The Collected Works of Susan Coolidge: 7 Novels, 35+ Short Stories, Essays & Poems (Illustrated). Susan Coolidge
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the old waiter who was setting the breakfast-table.
“Oh, please stop that man!” she said. “I want to see him.”
“What man is it, Miss?” said Wilkins.
When he reached the window and realized what Katy meant, his sense of propriety seemed to receive a severe shock. He even ventured on remonstrance.
“H’I wouldn’t, Miss, h’if h’I was you. Them Punches are a low lot, Miss; they h’ought to be put down, really they h’ought. Gentlefolks, h’as a general thing, pays no h’attention to them.”
But Katy didn’t care what “gentlefolks” did or did not do, and insisted upon having Punch called back. So Wilkins was forced to swallow his remonstrances and his dignity, and go in pursuit of the objectionable object. Amy came rushing out, with her hair flying and Mabel in her arms; and she and Katy had a real treat of Punch and Judy, with all the well-known scenes, and perhaps a few new ones thrown in for their especial behoof; for the showman seemed to be inspired by the rapturous enjoyment of his little audience of three at the first-floor windows. Punch beat Judy and stole the baby, and Judy banged Punch in return, and the constable came in and Punch outwitted him, and the hangman and the devil made their appearance duly; and it was all perfectly satisfactory, and “just exactly what she hoped it would be, and it quite made up for the muffins,” Katy declared.
Then, when Punch had gone away, the question arose as to what they should choose, out of the many delightful things in London, for their first morning.
Like ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, they decided on Westminster Abbey; and indeed there is nothing in England better worth seeing, or more impressive, in its dim, rich antiquity, to eyes fresh from the world which still calls itself “new.” So to the Abbey they went, and lingered there till Mrs. Ashe declared herself to be absolutely dropping with fatigue.
“If you don’t take me home and give me something to eat,” she said, “I shall drop down on one of these pedestals and stay there and be exhibited forever after as an ‘h’effigy’ of somebody belonging to ancient English history.”
So Katy tore herself away from Henry the Seventh and the Poets’ Corner, and tore Amy away from a quaint little tomb shaped like a cradle, with the marble image of a baby in it, which had greatly taken her fancy. She could only be consoled by the promise that she should soon come again and stay as long as she liked. She reminded Katy of this promise the very next morning.
“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 associated 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 scraps 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 circumstances, 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