Many Kingdoms Part 17

Rome, she further revealed, meant to her the Campagna and the Catacombs. On the former she had taken walks, and in the very bowels of the latter she had seemingly burrowed for days, following some mysterious purpose of her own. Her favorite time for a promenade on the Campagna, and one she paused to recommend to me, was at dusk, the place then being quiet and peaceful, owing to the fact that tourists, foolishly fearing the fever, kept away from it after sunset.

At this point Jessica sat up, arranged a pillow comfortably behind her back, and gave her undivided attention to the monologue. At last she put a question. Was the lady travelling alone? The lady hastened to explain that she was not.

"My, no," she said, briskly. "I'm a tourist--that's what they call 'em, you know, when they're with a man. They's eighteen in our party, and the man that is takin' us is Mr. James George Jackson. He's real nice.

He's in one of the other cars on this train, an' they's three gentlemen with him that belong to us, too. All the rest stayed in Paris because they was tired. You see," she added, explanatorily, "we done Lourdes in two days, an' we took it off our time in Paris. We ain't got much time in Paris, anyhow, so we went an' come back at night. I s'pose the rest thought it might be tryin' in the heat, so they stayed behind an' went to Fontingblow yesterday an' up the Seen to-day. But I saw the Black Forest when we was in Germany, an' the Rhine, too, an' some of us walked from Binjen to Cooblens, so's we could git the view real well.

So I thought I'd let the French river an' forest go, an' see Lourdes instead."

Jessica interrupted here.

"I beg your pardon," she asked, earnestly, "but--have you really been travelling two nights and sight-seeing two days in that fearful crush at Lourdes without any sleep?"

Our new friend nodded slowly, as one to whose attention the matter had just been directed. "Why, yes, that's so," she conceded. "But I ain't a bit tired. Old folks don't need much sleep, you know, an' I'm pretty old. I was eighty-one last June."

Jessica dropped her pillow and sat up very straight, a slight flush upon her face. Our new friend prattled on until the lights of Paris appeared in the distance, and Jessica and I began to collect the impressive array of impedimenta with which we had thoughtfully multiplied the discomfort of travel. As we pulled down packages of rugs and tightened various straps the bright eyes of the little old woman watched us unswervingly through her spectacles. Grasping firmly a stout and serviceable umbrella, she was ready to disembark. If she had brought any baggage with her, which I doubted, it was evidently in the fostering care of Mr. James George Jackson.

"What hotel are you goin' to?" she asked, suddenly. "I know a real good one."

I told her it was the St. James et D'Albany, and her wrinkled face grew radiant.

"Well, now, I declare," she cried, heartily, "ain't that nice! That's jest where we're stayin', an' I'm as comfor'ble as I can be. I got a room with a window that looks right into the Twilry Gardens. Mr.

Jackson says that I must have the best they is, because I'm the oldest.

'Age before beauty,' he says, an' none of the other ladies minds a bit.

They certainly are good to me. Of course, I don't say 't I wouldn't like a more relishin' breakfast, because I would; an' I ain't got used to that waiter man comin' right into my room with his trays before I'm out of my bed, an' I never expect to. But _'tis_ a good hotel, an' the lady that runs it is real nice, if she _is_ French."

The train swung into the great station as she spoke, and a round, perspiring, and very grimy masculine face presented itself at the door of our compartment.

"Well, Aunt Nancy," said the owner of this, with a sprightly effort at cheerfulness, "you alive yet? The rest of us are dead. You come right along with me now, and I'll whisk you up to the hotel in a cab. And if you take my advice, you'll go to bed and stay there for two days, after this experience."

He tucked the old lady under his arm as he spoke, and she trotted off with him in high good-humor, turning several times to nod and smile at us as she departed.

At eight o'clock the following morning I was awakened by Jessica, who stood at my bedside light-heartedly reminding me of my self-imposed duty of going early to the station to attend to the luggage, which we had omitted to do the night before. My replies to this suggestion, while they held Jessica's awe-struck attention for five minutes, would be of no interest here. Bitterly I rose, reluctantly and yawningly I dressed. At nine I stood at the entrance of our hotel signalling sleepily for a cab, and wilting already under the heat of the August sun. While I waited, a tourist coach drew up at the curb. It was gorgeous with red paint and conspicuous with large signs bearing the lettering "A VERSAILLES." The driver remained on the box. The guide, evidently there by appointment and sharply on time, leaped to the sidewalk, glanced at his watch, snapped the case shut with a satisfied nod, and stood with his eyes on the hotel entrance. One tiny black figure came forth, greeted him with a blithe "Bongjure," and intrepidly began the perilous ascent of the ladder he hastened to place against the side of the coach for her convenience. It was Aunt Nancy, dressed as she had been the night before, but immaculately neat, and reflecting in her face the brightness of the morning. I greeted her, and in her glad surprise at seeing me again she remained suspended between earth and heaven to talk to me, incidentally revealing the whole of two serviceable gaiters, the tiny ruffle of an alpaca petticoat, and a long, flat section of gray-striped cotton hose.

"Well, well," she beamed. "Ain't this nice? Yes, I'm goin'. The rest ain't ready yet, but I've been awake sence five, so I thought I'd come right down an' watch the coach fill up. The men ain't goin'--they're so tired, poor dears. Onri, my waiter, says every last one of 'em is in bed yit. But some of the ladies that went up the Seen yesterday is comin', so I guess we'll have a real nice party. We're goin' to see the palace an' the Treenon first, an' then I'm goin' to the fair in the village. Mr. Jackson says a French fair is real interestin', but he ain't goin'. He said last night he had a great deal of work to do in his room to-day, an' he guessed we wouldn't none of us see him till dinner. Do you know"--she lowered her voice mysteriously and cast an apprehensive eye about her as she went on--"Onri says Mr. Jackson's asleep this very minute, an' it's most nine o'clock in the mornin'!"

These startling revelations were checked by the appearance of two of her fellow-tourists, and I seized the opportunity afforded by this interruption to depart upon my uncongenial task.

We did not see Aunt Nancy again until the morning of our third day in Paris, when I ran across her in the galleries of the Luxembourg. She was settled comfortably in a bright-red upholstered seat near the main entrance, and on her wrinkled face was an expression of perfect peace.

"Well, I'm glad to see you resting at last," was my greeting.

"Yes, I'm restin'," she conceded. "I always do in the art galleries,"

she added, simply, as I sat down beside her. "They've got the comfort'blest chairs here of any, I think, though they was some nice ones in Florence, too; an' in one of the places in Rome they was a long seat where you could 'most lay down. I took a real nice nap there. You see," she continued, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle out of one lace mitt, "I don't know much about pictures, _anyway_, but I come right along with the others, an' when I git here I jest set down an' rest till they git through lookin' at 'em. I don't know what's Michelangelo an' what _ain't_, an' 't seems to me it's too late to find out now."

Jessica appeared at this moment, and further revelations were checked by greetings, followed almost immediately by our reluctant departure to keep an appointment. Before we left, however, we learned that the day at Versailles had been followed by an evening "at one of them French kafes where women sing," and that fourteen hours of sight-seeing in Paris itself had dispelled the threatened ennui of the second day.

Late that evening Mr. James George Jackson tottered to the side of Jessica in the corridor of the Hotel D'Albany and addressed her, wiping his brow as he did so.

"It's the old lady," he said--"Aunt Nancy Wheeler, you know. She asked me to ask you two ladies if you wouldn't like to join us in a drive this evening. She wants to see how Paris looks at night, an' I've got to show her."

He swayed languidly against a pillar when we had accepted the invitation, and groaned in reply to Jessica's tribute to the old lady's activity.

"She's active all right," he remarked, grimly. "If there's anything left of _me_ after she gets through, it'll be because I've inherited an iron const.i.tution from my mother. She's worn out every other man in the party weeks ago. The worst of it is that I don't know why she does it.

She really doesn't care about anything; I'm sure of that. But she's got some object; so she goes from early morn till dewy eve, and of course some one's got to go with her; we can't let her wander around alone.

Besides, what I'm afraid of is that she'll go all to pieces some day--like the deacon's one-horse shay, you know, and there won't be anything left but a little heap of alpaca clothes and congress gaiters.

She's worn out six pair of gaiters since we started," he added, with a wail. "I know, because I've had to buy them. _She_ hasn't had time." He shook his head mournfully as he wandered away.

Jessica and I bade Aunt Nancy an affecting farewell that night, as we were leaving Paris the next day. For several weeks we heard no more of her, but in Scotland we crossed her trail again. The Highlands were full of rumors of an intrepid old dame who had "done" the lakes and the Trossachs as apparently they had never been done before. Was she an American? She was. Eighty years old, dressed in black, with a big bonnet, steel-rimmed spectacles, and gaiters? All was correct but the gaiters. Seemingly the gaiter supply had been exhausted by the constant demand. She wore shoes with heavy soles and, our informant added, happily, gray, striped stockings. From the rumors of her achievements on land and water, Jessica and I glanced apprehensively over the surface of Scotland, fearing to see it strewn with exhausted boatmen, guides, and drivers; but apparently all her victims had survived, though they bore as a souvenir of their experience with her a haggard and hunted look which Jessica declared she could detect from the top seat of the loftiest coach.

Drifting down through Ireland we heard another echo of Aunt Nancy. She had ridden on horseback through the Gap of Dunloe, no difficult feat in itself, and one achieved daily during Kallarney's tourist season by old ladies of various countries and creeds. In Aunt Nancy's case, however, it appeared that she had been able to enjoy that variety which is so gratifying a feature of human experience. Notwithstanding the fact that she had never been on the back of a horse in her life, she unerringly selected the freshest and most frolicsome of the Irish ponies as her mount. It appears further that she was finally lifted to the saddle of this animal as the result of a distinct understanding between Mr. James George Jackson and her guide that the latter gentleman was not only to accompany the lady every foot of the route, but was meantime to cling valiantly to the bridle with both hands. Unfortunately, this arrangement, so deeply satisfying to all, was not ratified by the mettlesome Irish pony; the result being that, after the guide had been swept off his feet by a sudden and unexpected lift of the animal's forelegs, Aunt Nancy and the pony continued the excursion alone.

Judging from the terse words of one of the observers, it must have been an exciting spectacle while it lasted, though it pa.s.sed all too rapidly beyond the line of the beholder's longing vision.

"Ye c'u'dn't tell," remarked this gentleman, sadly, in relating the accident, "which was the ha.r.s.e an' which the auld lady, an' which the Gap of Dunloe!"

Excited pursuers did not "catch 'em," as they were urged to do by the frenzied Mr. Jackson, but they were rewarded by finding various portions of Aunt Nancy's wearing apparel scattered along the trail.

Items: one black bonnet, one cape, one handkerchief, one pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. Apparently only those garments securely fastened in place, such as shoes and lace mitts, had survived the experience. Apparently, also, Aunt Nancy had made in almost unbroken silence her exciting mountain ride. The exception seemingly occurred somewhere in the Dark Valley, where a mountain woman, seeing her fly by, had thoughtlessly urged her to stop and buy a gla.s.s of goat's milk.

The woman's memory of the encounter was slightly vague, it having ended so abruptly, but she retained the impression that Aunt Nancy had expressed an unusual degree of regret at being unable to accept her invitation.

"'Twasn't till thin I saw the poor ha.r.s.e was crazy wid fright, an' the auld lady's close blowin' over his eyes," added the mountain woman, sympathetically. "An' I couldn't do nathin', becuz, begorra, whin I lifted me v'ice to call me big bye, the auld woman an' the ha.r.s.e was half-way down the valley."

Fortunately, five or six miles of this stimulating pace had a blighting effect on the wild Hibernian spirits of the pony, with the result that he and his rider ambled at a most sedate gait into the s.p.a.ce where the row-boats were waiting their pa.s.sengers for Ross Castle, and where the remaining members of the party were expected to meet. The remaining members of the party, for obvious reasons, were not yet there; and the long delay before their arrival gave Aunt Nancy time to replace the missing articles of her apparel with garments borrowed from the woman at the refreshment booth, and to eat a hearty luncheon. Thus refreshed, she was ready for the fourteen-mile journey in a row-boat to Ross Castle, which was the next item on the programme of the day; and she made it that afternoon, notwithstanding the almost hysterical expostulations of Mr. James George Jackson.

It was not until we sailed for America that we looked again into Aunt Nancy's dauntless eyes. She was the first pa.s.senger we saw when we reached the deck of the Columbia, and her joy in the encounter was as deep as our own. We chatted for a moment, and then she darted off to greet various members of her party from whom side excursions had temporarily separated her.

The sea was slumberously calm, bathed in hazy autumnal sunshine.

Light-hearted men and women in white linen and pale flannel costumes strolled about the decks explaining to one another what good sailors they were, and how they hoped the sea would not remain monotonously smooth.

"One wants a little life and swing on a ship," explained one fat, blond man on whose face we were even then looking, though we knew it not, for the last time in seven sad days. To a unit the pa.s.sengers poured into the dining-saloon at the first call for luncheon. To a unit they consumed everything on the bill of fare. All was peace and appet.i.te.

That afternoon the sea roused herself drowsily, turned over, and yawned. The blue waves of the morning were gone. In their place were huge, oily, black swells, which lazily lifted the _Columbia_, held her suspended for a long minute, and then with slow, shuddering reluctance let her down, down, down. An interesting young Scotchman who was sitting by Jessica's side on deck stopped suddenly in the midst of an impa.s.sioned tribute to the character of Robert Brace, looked in her face for an instant with eyes full of a horrible fear, and hastily joined a stout German in a spirited foot-race to the nearest companionway. A High-church English divine, who had met me half an hour before and had hastened to spare me future heartaches by explaining at once that he was married, rose abruptly from his chair beside me and wobbled uncertainly to the deck-rail, where he hung suspended in an att.i.tude of pathetic resignation. Thus recalled to the grim realities of life, Jessica and I looked up and down the deck. It was deserted--deserted save for a little black figure that trotted rapidly past us, clutching occasionally at the empty air for support as she was hurled from one side to the other of the glistening deck, but cheerful, undaunted, and happy.

"I got to have some exercise," panted Aunt Nancy, as she reclined for an instant in my lap, where a lurch of the ship had deposited her; "so I'm takin' a little walk." She was still walking when Jessica and I retreated hurriedly to our cabin.

The days that followed are too sad to be described by the most sympathetic pen. The sea, moved to her uttermost depths as she had not been in twenty-five years, resented fiercely the presence of the Columbia on her disturbed bosom. Madly she cast her from her; with feline treachery she drew her back again, and sought to tear apart her mighty timbers. Groaningly, agonizingly, pluckily, the Columbia bore all--and revenged herself on her pa.s.sengers. She stood on her head, and sent them, so to speak, into her prow. She rose up on her stern, and scattered them aft. She stood still and shuddered. She lay down on her left side until she had imperilled the heart action of every person on board; she rolled over on her right side and started briskly toward the bottom of the sea. She recovered herself, leaped up and down a few times to prove that she was still intact, and did it all over again.

Meanwhile the pa.s.sengers, locked below and sternly commanded to keep to their cabins, held fast to the sides of their berths and prayed fervently for death.

Neither Jessica nor I was actively ill, but Jessica's indifference to food and social intercourse was marked in the extreme. Stretched on her back in the berth opposite my own, she lay day and night with closed eyes and forbidding demeanor, rousing herself only long enough to repel fiercely any suggestion that she take nourishment. Also, she furnished me with one life-long memory. From sheer ennui I ordered and devoured at noon on the third day a large portion of steamed peach dumpling, with hard sauce. The look which Jessica cast first upon this dish and then upon me will always, I think, remain the dominant feature of my most troubled dreams.

During this time I had not forgotten Aunt Nancy, though I am sure Jessica had. Her cabin, however, while on the same deck as our own, was at the other end of the ship, and I had grave doubts of my ability to cover safely the distance between. Finally I attempted it, and, aside from the slight incidents of blacking one eye in an unexpected diversion to the rail, and subsequently being hurled violently against the back of an axe nailed to the wall, I made the pa.s.sage in safety.

Aunt Nancy was not in her cabin, but a hollow groan from the upper berth betrayed the fact that her room-mate was. From this lady I was unfortunately unable to extract any information. She seemed to feel that I was mercifully sent to chloroform her out of existence, and her disappointment over my failure to play this Samaritan role was so bitter that I was forced to withdraw lest she should utter things unbefitting a gentlewoman.

Down the long corridor, as I groped my way back, something blew toward me like a wraith from the sea. It wore a gray, woolly bathrobe, a tiny wisp of white hair fastened precariously with one hair-pin, and a pair of knitted bedroom slippers. It was Aunt Nancy, and we executed then and there an intricate pas de deux in our common efforts to meet.

Finally the Columbia ceased her individual evolutions long enough to enable us to grasp the pa.s.sage-rail.

"I've been in your cabin," I explained, above the roar of wave and wind, as we stood facing each other. "I was afraid you were ill."

Aunt Nancy looked almost pained at such a suspicion.

"My, no," she disavowed, hastily; "but there's them that is," she conceded. "I've been to see--let me see--thirty of 'em to-day--men an'