IV
PENELOPE IN DEVON
We are in Bristol after a week’s coaching in Wales; the Jack Copleys, Tommy Schuyler, Mrs. Jack’s younger brother, and Miss Van Tyck, Mrs. Jack’s “Aunt Celia,” who played a grim third in that tour of the English Cathedrals during which Jack Copley was ostensibly studying architecture but in reality courting Kitty Schuyler. Also there is Bertram Ferguson, whom we call “Atlas” because he carries the world on his shoulders, gazing more or less vaguely and absent-mindedly at all the persons and things in the universe not in need of immediate reformation.
We had journeyed by easy stages from Liverpool through Carnarvon, Llanberis, Penygwyrd, Bettws-y-Coed, Beddgelert, and Tan-y-Bulch. Arriving finally at Dolgelly, we sent the coach back to Carnarvon and took the train to Ross,—the gate of the Wye,—from whence we were to go down the river in boats. As to that, everybody knows Symond’s Yat, Monmouth, Raglan Castle, Tintern Abbey, Chepstow; but at Bristol a brilliant idea took possession of Jack Copley’s mind. Long after we were in bed o’ nights the blessed man interviewed landlords and studied guidebooks that he might show us something beautiful next day, and above all, something out of the common route. Mrs. Jack didn’t like common routes; she wanted her appetite titillated with new scenes.
At breakfast we saw the red-covered Baedeker beside our host’s plate. This was his way of announcing that we were to “move on,” like poor Jo in “Bleak House.” He had already reached the marmalade stage, and while we discussed our bacon and eggs and reviled our coffee, he read us the following:—
“Clovelly lies in a narrow and richly-wooded combe descending abruptly to the sea.”—
“Any place that descends to the sea abruptly or otherwise has my approval in advance,” said Tommy.
“Be quiet, my boy.”—“It consists of one main street, or rather a main staircase, with a few houses climbing on each side of the combe so far as the narrow space allows. The houses, each standing on a higher or lower level than its neighbour, are all whitewashed, with gay green doors and lattices.”—
“Heavenly!” cried Mrs. Jack. “It sounds like an English Amalfi; let us take the first train.”
–“And the general effect is curiously foreign; the views from the quaint little pier and, better still, from the sea, with the pier in the foreground, are also very striking. The foundations of the cottages at the lower end of the village are hewn out of the living rock.”
“How does a living rock differ from other rocks—dead rocks?” Tommy asked facetiously. “I have always wanted to know; however, it sounds delightful, though I can’t remember anything about Clovelly.”
“Did you never read Dickens’s ‘Message from the Sea,’ Thomas?” asked Miss Van Tyck. Aunt Celia always knows the number of the unemployed in New York and Chicago, the date when North Carolina was admitted to the Union, why black sheep eat less than white ones, the height of the highest mountain and the length of the longest river in the world, when the first potato was dug from American soil, when the battle of Bull Run was fought, who invented the first fire-escape, how woman suffrage has worked in Colorado and California, the number of trees felled by Mr. Gladstone, the principle of the Westinghouse brake and the Jacquard loom, the difference between peritonitis and appendicitis, the date of the introduction of postal-cards and oleomargarine, the price of mileage on African railways, the influence of Christianity in the Windward Islands, who wrote “There’s Another, not a Sister,” “At Midnight in his Guarded Tent,” “A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever,” and has taken in through the pores much other information likely to be of service on journeys where an encyclopædia is not available.
If she could deliver this information without gibes at other people’s ignorance she would, of course, be more agreeable; but it is only justice to say that a person is rarely instructive and agreeable at the same moment.
“It is settled, then, that we go to Clovelly,” said Jack. “Bring me the A B C Guide, please” (this to the waiter who had just brought in the post).
“Quite settled, and we go at once,” said Mrs. Jack, whose joy at arriving at a place is only equalled by her joy in leaving it. “Penelope, hand me my letters, please; if you were not my guest I should say I had never witnessed such an appetite. Tommy, what news from father? Atlas, how can you drink three cups of British coffee? Oh-h-h, how more than lucky, how heavenly, how providential! Egeria is coming!”
“Egeria?” we cried with one rapturous voice.
“Read your letter carefully, Kitty,” said Jack; “you will probably find that she wishes she might come, but finds it impossible.”
“Or that she certainly would come if she had anything to wear,” drawled Tommy.
“Or that she could come perfectly well if it were a few days later,” quoth I.
Mrs. Jack stared at us superciliously, and lifting an absurd watch from her antique chatelaine, observed calmly, “Egeria will be at this hotel in one hour and fifteen minutes; I telegraphed her the night before last, and this letter is her reply.”
“Who is Egeria?” asked Atlas, looking up from his own letters. “She sounds like a character in a book.”
Mrs. Jack: “You begin, Penelope.”
Penelope: “No, I’d rather finish; then I can put in everything that you omit.”
Atlas: “Is there so much to tell?”
Tommy: “Rather. Begin with her hair, Penelope.”
Mrs. Jack: “No; I’ll do that! Don’t rattle your knives and forks, shut up your Baedeker, Jackie, and listen while I quote what a certain poet wrote of Egeria when she last visited us:—
Jack: “She has beautiful hair, but as an architect I shouldn’t think of mentioning it first. Details should follow, not precede, general characteristics. Her hair is an exquisite detail; so, you might say, is her nose, her foot, her voice; but viewed as a captivating whole, Egeria might be described epigrammatically as an animated lodestone. When a man approaches her he feels his iron-work gently and gradually drawn out of him.”
Atlas looked distinctly incredulous at this statement, which was reinforced by the affirmative nods of the whole party.
Penelope: “A man cannot talk to Egeria an hour without wishing the assistance of the Society for First Aid to the Injured. She is a kind of feminine fly-paper; the men are attracted by the sweetness, and in trying to absorb a little of it, they stick fast.”
Tommy: “Egeria is worth from two to two and a half times more than any girl alive; I would as lief talk to her as listen to myself.”
Atlas: “Great Jove, what a concession! I wish I could find a woman—an unmarried woman (with a low bow to Mrs. Jack)—that would produce that effect upon me. So you all like her?”