eyes were
blue. Not sky blue, or china blue, but a kind of sea blue on a cloudy
day. He had rather good eyes," I added reminiscently.

"Had he?" said Arthur.

"But your noses," I went on reassuringly, "were not to be compared with
each other."

"Oh!" said Arthur.

"He _was_ so impulsive!" I couldn't help smiling a little at the
recollection. "But for that matter they all were."

"Impulsive?" asked Arthur.

"Yes. Ridiculously so. They thought as little of proposing as of asking
one to dance."

"Ah!" said Arthur.

"Of course, I never accepted any of them, even for a moment. But they
had such a way of taking things for granted. Why one man actually
thought I was engaged to him!"

"Really!" said Arthur. "May I inquire----"

"No, dear," I replied, "I think not. I couldn't tell anybody about
it--for his sake. It was all a silly mistake. Some of them," I added
thoughtfully, "were very stupid."

"Judging from the specimens that find their way over here," Arthur
remarked, "I should say there was plenty of room in their heads for
their brains."

Arthur was sitting on the other side of the fireplace, and by this time
his expression was aggressive. I thought his remark unnecessarily
caustic, but I did not challenge it.

"_Some_ of them were stupid," I repeated, "but they were nearly all
nice." And I went on to say that what Chicago people as a whole thought
about it I didn't know and I didn't care, but so far as _my_ experience
went the English were the loveliest nation in the world.

"A nation like a box of strawberries," Mr. Page suggested, "all the big
ones on top, all the little ones at the bottom."

"That doesn't matter to us," I replied cheerfully, "we never get any
further than the top. And you'll admit there's a great tendency for
little ones to shake down. It's only a question of time. They've had so
much time in England. You see the effects of it everywhere."

"Not at all. By no means. _Our_ little strawberries rise," he declared.

"Do they? Dear me, so they do! I suppose the American law of gravity is
different. In England they would certainly smile at that."

Arthur said nothing, but his whole bearing expressed a contempt for
puns.

"Of course," I said, "I mean the loveliest nation after Americans."

I thought he might have taken that for granted. Instead, he looked
incredulous and smiled, in an observing, superior way.

"Why do you say 'ahfter'?" he asked. His tone was sweetly acidulated.

"Why do you say 'affter'?" I replied simply.

"Because," he answered with quite unnecessary emphasis, "in the part of
the world I come from everybody says it. Because my mother has brought
me up to say it."

"Oh," I said, looking at the lamp, "they say it like that in other parts
of the world too. In Yorkshire--and such places. As far as _mothers_ go,
I must tell you that momma approves of my pronunciation. She likes it
better than anything else I have brought back with me--even my
tailor-mades--and thinks it wonderful that I should have acquired it in
the time."

"Don't you think you could remember a little of your good old American?
Doesn't it seem to come back to you?"

All the Wicks hate sarcasm, especially from those they love, and I
certainly had not outgrown my fondness for Mr. Page at this time.

"It all came back to me, my dear Arthur," I said, "the moment you opened
your lips!"

At that not only Mr. Page's features and his shirt front, but his whole
personality seemed to stiffen. He sat up and made an outward movement on
the seat of his chair which signified, "My hat and overcoat are in the
hall, and if you do not at once retract----"

"Rather than allow anything to issue from them which would imply that I
was not an American I would keep them closed for ever," he said.

"You needn't worry about that," I observed. "Nothing ever will. But I
don't know why we should _glory_ in talking through our noses."
Involuntarily I played with my engagement ring, slipping it up and
down, as I spoke.

Arthur rose with an expression of tolerant amusement--entirely
forced--and stood by the fireplace. He stood beside it, with his elbow
on the mantelpiece, not in front of it with his legs apart, and I
thought with a pang how much more graceful the American attitude was.

"Have you come back to tell us that we talk through our noses?" he
asked.

"I don't like being called an Anglomaniac," I replied, dropping my ring
from one finger to another. Fortunately I was sitting in a rocking
chair--the only one I had not been able to persuade momma to have taken
out of the drawing-room. The rock was a considerable relief to my
nerves.

"I knew that the cockneys on the other side were fond of inventing
fictions about what they are pleased to call the 'American accent,'"
continued Mr. Page, with a scorn which I felt in the very heels of my
shoes, "but I confess I thought you too patriotic to be taken in by
them."

"Taken in by them" was hard to bear, but I thought if I said nothing at
this point we might still have a peaceful evening. So I kept silence.

"Of course, I speak as a mere product of the American Constitution--a
common unit of the democracy," he went on, his sentences gathering wrath
as he rolled them out, "but if there were such a thing as an American
accent, I think I've lived long enough, and patrolled this little Union
of ours extensively enough, to hear it by this time. But it appears to
be necessary to reside four months in England, mixing freely with earls
and countesses, to detect it."

"Perhaps it is," I said, and I _may_ have smiled.

"I should hate to pay the price."

Mr. Page's tone distinctly expressed that the society of earls and
countesses would be, to him, contaminating.

Again I made no reply. I wanted the American accent to drop out of the
conversation, if possible, but Fate had willed it otherwise.

"I sai, y'know, awfly hard luck, you're havin' to settle down amongst
these barbarians again, bai Jove!"

I am not quite sure that it's a proper term for use in a book, but by
this time I was _mad_. There was criticism in my voice, and a distinct
chill as I said composedly, "You don't do it very well."

I did not look at him, I looked at the lamp, but there was that in the
air which convinced me that we had arrived at a crisis.

"I suppose not. I'm not a marquis, nor the end man at a minstrel show.
I'm only an American, like sixty million other Americans, and the
language of Abraham Lincoln is good enough for me. But I suppose I, like
the other sixty million, emit it through my nose!"

"I should be sorry to contradict you," I said.

Arthur folded his arms and gathered himself up until he appeared to
taper from his stem like a florist's bouquet, and all the upper part of
him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain
corpulence; he is already well rounded.

"I need hardly say," he said majestically, "that when I did myself the
honour of proposing, I was under the impression that I had a suitable
larynx to offer you."

"You see I didn't know," I murmured, and by accident I dropped my
engagement ring, which rolled upon the carpet at his feet. He stooped
and picked it up.

"Shall I take this with me?" he asked, and I said "By all means."

That was all.

I gave ten minutes to reflection and to the possibility of Arthur's
coming back and pleading, on his knees, to be allowed to restore that
defective larynx. Then I went straight upstairs to the telephone and
rang up the Central office. When they replied "_Hello_," I said, in the
moderate and concentrated tone which we all use through telephones, "Can
you give me New York?"

Poppa was in New York, and in an emergency poppa and I always turn to
one another. There was a delay, during which I listened attentively,
with one eye closed--I believe it is the sign of an unbalanced intellect
to shut one eye when you use the telephone, but I needn't go into
that--and presently I got New York. In a few minutes more I was
accommodated with the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

"Mr. T.P. Wick, of Chicago," I demanded.

"_Is his room number Sixty-two?_"

That is the kind of mind which you usually find attached to the New York
end of a trans-American telephone. But one does not bandy words across a
thousand miles of country with a hotel clerk, so I merely responded:

"Very probably."

There was a pause, and then the still small voice came again.

"_Mr. Wick is in bed at present. Anything important?_"

I reflected that while I in Chicago was speaking to the hotel clerk at
half-past nine o'clock, the hotel clerk in New York was speaking to me
at eleven. This in itself was enough to make our conversation
disjointed.

"Yes," I responded, "it is important. Ask Mr. Wick to get out of bed."

Sufficient time elapsed to enable poppa to put on his clothes and come
down by the elevator, and then I heard:

"_Mr. Wick is now speaking_."

"Yes, poppa," I replied, "I guess you are. Your old American accent
comes singing across in a way that no member of your family would ever
mistake. But you needn't be stiff about it. Sorry to disturb you."

Poppa and I were often personal in our intercourse. I had not the
slightest hesitation in mentioning his American accent.

"_Hello, Mamie! Don't mention it. What's up? House on fire? Water pipes
burst? Strike in the kitchen? Sound the alarm--send for the
plumber--raise Gladys's wages and sack Marguerite_."

"My engagement to Mr. Page is broken. Do you get me? What do you
suggest?"

I heard a whistle, which I cannot express in italics, and then,
confidentially:

"_You don't say so! Bad break?_"

"Very," I responded firmly.

"_Any details of the disaster available? What?_"

"Not at present," I replied, for it would have been difficult to send
them by telephone.

I could hear poppa considering the matter at the other end. He coughed
once or twice and made some indistinct inquiries of the hotel clerk.
Then he called my attention again.

"_Hello!_" he said. "_On to me? All right. Go abroad. Always done.
Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, and the other places. I'll stand in.
Germanic sails Wednesdays. Start by night train to-morrow. Bring momma.
We can get Germanic in good shape and ten minutes to spare. Right?_"

"Right," I responded, and hung up the handle. I did not wish to keep
poppa out of bed any longer than was necessary, he was already up so
much later than I was. I turned away from the instrument to go down
stairs again, and there, immediately behind me, stood momma.

"Well, really!" I exclaimed. It did not occur to me that the privacy of
telephonic communication between Chicago and New York was not
inviolable. Besides, there are moments when one feels a little annoyed
with one's momma for having so lightly undertaken one's existence. This
was one of them. But I decided not to express it.

"I was only going to say," I remarked, "that if I had shrieked it would
have been your fault."

"I knew everything," said momma, "the minute I heard him shut the gate.
I came up immediately, and all this time, dear, you've been confiding in
us both. My dear daughter."

Momma carries about with her a well-spring of sentiment, which she did
not bequeath to me. In that respect I take almost entirely after my
other parent.

"Very well," I said, "then I won't have to do it again."

Her look of disappointment compelled me to speak with decision. "I know
what you would like at this juncture, momma. You'd like me to get down
on the floor and put my head in your lap and weep all over your new
brocade. That's what you'd really enjoy. But, under circumstances like
these, I never do things like that. Now the question is, can you get
ready to start for Europe to-morrow night, or have you a headache coming
on?"

Momma said that she expected Mrs. Judge Simmons to tea to-morrow
afternoon, that she hadn't been thinking of it, and that she was out of
nerve tincture. At least, these were her principal objections. I said,
on mature consideration, I didn't see why Mrs. Simmons shouldn't come to
tea, that there were twenty-four hours for all necessary thinking, and
that a gallon of nerve tincture, if required, could be at her disposal
in ten minutes.

"Being Protestants," I added, "I suppose a convent wouldn't be of any
use to us--what do you think?"

Momma thought she could go.

There was no need for hurry, and I attended to only one other matter
before I went to bed. That was a communication to the _Herald_, which I
sent off in plenty of time to appear in the morning. It was addressed to
the Society Editor, and ran as follows:

"The marriage arranged between Professor Arthur Greenleaf Page, of Yale
University, and Miss Mamie Wick, of 1453, Lakeside-avenue, Chicago, will
not take place. Mr. and Mrs. Wick, and Miss Wick, sail for Europe on
Wednesday by s.s. Germanic."

I reflected, as I closed my eyes, that Arthur was a regular reader of
the _Herald_.

CHAPTER II.

We met poppa on the Germanic gangway, his hat on the back of his head
and one finger in each of his waistcoat pockets, an attitude which, with
him, always betokens concern. The vessel was at that stage of departure
when the people who have been turned off are feeling injured that it
should have been done so soon, and apparently only the weight of poppa's
personality on its New York end kept the gangway out. As we drove up he
appeared to lift his little finger and three dishevelled navigators
darted upon the cab. They and we and our trunks swept up the gangway
together, which immediately closed behind us, under the direction of an
extremely irritated looking Chief Officer. We reunited as a family as
well as we could in connection with uncoiled ropes and ship discipline.
Then poppa, with his watch in his hand, exclaimed reproachfully, well in
hearing of the Chief Officer, "I gave you ten minutes and you _had_ ten
minutes. You stopped at Huyler's for candy, I'll lay my last depreciated
dollar on it."

My other parent looked guiltily at some oblong boxes tied up in white
paper with narrow red ribbon, which, innocently enough I consider,
enhance the value of life to us both. But she ignored the charge--momma
hates arguments.

"Dear me!" she said, as the space widened between us and the docks. "So
we are all going to Europe together this morning! I can hardly realise
it. Farewell America! How interesting life is."

"Yes," replied poppa. "And now I guess I'd better show you your cabins
before it gets any more interesting."

We had a calm evening, though nothing would induce momma to think so,
and at ten o'clock Senator J.P. Wick and I were still pacing the deck
talking business. The moon rose, and threw Arthur's shadow across our
conversation, but we looked at it with precision and it moved away. That
is one of poppa's most comforting characteristics, he would as soon open
his bosom to a shot-gun as to a confidence. He asked for details through
the telephone merely for bravado. As a matter of fact, if I had begun to
send them he would have rung off the connection and said it was an
accident. We dipped into politics, and I told the Senator that while I
considered his speech on the Silver Compromise a credit to the family on
the whole, I thought he had let himself out somewhat unnecessarily at
the expense of the British nation.

"We are always twisting a tail," I said reproachfully, "that does
nothing but wag at us."

This poppa reluctantly admitted with the usual reference to the Irish
vote. We both hoped sincerely that any English friends who saw that
speech, and paused to realise that the orator was a parent of mine,
would consider the number of Irish resident in Illinois, and the amount
of invective which their feelings require. Poppa doesn't really know
sometimes whether he is himself or a shillelagh, but whatever his
temporary political capacity he is never ungrateful. He went on to give
me the particulars of his interview with the President about the Chicago
Post Office, and then I gradually unfolded my intention of preparing our
foreign experiences as a family for publication in book form. While I
was unfolding it poppa eyed me askance.

"Is that usual?" he inquired.

"Very usual indeed," I replied.

"I mean--under the circumstances?"

"Under what circumstances?" I demanded boldly. I knew that nothing would
induce him to specify them.

"Oh, I only meant--it wasn't exactly my idea."

"What was your idea--exactly?" It was mean of me to put poppa to the
blush, but I had to define the situation.

"Oh," said he, with unlooked-for heroism, "I was basing my calculations
with reference to you on the distractions of change--Paris dry-goods,
rowing round Venice in gondolas, riding through the St. Gothard tunnel,
and the healing hand of time. I don't intend to give a day less than six
weeks to it. I'm looking forward to the tranquilising effect of the
antique some myself," he added, hedging. "I find these new self-risers
that we've undertaken to carry almost more than my temperament can
stand. They went up from an output of five hundred dollars to six
hundred and fifty thousand, and back again inside seven days last month.
I'm looking forward to examining something that hasn't moved for a
couple of thousand years with considerable pleasure."

"Poppa," said I, ignoring the self-risers, "if you were as particular
about the quality of your fiction as you are about the quality of your
table-butter, you would know that the best heroines never have recourse
to such measures now. They are simply obsolete. Except for my literary
intention, I should be ashamed to go to Europe at all--under the
circumstances. But that, you see, brings the situation up to date. I
transmit my European impressions through the prism of damaged affection.
Nothing could be more modern."

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