A Voyage of Consolation Part 7

After which we drove quietly home.

CHAPTER VI.

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 _elite_ 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 antic.i.p.ant 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 compa.s.sion. As momma said, if we hadn't taken our tickets it was enough to have sent us to the Bon Marche.

A man in a black frock coat and white s.h.i.+rt cuffs came bareheaded from the office and pointed us out to the interpreter, who wore bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 a descendre!_"

"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 a.s.sist you?" he said, and the Misses Bingham allowed themselves to be a.s.sisted. 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 n.o.body 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-gla.s.s, 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-gla.s.s 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 cla.s.s."

"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. Circ.u.mstances 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 hoa.r.s.ely 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 gra.s.shopper 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.