Amazing Grace Part 33

Those same high, wailing notes that we heard that first day--_that first day_--are ringing in my ears this minute.

"How they sob--sob--sob! And over the hours they spent together! That's the foolish part of it! I am sobbing over the hours I _might_ have spent with him--and didn't!

"'Are like a string of pearls to me!'

"Bah! The hours I spent with him wouldn't make pearls enough for a stick-pin--much less a rosary!

"To me _Caro Mio Ben_ is a much more sensible little love plaint! I wonder if _he_ knows it? I wonder if he heard that girl singing in the parlor the night of the Kendalls'

dance--and if it still rings--rings--rings in his mind every time he thinks of me? Or if he ever thinks of me at all?"

I have inserted this not so much to show you how very critical my case was, as to demonstrate how valuable a thing is diversion. Without Hilda and the elder Montgomerys I should no doubt have tried to emulate Lady Frances Webb in the feat of writing heart-throbs.

The third day's observation was a distinct improvement.

"The men on shipboard are rather better than the women--just as they are on dry land. True, there are some who have sold Chicago real estate, and are now bent upon spending the rest of their lives running over to Europe to criticize everything that they can not buy. Nothing is sacred to them--until after they have paid duty on it. They revere and caress their own Italian mantlepieces, their cases of majolica, and their collection of Wedgwood--when these are safely decorating their lake-sh.o.r.e homes--but what Europe keeps for herself they scorn.

"'Bah! I don't see anything so swell about St. Mark's--nor St.

Doge's either!' I heard one emit this morning. 'But, old man, you just ought to see the champagne gla.s.ses I bought last year in Venice. The governor dined with me the other night, and he said----' etc.

"Then, there's another sort of Philistine, who goes all over the Old World eating his lunch off places where men have suffered, died, or invented pendulums.

"'That confounded Leaning Tower _does_ feel like it's wiggling as you go up, but pshaw! it's perfectly safe! Why, I stayed on top long enough to eat three sandwiches and drink a bottle of that red ink you get for half a dollar in Florence!'

"This doesn't create much of a stir, however, because there's always one better.

"'Nice little tower down there in Pisa--and you really have to have something like that to relieve your const.i.tution of the pictorial strain in Florence--but you see, after you've eaten hard-boiled eggs on top of _Cheops_, climbing the Leaning Tower is not half so exciting as riding a sapling was when you were a boy!'

"'And oh, speaking of hard-boiled eggs--have you ever been to Banff, Mr. Smith?' one of the women in the crowd speaks up.

'Yes, the scenery in the Canadian Rockies is all right, of course, but just to _think_ of having your eggs perfectly hot and well done in the waters of Banff!'

"There are other women on board, however, whose thoughts are not on food. They are more amusing by far to watch than the innocent creatures who love Banff. They manage to stay well out of view by strong daylight, then come into the lounge at night, dressed in plumes and diamonds like Cinderella's stepsisters, and select the husbands of sea-sick wives to ask advice about focusing a kodak or going to Gibraltar to buy a mandarin coat!

"But, as I have said, the men for the greater part are much more interesting than the women--still I have never aspired to a nautical flirtation, for a month after one is past you can't recall the princ.i.p.al's name. You do well if you can remember his nationality."

The entry broke off with this piece of sarcasm, which, after all, is actual truth. A friend of mine had such an experience. A month after a bitter parting on a moonlit deck one night she came face to face with the absent one in a church in Rome--and all she could stammer was: "Oh--you _Canadian_!"

The fourth day--after the last vestige of the gulls had been left behind--I began to grow impatient. The "meanwhile" aspect of life in general was beginning to press down.

"I wish mother had named me 'Patience,' for I love a joke!" I wrote frantically--with the same feeling of suffocation which caused Lady Frances Webb to rush out to the rose garden where the sun-dial stood, to keep from hearing the clock tick.

"To me, the inertia which a woman is supposed to exhibit is the hardest part of her whole earthly task! And I don't know what it's for, either, unless to prepare her for a future incarnation into a camel!

"Yet, if you're a woman, you just must stay still and let your heart's desire slip through your fingers--even if you have to lock yourself up into your bedroom closet to accomplish it!"

And yet, even as I wrote, I wondered what I'd do when I should be back in America. Somehow, I didn't exactly fancy myself getting a ticket home from New York with stop-over privileges at Pittsburgh--where I could spend an exciting time looking up a city directory!

And so the remaining days of the voyage pa.s.sed. The Montgomery family planned to have me go home with them, after a day in London, and declared that I could find as much interesting news to write home for the _Herald_ from Lancashire as from any other portion of the United Kingdom, since one never knew where a fire would be started or a bomb discovered through the playful antics of the women who have changed the "clinging" s.e.x into the _flinging_ s.e.x; and I had accepted fervently--when, on the trip from Liverpool down to London, these arrangements were abruptly upset.

We were a little late in landing, and rushed straight to the train, where a tea-basket, operated in the compartment which we had to ourselves, was giving me the a.s.surance that surely, next to a hayloft on a rainy morning, a private compartment in a British train is the coziest spot on the face of the earth, when Mr. Montgomery suddenly dropped the sheet of newspaper he had been eagerly scanning.

"My _word_!" he said.

His exclamation was so insistent that I immediately felt in my pocket to see if I had his word, and his wife glanced up from the lamp which she was handling lovingly.

"Yes, Herbert?"

"But I say--Lord Erskine is dead!"

"Herbert!"

Her tone was accusing, but her husband nodded, with a pleased look of a.s.surance.

"You may read it for yourself, I'm sure--if you don't believe me!"

He handed the paper over to her, and she received it gingerly, after looking to the tea-basket with a housewifely air, and placing the lamp quite to one side, out of harm's way. Then she turned to the article indicated, reading slowly, while her daughter looked over her shoulder.

"Why, he's _been_ dead!"

She glanced up suddenly, toward me, with a shamefaced look.

"He was dead at the very time you were telling Grace all those atrocious things about him!" Hilda reminded her, smiling at the look of discomfiture which had crept over the kindly, wrinkled little face.

"Yes! It's--extraordinary!"

"And it makes us both feel--a little uncomfortable, eh?"

Her husband's tone was tormenting, but she turned on him seriously.

"I'm sure, Herbert, dear, you said quite as much as I did!" she declared, evidently finding relief in the knowledge. "Still--this news does rather make one--think."

The girl rattled the sheet of paper excitedly.

"I'm thinking!" she announced, her eyes wide. "I'm thinking of Colmere Abbey! What a chance for some rich decent American! Somebody that one could easily endure, you understand!"

"Hilda!"

She waved aside the reprimand.

"Grace understands me--and what I think of Americans," she answered quickly. "But, mother, this _is_ a problem! What Englishman would buy the place--with its haunting tales--and monstrous value? n.o.body would be rich enough except one of the millionaires who owns a dozen homes already. And the next-of-kin will inherit nothing along with the place to keep it up!"

"Hilda! This is neither respectful nor neighborly," her mother remonstrated again, then she turned to her husband. "Shall you write to the new Lord Erskine from London, Herbert?"

Her tone was one of foregone conclusion, conventional enough, but very kindly, and her husband nodded obediently.

"Oh, to be sure, my dear," he chirruped in a dutiful way. "I shall wire his lawyers immediately and----"

"And ask for the pleasure of putting him up while he's in the country?"

"Certainly! Certainly!"