"Mamma has waked up with rather a bad headache, and she thinks she will lie still and not come to breakfast," she reported. "And she sends her love, and says will you please have a cab and go where you like; and if I won"t be a trouble, she would be glad if you would take me with you. And I won"t be a trouble, Miss Katy, and I know where I wish you would go."
"Where is that!"
"To see that cunning little baby again that we saw yesterday. I want to show her to Mabel,--she didn"t go with us, you know, and I don"t like to have her mind not improved; and, darling Miss Katy, mayn"t I buy some flowers and put them on the Baby? She"s so dusty and so old that I don"t believe anybody has put any flowers for her for ever so long."
Katy found this idea rather pretty, and willingly stopped at Covent Garden, where they bought a bunch of late roses for eighteen pence, which entirely satisfied Amy. With them in her hand, and Mabel in her arms, she led the way through the dim aisles of the Abbey, through grates and doors and up and down steps; the guide following, but not at all needed, for Amy seemed to have a perfectly clear recollection of every turn and winding. When the chapel was reached, she laid the roses on the tomb with gentle fingers, and a pitiful, reverent look in her gray eyes. Then she lifted Mabel up to kiss the odd little baby effigy above the marble quilt; whereupon the guide seemed altogether surprised out of his composure, and remarked to Katy,--
"Little Miss is an h"American, as is plain to see; no h"English child would be likely to think of doing such a thing."
"Do not English children take any interest in the tombs of the Abbey?"
asked Katy.
"Oh yes, m"m,--h"interest; but they don"t take no special notice of one tomb above h"another."
Katy could scarcely keep from laughing, especially as she heard Amy, who had been listening to the conversation, give an audible sniff, and inform Mabel that she was glad _she_ was not an English child, who didn"t notice things and liked grown-up graves as much as she did dear little cunning ones like this!
Later in the day, when Mrs. Ashe was better, they all drove together to the quaint old keep which has been the scene of so many tragedies, and is known as the Tower of London. Here they were shown various rooms and chapels and prisons; and among the rest the apartments where Queen Elizabeth, when a friendless young Princess, was shut up for many months by her sister, Queen Mary. Katy had read somewhere, and now told Amy, the pretty legend of the four little children who lived with their parents in the Tower, and used to play with the royal captive; and how one little boy brought her a key which he had picked up on the ground, and said, "Now you can go out when you will, lady;" and how the Lords of the Council, getting wind of it, sent for the children to question them, and frightened them and their friends almost to death, and forbade them to go near the Princess again.
A story about children always brings the past much nearer to a child, and Amy"s imagination was so excited by this tale, that when they got to the darksome closet which is said to have been the prison of Sir Walter Raleigh, she marched out of it with a pale and wrathful face.
"If this is English history, I never mean to learn any more of it, and neither shall Mabel," she declared.
But it is not possible for Amy or any one else not to learn a great deal of history simply by going about London. So many places are a.s.sociated with people or events, and seeing the places makes one care so much more for the people or the events, that one insensibly questions and wonders.
Katy, who had "browsed" all through her childhood in a good old-fashioned library, had her memory stuffed with all manner of little sc.r.a.ps of information and literary allusions, which now came into use.
It was like owning the disjointed bits of a puzzle, and suddenly discovering that properly put together they make a pattern. Mrs. Ashe, who had never been much of a reader, considered her young friend a prodigy of intelligence; but Katy herself realized how inadequate and inexact her knowledge was, and how many bits were missing from the pattern of her puzzle. She wished with all her heart, as every one wishes under such circ.u.mstances, that she had studied harder and more wisely while the chance was in her power. On a journey you cannot read to advantage. Remember that, dear girls, who are looking forward to travelling some day, and be industrious in time.
October is not a favorable month in which to see England. Water, water is everywhere; you breathe it, you absorb it; it wets your clothes and it dampens your spirits. Mrs. Ashe"s friends advised her not to think of Scotland at that time of the year. One by one their little intended excursions were given up. A single day and night in Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon; a short visit to the Isle of Wight, where, in a country-place which seemed provokingly pretty as far as they could see it for the rain, lived that friend of Mrs. Ashe who had married an Englishman and in so doing had, as Katy privately thought, "renounced the sun;" a peep at Stonehenge from under the shelter of an umbrella, and an hour or two in Salisbury Cathedral,--was all that they accomplished, except a brief halt at Winchester, that Katy might have the privilege of seeing the grave of her beloved Miss Austen. Katy had come abroad with a terribly long list of graves to visit, Mrs. Ashe declared. They laid a few rain-washed flowers upon the tomb, and listened with edification to the verger, who inquired,--
"Whatever was it, ma"am, that lady did which brings so many h"Americans to h"ask about her? Our h"English people don"t seem to take the same h"interest."
"She wrote such delightful stories," explained Katy; but the old verger shook his head.
"I think h"it must be some other party, Miss, you"ve confused with this here. It stands to reason, Miss, that we"d have heard of "em h"over "ere in England sooner than you would h"over there in h"America, if the books "ad been h"anything so h"extraordinary."
The night after their return to London they were dining for the second time with the cousins of whom Mrs. Ashe had spoken to Dr. Carr; and as it happened Katy sat next to a quaint elderly American, who had lived for twenty years in London and knew it much better than most Londoners do. This gentleman, Mr. Allen Beach, had a hobby for antiquities, old books especially, and pa.s.sed half his time at the British Museum, and the other half in sales rooms and the old shops in Wardour Street.
Katy was lamenting over the bad weather which stood in the way of their plans.
"It is so vexatious," she said. "Mrs. Ashe meant to go to York and Lincoln and all the cathedral towns and to Scotland; and we have had to give it all up because of the rains. We shall go away having seen hardly anything."
"You can see London."
"We have,--that is, we have seen the things that everybody sees."
"But there are so many things that people in general do not see. How much longer are you to stay, Miss Carr?"
"A week, I believe."
"Why don"t you make out a list of old buildings which are connected with famous people in history, and visit them in turn? I did that the second year after I came. I gave up three months to it, and it was most interesting. I unearthed all manner of curious stories and traditions."
"Or," cried Katy, struck with a sudden bright thought, "why mightn"t I put into the list some of the places I know about in books,--novels as well as history,--and the places where the people who wrote the books lived?"
"You might do that, and it wouldn"t be a bad idea, either," said Mr.
Beach, pleased with her enthusiasm. "I will get a pencil after dinner and help you with your list if you will allow me."
Mr. Beach was better than his word. He not only suggested places and traced a plan of sight-seeing, but on two different mornings he went with them himself; and his intelligent knowledge of London added very much to the interest of the excursions. Under his guidance the little party of four--for Mabel was never left out; it was _such_ a chance for her to improve her mind, Amy declared--visited the Charter-House, where Thackeray went to school, and the Home of the Poor Brothers connected with it, in which Colonel Newcome answered "Adsum" to the roll-call of the angels. They took a look at the small house in Curzon Street, which is supposed to have been in Thackeray"s mind when he described the residence of Becky Sharpe; and the other house in Russell Square which is unmistakably that where George Osborne courted Amelia Sedley. They went to service in the delightful old church of St. Mary in the Temple, and thought of Ivanhoe and Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca the Jewess. From there Mr. Beach took them to Lamb"s Court, where Pendennis and George Warrington dwelt in chambers together; and to Brick Court, where Oliver Goldsmith pa.s.sed so much of his life, and the little rooms in which Charles and Mary Lamb spent so many sadly happy years. On another day they drove to Whitefriars, for the sake of Lord Glenvarloch and the old privilege of Sanctuary in the "Fortunes of Nigel;" and took a peep at Bethnal Green, where the Blind Beggar and his "Pretty Bessee"
lived, and at the old Prison of the Marshalsea, made interesting by its a.s.sociations with "Little Dorrit." They also went to see Milton"s house and St. Giles Church, in which he is buried; and stood a long time before St. James Palace, trying to make out which could have been Miss Burney"s windows when she was dresser to Queen Charlotte of bitter memory. And they saw Paternoster Row and No. 5 Cheyne Walk, sacred forevermore to the memory of Thomas Carlyle, and Whitehall, where Queen Elizabeth lay in state and King Charles was beheaded, and the state rooms of Holland House; and by great good luck had a glimpse of George Eliot getting out of a cab. She stood for a moment while she gave her fare to the cabman, and Katy looked as one who might not look again, and carried away a distinct picture of the unbeautiful, interesting, remarkable face.
With all this to see and to do, the last week sped all too swiftly, and the last day came before they were at all ready to leave what Katy called "Story-book England." Mrs. Ashe had decided to cross by Newhaven and Dieppe, because some one had told her of the beautiful old town of Rouen, and it seemed easy and convenient to take it on the way to Paris.
Just landed from the long voyage across the Atlantic, the little pa.s.sage of the Channel seemed nothing to our travellers, and they made ready for their night on the Dieppe steamer with the philosophy which is born of ignorance. They were speedily undeceived!
The English Channel has a character of its own, which distinguishes it from other seas and straits. It seems made fractious and difficult by Nature, and set as on purpose to be barrier between two nations who are too unlike to easily understand each other, and are the safer neighbors for this wholesome difficulty of communication between them. The "chop"
was worse than usual on the night when our travellers crossed; the steamer had to fight her way inch by inch. And oh, such a little steamer! and oh, such a long night!
CHAPTER VI.
ACROSS THE CHANNEL.
Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward noon, before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours after the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since have started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way out of the terrible ladies"-cabin, she crept on deck for her first glimpse of France.
The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, and his faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than the vessel"s deck, intersected with ca.n.a.l-like waterways, through whose intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to the landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people a.s.sembled to watch the boat come in,--workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers, custom-house officers, moving to and fro,--and all this crowd were talking all at once and all were talking French!
I don"t know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of course, that people of different countries were liable to be found speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the chattering mult.i.tude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise.
"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!"
She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night!
"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs.
Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered custom-house officers pounce upon the pa.s.sengers as they landed one by one, and she felt her heart sink within her.
But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very bad. Katy"s pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She did not trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to understand without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and out, and in a surprisingly short time all was p.r.o.nounced right, the baggage had "pa.s.sed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to the railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand.
Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till four in the afternoon.
"I am rather glad," declared poor Mrs. Ashe, "for I feel too used up to move. I will lie here on this sofa; and, Katy dear, please see if there is an eating-place, and get some breakfast for yourself and Amy, and send me a cup of tea."
"I don"t like to leave you alone," Katy was beginning; but at that moment a nice old woman who seemed to be in charge of the waiting-room appeared, and with a flood of French which none of them could follow, but which was evidently sympathetic in its nature, flew at Mrs. Ashe and began to make her comfortable. From a cupboard in the wall she produced a pillow, from another cupboard a blanket; in a trice she had one under Mrs. Ashe"s head and the other wrapped round her feet.
"Pauvre madame," she said, "si pale! si souffrante! Il faut avoir quelque chose a boire et a manger tout de suite." She trotted across the room and into the restaurant which opened out of it, while Mrs. Ashe smiled at Katy and said, "You see you can leave me quite safely; I am to be taken care of." And Katy and Amy pa.s.sed through the same door into the _buffet_, and sat down at a little table.
It was a particularly pleasant-looking place to breakfast in. There were many windows with bright polished panes and very clean short muslin curtains, and on the window-sills stood rows of thrifty potted plants in full bloom,--marigolds, balsams, nasturtiums, and many colored geraniums. Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was waxed to a gla.s.s-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the marble of the tables except the napkins laid over them. And such a good breakfast as was presently brought to them,--delicious coffee in bowl-like cups, crisp rolls and rusks, an omelette with a delicate flavor of fine herbs, stewed chicken, little pats of freshly churned b.u.t.ter without salt, shaped like sh.e.l.ls and tasting like solidified cream, and a pot of some sort of nice preserve. Amy made great delighted eyes at Katy, and remarking, "I think France is heaps nicer than that old England," began to eat with a will; and Katy herself felt that if this railroad meal was a specimen of what they had to expect in the future, they had indeed come to a land of plenty.
Fortified with the satisfactory breakfast, she felt equal to a walk; and after they had made sure that Mrs. Ashe had all she needed, she and Amy (and Mabel) set off by themselves to see the sights of Dieppe. I don"t know that travellers generally have considered Dieppe an interesting place, but Katy found it so. There was a really old church and some quaint buildings of the style of two centuries back, and even the more modern streets had a novel look to her unaccustomed eyes. At first they only ventured a timid turn or two, marking each corner, and going back now and then to rea.s.sure themselves by a look at the station; but after a while, growing bolder, Katy ventured to ask a question or two in French, and was surprised and charmed to find herself understood. After that she grew adventurous, and, no longer fearful of being lost, led Amy straight down a long street lined with shops, almost all of which were for the sale of articles in ivory.