The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories Part 5

And I was so amazed that I sat and looked at Pomona without saying a word.

"Yes," cried Pomona, her eyes sparkling with excitement, "I've seen a lord, and trod his floors, and I'll tell you all about it. You know I was boun' to do it, and I wanted to go alone, for if Jone was with me he'd be sure to put in some of his queer sayin's an' ten to one hurt the man's feelin's, and cut off the interview. An' as Jone said this afternoon he felt tired, with some small creeps in his back, an' didn't care to go out, I knew my time had come, and said I'd go for a walk.

Day before yesterday I went up to a policeman an' I asked him if he could tell me if a lord, or a earl, or a duke lived anywhere near here.

First he took me for crazy, an' then he began to ask questions which he thought was funny, but I kep' stiff to the mark, an' I made him tell me where a lord did live,--about five blocks from here. So I fixed things all ready an' today I went there."

"You didn't have the a.s.surance to suppose he'd see you?" cried Euphemia.

"No, indeed, I hadn't," said Pomona, "at least under common circ.u.mstances. You may be sure I racked my brains enough to know what I should do to meet him face to face. It wouldn't do to go in the common way, such as ringin' at the front door and askin' for him, an' then offerin' to sell him furniter-polish for his pianner-legs. I knowed well enough that any errand like that would only bring me face to face with his bailiff, or his master of hounds, or something of that kind.

So, at last, I got a plan of my own, an' I goes up the steps and rings the bell, an' when the flunkey, with more of an air of gen'ral upliftedness about him than any one I'd seen yet, excep' Nelson on top of his pillar, opened the door an' looked at me, I asked him,--

"'Is Earl Cobden in?'

"At this the man opened his eyes, an' remarked:--

"'What uv it if he is?'

"Then I answers, firmly:--

"'If he's in, I want yer to take him this letter, an' I'll wait here.'"

"You don't mean to say," cried Euphemia, "that you wrote the earl a letter?"

"Yes, I did," continued Pomona, "and at first the man didn't seem inclined to take it. But I held it out so steady that he took it an'

put it on a little tray, whether nickel-plated or silver I couldn't make out, and carried it up the widest and splendidest pair o' stairs that I ever see in a house jus' intended to be lived in. When he got to the fust landin' he met a gentleman, and give him the letter. When I saw this I was took aback, for I thought it was his lords.h.i.+p a-comin'

down, an' I didn't want to have no interview with a earl at his front door. But the second glance I took at him showed me that it wasn't him.

He opened it, notwithstanding', an' read it all through from beginnin'

to end. When he had done it he looked down at me, and then he went back up stairs a-follered by the flunk, which last pretty soon came down ag'in an' told me I was to go up. I don't think I ever felt so much like a wringed-out dish-cloth as I did when I went up them palatial stairs. But I tried to think of things that would prop me up. P'r'aps, I thought, my ancient ancestors came to this land with his'n; who knows? An' I might 'a' been switched off on some female line, an' so lost the name an' estates. At any rate, be brave! With such thoughts as these I tried to stiffen my legs, figgeratively speakin'. We went through two or three rooms (I hadn't time to count 'em) an' then I was showed into the lofty presence of the earl. He was standin' by the fire-place, an' the minnit my eyes lit upon him I knowed it was him."

"Why, how was that?" cried Euphemia and myself almost in the same breath.

"I knowed him by his wax figger," continued Pomona, "which Jone and I see at Madame Tussaud's wax-works. They've got all the head people of these days there now, as well as the old kings and the pizeners. The clothes wasn't exactly the same, though very good on each, an' there was more of an air of shortenin' of the spine in the wax figger than in the other one. But the likeness was awful strikin'.

"'Well, my good woman,' says he, a-holdin' my open letter in his hand, 'so you want to see a lord, do you?'"

"What on earth did you write to him?" exclaimed Euphemia. "You mustn't go on a bit further until you have told what was in your letter."

"Well," said Pomona, "as near as I can remember, it was like this: '_William, Lord Cobden, Earl of Sorsets.h.i.+re an' Derry. Dear Sir. Bein'

brought up under Republican inst.i.tutions, in the land of the free--'_ I left out '_the home of the brave_' because there wasn't no use crowin'

about that jus' then--'_I haven't had no oppertunity of meetin' with a individual of lordly blood. Ever since I was a small girl takin' books from the circulatin' libery, an' obliged to read out loud with divided sillerbles, I've drank in every word of the tales of lords and other n.o.bles of high degree, that the little shops where I gen'rally got my books, an' some with the pages out at the most excitin' parts, contained. An' so I asks you now, Sir Lord--_' I did put _humbly_, but I scratched that out, bein' an American woman--'_to do me the favor of a short audience. Then, when I reads about n.o.ble earls an' dukes in their brilliant lit halls an' castles, or mounted on their champin'

chargers, a-leadin' their trusty hordes to victory amid the glittering minarets of fame, I'll know what they looks like._' An' then I signed my name.

"'Yes, sir,' says I, in answer to his earls.h.i.+p's question," said Pomona, taking up her story, "'I did want to see one, upon my word.'

"'An' now that you have seen him,' says he, 'what do you think of him?'

"Now, I had made up my mind before I entered this ducal pile, or put my foot on one ancestral stone, that I'd be square and honest through the whole business, and not try no counterfeit presentiments with the earl.

So I says to him:--

"'The fust thing I thinks is, that you've got on the nicest suit of clothes that I've ever seed yit, not bein' exactly Sunday clothes, and yit fit for company, an' if money can buy 'em--an' men's clothes is cheap enough here, dear only knows--I'm goin' to have a suit jus' like it for Jone, my husband.' It was a kind o' brown mixed stuff, with a little spot of red in it here an' there, an' was about as gay for plain goods, an' as plain for gay goods, as anythin' could be, an' 'twas easy enough to see that it was all wool. 'Of course,' says I, 'Jone'll have his coat made different in front, for single-breasted, an' a b.u.t.tonin'

so high up is a'most too stylish for him, 'specially as fas.h.i.+ons 'ud change afore the coat was wore out. But I needn't bother your earls.h.i.+p about that.'

"'An' so,' says he, an' I imagine I see an air of sadness steal over his features, 'it's my clothes, after all, that interest you?'

"'Oh, no,' says I, 'I mention them because they come up fust. There is, no doubt, qualities of mind and body--'

"'Well, we won't go into that,' said his earls.h.i.+p, 'an' I want to ask you a question. I suppose you represent the middle cla.s.s in your country?'

"'I don't know 'zactly where society splits with us,' says I, 'but I guess I'm somewhere nigh the crack.'

"'Now don't you really believe,' says he, 'that you and the people of your cla.s.s would be happier, an' feel safer, politically speakin', if they had among 'em a aristocracy to which they could look up to in times of trouble, as their nat'ral born gardeens? I ask yer this because I want to know for myself what are the reel sentiments of yer people.'

"'Well, sir,' says I, 'when your work is done, an' your kitchen cleaned up, an' your lamp lit, a lord or a duke is jus' tip-top to read about, if the type aint too fine an' the paper mean beside, which it often is in the ten-cent books; but, further than this, I must say, we aint got no use for 'em.' At that he kind o' steps back, and looks as if he was goin' to say somethin', but I puts in quick: 'But you mustn't think, my earl,' says I, 'that we undervallers you. When we remembers the field of Agincourt; and Chevy Chase; an' the Tower of London, with the block on which three lords was beheaded, with the very cuts in it which the headsman made when he chopped 'em off, as well as two crooked ones a-showin' his bad licks, which little did he think history would preserve forever; an' the old Guildhall, where down in the ancient crypt is a-hangin' our Declaration of Independence along with the Roman pots and kittles dug up in London streets; we can't forgit that if it hadn't 'a' been for your old ancestral lines as roots, we'd never been the flouris.h.i.+n' tree we is.'

"'Well,' said his earls.h.i.+p, when I'd got through, an' he kind o' looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or not, 'if you represent the feelin's of your cla.s.s in your country, I reckon they're not just ready for a aristocracy yit.'

"An' with that he give me a little nod, an' walked off into another room. It was pretty plain from this that the interview was brought to a close, an' so I come away. The flunk was all ready to show me out, an'

he did it so expeditious, though quite polite, that I didn't git no chance to take a good look at the furniter and carpets, which I'd 'a'

liked to have done. An' so I've talked to a real earl, an' if not in his ancestral pile, at any rate in the gorgeousest house I ever see.

An' the brilliantest dream of my youth has come true."

When she had finished I rose and looked upon her.

"Pomona," said I, "we may yet visit many foreign countries. We may see kings, queens, dukes, counts, sheikhs, beys, sultans, khedives, pashas, rajahs, and I don't know what potentates besides, and I wish to say just this one thing to you. If you don't want to get yourself and us into some dreadful sc.r.a.pe, and perhaps bring our journeys to a sudden close, you must put a curb on your longing for communing with beings of n.o.ble blood."

"That's true, sir," said Pomona, thoughtfully, "an' I made a pretty close shave of it this time, for when I was talkin' to the earl, I was just on the p'int of tellin' him that I had such a high opinion of his kind o' folks that I once named a big black dog after one of 'em, but I jus' remembered in time, an' slipped on to somethin' else. But I trembled worse than a peanut woman with a hackman goin' round the corner to ketch a train an' his hubs just grazin' the legs of her stand. An' so I promise you, sir, that I'll put my heel on all hankerin' after potentates."

And so she made her promise. And, knowing Pomona, I felt sure that she would keep it--if she could.

POMONA'S DAUGHTER.

In the pretty walk, bordered by bright flowers and low, overhanging shrubbery, which lies back of the Albert Memorial, in Kensington Gardens, London, Jonas sat on a green bench, with his baby on his knee.

A few nurses were pus.h.i.+ng baby-carriages about in different parts of the walk, and there were children playing not far away. It was drawing toward the close of the afternoon, and Jonas was thinking it was nearly time to go home, when Pomona came running to him from the gorgeous monument, which she had been carefully inspecting.

"Jone," she cried, "do you know I've been lookin' at all them great men that's standin' round the bottom of the monnyment, an' though there's over a hundred of 'em, I'm sure, I can't find a American among 'em!

There's poets, an' artists, an' leadin' men, sc.r.a.ped up from all parts, an' not one of our ill.u.s.trious dead. What d'ye think of that?"

"I can't believe it," said Jonas. "If we go home with a tale like that we'll hear the recruiting-drum from Newark to Texas, and, ten to one, I'll be drafted."

"You needn't be makin' fun," said Pomona; "you come an' see for yourself. Perhaps you kin' find jus' one American, an' then I'll go home satisfied."

"All right," said Jonas.

And, putting the child on the bench, he told her he'd be back in a minute, and hurried after Pomona, to give a hasty look for the desired American.

Corinne, the offspring of Jonas and Pomona, had some peculiarities. One of these was that she was accustomed to stay where she was put. Ever since she had been old enough to be carried about, she had been carried about by one parent or the other; and, as it was frequently necessary to set her down, she had learned to sit and wait until she was taken up again. She was now nearly two years old, very strong and active, and of an intellect which had already begun to tower. She could walk very well, but Jonas took such delight in carrying her that he seldom appeared to recognize her ability to use her legs. She could also talk, but how much her parents did not know. She was a taciturn child, and preferred to keep her thoughts to herself, and, although she sometimes astonished us all by imitating remarks she had heard, she frequently declined to repeat the simplest words that had been taught her.