Pomona's Travels Part 18

"Did that cut off the line?" said I, very quick.

"Oh, no," said the family-tree man, "the line went on. One of the duke's younger sisters must have married a man on condition that he took the old family name, which is often done, and her descendants must have emigrated somewhere, for the name no longer appears in Hamps.h.i.+re; but probably not to America, for that was rather early for English emigration."

"Do you suppose," said I, "that they went to Scotland?"

"Very likely," said he, after thinking a minute; "that would be probable enough. Have you reason to suppose that there was a Scotch branch in your family?"

"Yes," said I, for it would have been positively wrong in me to say that the feelings that I had for the Scotch hadn't any meaning at all.

"Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock."

I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother, most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.

Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.

"I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred years."

"Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of family lines, it would cut off a great many n.o.ble ancestries from families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg you not to pay any attention to that, madam."

My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But, after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and begin again somewhere up in the air."

"Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made complete and perfect."

Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed, madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning, but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots; but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.

_Letter Number Twenty-six_

SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON

To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.

I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought suddenly came to me that we were now in Hamps.h.i.+re, and that, perhaps, in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on the floor.

Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs, and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my spirits rose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "This might be a Dorkminster"]

We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer, although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching Italy.

You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to see the world, and I shall take her.

Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain, which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which hurt n.o.body, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment as this.

_Letter Number Twenty-seven_

NEW YORK

I send you this, madam, to let you know that we arrived here safely yesterday afternoon, and that we are going to-day to Jone's mother's farm where Corinne is.

I liked sailing from Southampton because when I start to go to a place I like to go, and when we went home before and had to begin by going all the way up to Liverpool by land, and then coming all the way back again by water, and after a couple of days of this to stop at Queenstown and begin the real voyage from there, I did not like it, although it was a good deal of fun seeing the b.u.mboat women come aboard at Queenstown and telescope themselves into each other as they hurried up the ladder to get on deck and sell us things.

We had a very good voyage, with about enough rolling to make the dining saloon look like some of the churches we've seen abroad on weekdays where there was services regular, but mighty small congregations.

When we got in sight of my native sh.o.r.e, England, Scotland, and even the longed-for Italy, with her palaces and gondolas, faded from my mind, and my every fibre tingled with pride and patriotism. We reached our dock about six o'clock in the afternoon, and I could scarcely stand still, so anxious was I to get ash.o.r.e. There was a train at eight which reached Rockbridge at half-past nine, and there we could take a carriage and drive to the farm in less than an hour, and then Corinne would be in my arms, so you may imagine my state of mind--Corinne before bedtime! But a cloud blacker than the heaviest fog came down upon me, for while we was standing on the deck, expecting every minute to land, a man came along and shouted at the top of his voice that no baggage could be examined by the custom-house officers after six o'clock, and the pa.s.sengers could take nothing ash.o.r.e with them but their hand-bags, and must come back in the morning and have their baggage examined. When I heard this my soul simply boiled within me! I looked at Jone, and I could see he was boiling just as bad.

"Jone," said I, "don't say a word to me."

"I am not going to say a word," said he, and he didn't. All our belongings was in our trunks. Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one which had in it three newspapers, which we bought from the pilot, a tooth-brush, a spool of thread and some needles, and a pair of scissors with one point broken off. With these things we had to go to a hotel and spend the night, and in the morning we had to go back to have our trunks examined, which, as there was nothing in them to pay duty on, was waste time for all parties, no matter when it was done.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Jone didn't carry any hand-bag, and I had only a little one"]

That night, when I was lying awake thinking about this welcome to our native land, I don't say that I hauled down the stars and stripes, but I did put them at half mast. When we arrived in England we got ash.o.r.e about twelve o'clock at night, but there was the custom-house officers as civil and obliging as any people could be, ready to tend to us and pa.s.s us on. And when I thought of them, and afterward of the lordly hirelings who met us here, I couldn't help feeling what a glorious thing it would be to travel if you could get home without coming back.

Jone tried to comfort me by telling me that we ought to be very glad we don't like this sort of thing. "In many foreign countries," said he, "people are a good deal nagged by their governments and they like it; we don't like it, so haul up your flag."

I hauled it up, and it's flying now from the tiptop of my tallest mast.

In an hour our train starts, and I shall see Corinne before the sun goes down.