In this fashion we reached "The Insular," where we were received by four or five gorgeous creatures in livery, the head one of whom said, "Miss Columbia?" I admitted it, and we were ushered in, where we were met by more belonging to this tribe of gorgeousness, another of whom said, "Miss Columbia?"
"Yes," I said, firmly, privately wondering if they were trying to trip me into admitting that I was somebody else.
"The housekeeper will be here presently," said this person. "She is expecting you."
Forth came the housekeeper.
"Miss Columbia?" she said.
Once again I said "Yes," patiently, standing on my other foot.
"If you will be good enough to come with me I will show you your rooms."
A door opened outward, disclosing a little square place with two cane-bottomed chairs. A man bounced out so suddenly that I nearly annihilated my sister, who was back of me. I could not imagine what this little cubbyhole was, but as there seemed to be nowhere else to go, I went in. The others followed, then the man who had bounced out.
He closed the door and shut us in, where we stood in solemn silence.
About a quarter of an hour afterwards I thought I saw something through the gla.s.s moving slowly downward, and then an infinitesimal thrill in the soles of my feet led me to suspect the truth.
"Is this thing an elevator?" I whispered to my sister.
"No, they call it a lift over here," she whispered back.
"I know that," I murmured, impatiently. "But is this thing it? Are we moving? Are we going anywhere?"
"Why, of course, my dear. They are slower than ours, that"s all."
I listened to her with some misgivings, for her information is not always to be wholly trusted, but this time it happened that she was right, for after a while we came to the fourth floor, where our rooms were.
I wish you could have seen the size of them. I shall not attempt to describe them, for you would not believe me. I had engaged "two rooms and a bath." The two rooms were there. "Where is the bath?" I said.
The housekeeper lovingly, removed a gigantic crash towel from a hideous tin object, and proudly exposed to my vision that object which is next dearest to his silk hat to an Englishman"s heart--a hip-bath tub. Her manner said, "Beat that if you can."
My sister prodded me in the back with her umbrella, which in our sign language means, "Don"t make a scene."
"Very well," I said, rather meekly. "Have our trunks sent up."
"Very good, madam."
She went away, and then we rang the bell and began to order what were to us the barest necessities of life. We were tired and lame and sleepy from a night spent at the pier landing the luggage, and we wanted things with which to make ourselves comfortable.
There was a pocket edition of a fireplace, and they brought us a hatful of the vilest soft coal, which peppered everything in the rooms with soot.
We climbed over our trunks to sit by this imitation of a fire, only to find that there was nothing to sit on but the most uncompromising of straight-backed chairs.
We groaned as we took in the situation. To our poor, racked frames a coal-hod would not have suggested more discomfort. We dragged up our hampers, packed with steamer-rugs and pillows, and my sister sat on hers while I took another turn at the bell. While the maid is answering this bell I shall have plenty of time to tell you what we afterwards discovered the process of bell-ringing in an English hotel to be.
We rang our bell. Presently we heard the most horrible gong, such as we use on our patrol wagons and fire-engines at home. This clanged four times. Then a second bell down the hall answered it. Then feet flew by our door. At this juncture my sister and I prepared to let ourselves down the fire-escape. But we soon discovered that those flying feet belonged to the poor maid, whom that gong had signalled that she was wanted on the fourth floor. She flew to a speaking-tube and asked who on the fourth floor wanted her. She was then given the number of our room, when she rang a bell to signify that our call was answered, by which time she was at liberty, and knocked at our door, saying, in her soft English voice, "Did you ring, miss?"
We told her we wanted rocking-chairs. She said there was not one in the house. Then easy-chairs, we said, or anything cushioned or low or comfortable. She said the housekeeper had no easier chairs.
We sat down on our hampers, and my sister leaned against the corner of the wardrobe with a pillow at her back to keep from being cut in two.
I propped my back against the wash-stand, which did very well, except that the wash-stand occasionally slid away from me.
"This," said my sister, impressively, "is England."
We had been here only half an hour, but I had already got my point of view.
"Let"s go out and look up a hotel where they take Americans," I said.
"I feel the need of ice-water."
Our drinking-water at "The Insular" was on the end of the wash-stand nearest the fire.
So, feeling a little timid and nervous, but not in the least homesick, we went downstairs. One of our gorgeous retinue called a cab and we entered it.
"Where shall we go?" asked my sister.
"I feel like saying to the first hotel we see," I said.
Just then we raised our eyes and they rested simultaneously upon a sign, "The Empire Hotel for Cats and Dogs." This simple solution of our difficulty put us in such high good humor that we said we wouldn"t look up a hotel just yet--we would take a drive.
Under these circ.u.mstances we took our first drive down Piccadilly, and Europe to me dates from that moment. The ship, the landing, the custom-house, the train, the hotel--all these were mere preliminaries to the Europe, which began then. People told me in America how my heart would swell at this, and how I would thrill at that, but it was not so. My first real thrill came to me in Piccadilly. It went all over me in little shivers and came out at the ends of my fingers, and then began once more at the base of my brain and did it all over again.
But what is the use of describing one"s first view of London streets and traffic to the initiated? Can they, who became used to it as children, appreciate it? Can they look back and recall how it struck them? No. When I try to tell Americans over here they look at me curiously and say, "Dear me, how odd!" The way they say it leaves me to draw any one of three conclusions: either they are not impressionable, and are therefore honest in denying the feeling; or they think it vulgar to admit it; or I am the only grown person in America who never has been to Europe before.
But I am indifferent to their opinion. People are right in saying this great tremendous rush of feeling can come but once. It is like being in love for the first time. You like it and yet you don"t like it. You wish it would go away, yet you fear that it will go all too soon. It gets into your head and makes you dizzy, and you want to shut your eyes, but you are afraid if you do that you will miss something. You cannot eat and you cannot sleep, and you feel that you have two consciousnesses: one which belongs to the life you have lived hitherto, and which still is going on, somewhere in the world, unmindful of you, and you unmindful of it; and the other is this new bliss which is beating in your veins and sounding in your ears and shining before your eyes, which no one knows and no one dreams of, but which keeps a smile on your lips--a smile which has in it nothing of humor, nothing from the great without, but which-comes from the secret recesses of your own inner consciousness, where the heart of the matter lies.
I remember nothing definite about that first drive. I, for my part, saw with unseeing eyes. My sister had seen it all before, so she had the power of speech. Occasionally she prodded me and cried, "Look, oh!
look quickly." But I never swerved. "I can"t look. If I do I shall miss something. You attend to your own window and I"ll attend to mine.
Coming back I will see your side."
When we got beyond the shops I said to the cabman:
"Do you know exactly the way you have come?"
"Yes, miss," he said.
"Then go back precisely the same way."
"Have you lost something, miss?" he inquired.
"Yes," I said, "I have lost an impression, and I must look till I find it."
"Very good, miss," he said.
If I had said, "I have carelessly let fall my cathedral," or, "I have lost my orang-outang. Look for him!" an imperturbable British cabby would only touch his cap and say, "Very good, miss!"
So we followed our own trail back to "The Insular." "In this way," I said to my sister, "we both get a complete view. To-morrow we will do it all over again."
But we found that we could not wait for the morrow. We did it all over again that afternoon, and that second time I was able in a measure to detach myself from the hum and buzz and the dizzying effect of foreign faces, and I began to locate impressions. My first distinct recollections are of the great numbers of high hats on the men, the ill-hanging skirts and big feet of the women, the unsteadying effect of all those thousands of cabs, carriages, and carts all going to the left, which kept me constantly wishing to shriek out, "Go to the right or we"ll all be killed," the absolutely perfect manner in which traffic was managed, and the majestic authority of the London police.
I have seen the Houses of Parliament and the Tower and Westminster Abbey, and the World"s Fair, but the most impressive sight I ever beheld is the upraised hand of a London policeman. I never heard one of them speak except when spoken to. But let one little blue-coated man raise his forefinger and every vehicle on wheels stops, and stops instantly; stops in obedience to law and order; stops without swearing or gesticulating or abuse; stops with no underhanded trying to drive out of line and get by on the other side; just stops, that is the end of it. And why? Because the Queen of England is behind that raised finger. A London policeman has more power than our President.