His companion uttered an exclamation, stared, then laid his two hands on the other’s shoulders. The latter looked round at me keenly, compassing me in a momentary glance. I read in its own high light that this was an American eye-beam; and with such confidence that I hardly needed to see its owner, as he prepared, with his friend, to seat himself at the table adjoining my own, take from his overcoat-pocket three New York papers and lay them beside his plate. As my neighbours proceeded to dine, I became conscious that, through no indiscretion of my own, a large portion of their conversation made its way over the top of our dividing partition and mingled its savour with that of my simple repast. Occasionally their tone was lowered, as with the intention of secrecy; but I heard a phrase here and a phrase there distinctly enough to grow very curious as to the burden of the whole, and, in fact, to succeed at last in guessing it. The two voices were pitched in an unforgotten key, and equally native to our Cisatlantic air; they seemed to fall upon the muffled medium of surrounding parlance as the rattle of pease on the face of a drum. They were American, however, with a difference; and I had no hesitation in assigning the lighter and softer of the two to the pale, thin gentleman, whom I decidedly preferred to his comrade. The latter began to question him about his voyage.
‘Horrible, horrible! I was deadly sick from the hour we left New York.’
‘Well, you do look considerably reduced,’ his friend affirmed.
‘Reduced! I’ve been on the verge of the grave. I haven’t slept six hours in three weeks.’ This was said with great gravity. ‘Well, I have made the voyage for the last time.’
‘The deuce you have! You mean to stay here for ever?’
‘Here, or somewhere! It’s likely to be a short for ever.’ There was a pause; after which: ‘You’re the same cheerful old boy, Searle. Going to die to-morrow, eh?’
‘I almost wish I were.’
‘You’re not in love with England, then? I’ve heard people say at home that you dressed and talked and acted like an Englishman. But I know Englishmen, and I know you. You’re not one of them, Searle, not you. You’ll go under here, sir; you’ll go under as sure as my name is Simmons.’
Following this, I heard a sudden clatter, as of the dropping of a knife and fork. ‘Well, you’re a delicate sort of creature, Simmons! I have been wandering about all day in this accursed city, ready to cry with home-sickness and heart-sickness and every possible sort of sickness, and thinking, in the absence of anything better, of meeting you here this evening, and of your uttering some syllable of cheer and comfort, and giving me some feeble ray of hope. Go under? Am I not under now? I can’t sink lower, except to sink into my grave!’
Mr Simmons seems to have staggered a moment under this outbreak of passion. But the next, ‘Don’t cry, Searle,’ I heard him say. ‘Remember the waiter. I’ve grown Englishman enough for that. For heaven’s sake, don’t let us have any feelings. Feelings will do nothing for you here. It’s best to come to the point. Tell me in three words what you expect of me.’
I heard another movement, as if poor Searle had collapsed in his chair. ‘Upon my word, Simmons, you are inconceivable. You got my letter?’
‘Yes, I got your letter. I was never sorrier to get anything in my life.’
At this declaration Mr Searle rattled out an oath, which it was well perhaps that I but partially heard. ‘John Simmons,’ he cried, ‘what devil possesses you? Are you going to betray me here in a foreign land, to turn out a false friend, a heartless rogue?’
‘Go on, sir,’ said sturdy Simmons. ‘Pour it all out. I’ll wait till you have done. – Your beer is very bad,’ to the waiter. ‘I’ll have some more.’
‘For God’s sake, explain yourself!’ cried Searle.
There was a pause, at the end of which I heard Mr Simmons set down his empty tankard with emphasis. ‘You poor morbid man,’ he resumed, ‘I don’t want to say anything to make you feel sore. I pity you. But you must allow me to say that you have acted like a blasted fool!’
Mr Searle seemed to have made an effort to compose himself. ‘Be so good as to tell me what was the meaning of your letter.’
‘I was a fool, myself, to have written that letter. It came of my infernal meddlesome benevolence. I had much better have let you alone. To tell you the plain truth, I never was so horrified in my life as when I found that on the strength of that letter you had come out here to seek your fortune.’
‘What did you expect me to do?’
‘I expected you to wait patiently till I had made further inquiries and had written to you again.’
‘You have made further inquiries now?’
‘Inquiries! I have made assaults.’
‘And you find I have no claim?’
‘No claim to call a claim. It looked at first as if you had a very pretty one. I confess the idea took hold of me –’
‘Thanks to your preposterous benevolence!’
Mr Simmons seemed for a moment to experience a difficulty in swallowing. ‘Your beer is undrinkable,’ he said to the waiter. ‘I’ll have some brandy. – Come, Searle,’ he resumed, ‘don’t challenge me to the arts of debate, or I’ll settle right down on you. Benevolence, as I say, was part of it. The reflection that if I put the thing through it would be a very pretty feather in my cap and a very pretty penny in my purse was part of it. And the satisfaction of seeing a poor nobody of a Yankee walk right into an old English estate was a good deal of it. Upon my word, Searle, when I think of it, I wish with all my heart that, erratic genius as you are, you had a claim, for the very beauty of it! I should hardly care what you did with the confounded property when you got it. I could leave you alone to turn it into Yankee notions, – into ducks and drakes, as they call it here. I should like to see you stamping over it and kicking up its sacred dust in their very faces!’
‘You don’t know me, Simmons!’ said Searle, for all response to this untender benediction.
‘I should be very glad to think I didn’t, Searle. I have been to no small amount of trouble for you. I have consulted by main force three first-rate men. They smile at the idea. I should like you to see the smile negative of one of these London big-wigs. If your title were written in letters of fire, it wouldn’t stand being sniffed at in that fashion. I sounded in person the solicitor of your distinguished kinsman. He seemed to have been in a manner forewarned and forearmed. It seems your brother George, some twenty years ago, put forth a feeler. So you are not to have the glory of even frightening them.’
‘I never frightened any one,’ said Searle, ‘I shouldn’t begin at this time of day. I should approach the subject like a gentleman.’
‘Well, if you want very much to do something like a gentleman, you’ve got a capital chance. Take your disappointment like a gentleman.’
I had finished my dinner, and I had become keenly interested in poor Mr Searle’s mysterious claim; so interested that it was vexatious to hear his emotions reflected in his voice without noting them in his face. I left my place, went over to the fire, took up the evening paper, and established a post of observation behind it.
Lawyer Simmons was in the act of choosing a soft chop from the dish, – an act accompanied by a great deal of prying and poking with his own personal fork. My disillusioned compatriot had pushed away his plate; he sat with his elbows on the table, gloomily nursing his head with his hands. His companion stared at him a moment, I fancied half tenderly; I am not sure whether it was pity or whether it was beer and brandy. ‘I say, Searle,’ – and for my benefit, I think, taking me for an impressible native, he attuned his voice to something of a pompous pitch, – ‘in this country it is the inestimable privilege of a loyal citizen, under whatsoever stress of pleasure or of pain, to make a point of eating his dinner.’
Searle disgustedly gave his plate another push. ‘Anything may happen, now!’ he said. ‘I don’t care a straw.’
‘You ought to care. Have another chop, and you will care. Have some brandy. Take my advice!’
Searle fro
m between his two hands looked at him. ‘I have had enough of your advice!’ he said.
‘A little more,’ said Simmons, mildly; ‘I sha’n’t trouble you again. What do you mean to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘O, come!’
‘Nothing, nothing, nothing!’
‘Nothing but starve. How about your money?’
‘Why do you ask? You don’t care.’
‘My dear fellow, if you want to make me offer you twenty pounds, you set most clumsily about it. You said just now I don’t know you. Possibly! There is, perhaps, no such enormous difference between knowing you and not knowing you. At any rate, you don’t know me. I expect you to go home.’
‘I won’t go home! I have crossed the ocean for the last time.’
‘What is the matter? Are you afraid?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid! “I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word!” ’
‘You’re more afraid to go than to stay?’
‘I sha’n’t stay. I shall die.’
‘O, are you sure of that?’
‘One can always be sure of that.’
Mr Simmons started and stared: his mild cynic had turned grim stoic. ‘Upon my soul,’ he said, ‘one would think that Death had named the day!’
‘We have named it, between us.’
This was too much even for Mr Simmons’s easy morality. ‘I say, Searle,’ he cried, ‘I’m not more of a stickler than the next man, but if you are going to blaspheme, I shall wash my hands of you. If you’ll consent to return home with me by the steamer of the 23rd, I’ll pay your passage down. More than that, I’ll pay your wine bill.’
Searle meditated. ‘I believe I never willed anything in my life,’ he said; ‘but I feel sure that I have willed this, that I stay here till I take my leave for a newer world than that poor old New World of ours. It’s an odd feeling, – I rather like it! What should I do at home?’
‘You said just now you were homesick.’
‘So I was – for a morning. But haven’t I been all my life long sick for Europe? And now that I’ve got it, am I to cast it off again? I’m much obliged to you for your offer. I have enough for the present. I have about my person some forty pounds’ worth of British gold and the same amount, say, of Yankee vitality. They’ll last me out together! After they are gone, I shall lay my head in some English churchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an English yew.’
I had thus far distinctly followed the dialogue; but at this point the landlord came in, and, begging my pardon, would suggest that No. 12, a most superior apartment, having now been vacated, it would give him pleasure, etc. The fate of No. 12 having been decreed, I transferred my attention back to my friends. They had risen to their feet; Simmons had put on his overcoat; he stood polishing his rusty black hat with his napkin. ‘Do you mean to go down to the place?’ he asked.
‘Possibly. I have dreamed of it so much I should like to see it.’
‘Shall you call on Mr Searle?’
‘Heaven forbid!’
‘Something has just occurred to me,’ Simmons pursued, with an unhandsome grin, as if Mephistopheles were playing at malice. ‘There’s a Miss Searle, the old man’s sister.’
‘Well?’ said the other, frowning.
‘Well, sir! suppose, instead of dying, you should marry!’
Mr Searle frowned in silence. Simmons gave him a tap on the stomach. ‘Line those ribs a bit first!’ The poor gentleman blushed crimson and his eyes filled with tears. ‘You are a coarse brute,’ he said. The scene was pathetic. I was prevented from seeing the conclusion of it by the reappearance of the landlord, on behalf of No. 12. He insisted on my coming to inspect the premises. Half an hour afterwards I was rattling along in a Hansom toward Covent Garden, where I heard Madame Bosio in the Barber of Seville. On my return from the opera I went into the coffee-room, vaguely fancying I might catch another glimpse of Mr Searle. I was not disappointed. I found him sitting before the fire, with his head fallen on his breast, sunk in the merciful stupor of tardy sleep. I looked at him for some moments. His face, pale and refined in the dim lamplight, impressed me with an air of helpless, ineffective delicacy. They say fortune comes while we sleep. Standing there I felt benignant enough to be poor Mr Searle’s fortune. As I walked away, I perceived amid the shadows of one of the little dining-stalls which I have described the lonely ever-dressed waiter, dozing attendance on my friend, and shifting aside for a while the burden of waiterhood. I lingered a moment beside the old inn-yard, in which, upon a time, the coaches and postchaises found space to turn and disgorge. Above the upward vista of the enclosing galleries, from which lounging lodgers and crumpled chambermaids and all the picturesque domesticity of an antique tavern must have watched the great entrances and exits of the posting and coaching drama, I descried the distant lurid twinkle of the London constellations. At the foot of the stairs, enshrined in the glittering niche of her well-appointed bar, the landlady sat napping like some solemn idol amid votive brass and plate.
The next morning, not finding the innocent object of my benevolent curiosity in the coffee-room, I learned from the waiter that he had ordered breakfast in bed. Into this asylum I was not yet prepared to pursue him. I spent the morning running about London, chiefly on business, but snatching by the way many a vivid impression of its huge metropolitan interest. Beneath the sullen black and grey of that hoary civic world the hungry American mind detects the magic colours of association. As the afternoon approached, however, my impatient heart began to babble of green fields; it was of English meadows I had chiefly dreamed. Thinking over the suburban lions, I fixed upon Hampton Court. The day was the more propitious that it yielded just that dim, subaqueous light which sleeps so fondly upon the English landscape.
At the end of an hour I found myself wandering through the multitudinous rooms of the great palace. They follow each other in infinite succession, with no great variety of interest or aspect, but with a sort of regal monotony, and a fine specific flavour. They are most exactly of their various times. You pass from great painted and panelled bedchambers and closets, anterooms, drawing-rooms, council-rooms, through king’s suite, queen’s suite, and prince’s suite, until you feel as if you were strolling through the appointed hours and stages of some decorous monarchical day. On one side are the old monumental upholsteries, the vast cold tarnished beds and canopies, with the circumference of disapparelled royalty attested by a gilded balustrade, and the great carved and yawning chimney-places, where dukes-in-waiting may have warmed their weary heels; on the other side, in deep recesses, the immense windows, the framed and draped embrasures where the sovereign whispered and favourites smiled, looking out on the terraced gardens and the misty glades of Bushey Park. The dark walls are gravely decorated by innumerable dark portraits of persons attached to Court and State, more especially with various members of the Dutch-looking entourage of William of Orange, the restorer of the palace; with good store, too, of the lily-bosomed models of Lely and Kneller. The whole tone of this long-drawn interior is immensely sombre, prosaic, and sad. The tints of all things have sunk to a cold and melancholy brown, and the great palatial void seems to hold no stouter tenantry than a sort of pungent odorous chill. I seemed to be the only visitor. I held ungrudged communion with the formal genius of the spot. Poor mortalised kings! ineffective lure of royalty! This, or something like it, was the murmured burden of my musings. They were interrupted suddenly by my coming upon a person standing in devout contemplation before a simpering countess of Sir Peter Lely’s creation. On hearing my footstep this person turned his head, and I recognised my fellow-lodger at the Red-Lion. I was apparently recognised as well; I detected an air of overture in his glance. In a few moments, seeing I had a catalogue, he asked the name of the portrait. On my ascertaining it, he inquired, timidly, how I liked the lady.
‘Well,’ said I, not quite timidly enough, perhaps, ‘I confess she seems to me rather a light piece of work.’
He remained silent, and a little
abashed, I think. As we strolled away he stole a sidelong glance of farewell at his leering shepherdess. To speak with him face to face was to feel keenly that he was weak and interesting. We talked of our inn, of London, of the palace; he uttered his mind freely, but he seemed to struggle with a weight of depression. It was a simple mind enough, with no great culture, I fancied, but with a certain appealing native grace. I foresaw that I should find him a true American, full of that perplexing interfusion of refinement and crudity which marks the American mind. His perceptions, I divined, were delicate; his opinions, possibly, gross. On my telling him that I too was an American, he stopped short and seemed overcome with emotion: then silently passing his arm into my own, he suffered me to lead him through the rest of the palace and down into the gardens. A vast gravelled platform stretches itself before the basement of the palace, taking the afternoon sun. A portion of the edifice is reserved as a series of private apartments, occupied by state pensioners, reduced gentlewomen in receipt of the Queen’s bounty, and other deserving persons. Many of these apartments have their little private gardens; and here and there, between their verdure-coated walls, you catch a glimpse of these dim horticultural closets. My companion and I took many a turn up and down this spacious level, looking down on the antique geometry of the lower garden and on the stoutly woven tapestry of vine and blossom which muffles the foundations of the huge red pile. I thought of the various images of old-world gentility, which, early and late, must have strolled upon that ancient terrace and felt the great protecting quietude of the solemn palace. We looked through an antique grating into one of the little private gardens, and saw an old lady with a black mantilla on her head, a decanter of water in one hand and a crutch in the other, come forth, followed by three little dogs and a cat, to sprinkle a plant. She had an opinion, I fancied, on the virtue of Queen Caroline. There are few sensations so exquisite in life as to stand with a companion in a foreign land and inhale to the depths of your consciousness the alien savour of the air and the tonic picturesqueness of things. This common relish of local colour makes comrades of strangers. My companion seemed oppressed with vague amazement. He stared and lingered and scanned the scene with a gentle scowl. His enjoyment appeared to give him pain. I proposed, at last, that we should dine in the neighbourhood and take a late train to town. We made our way out of the gardens into the adjoining village, where we found an excellent inn. Mr Searle sat down to table with small apparent interest in the repast, but gradually warming to his work, he declared at the end of half an hour that for the first time in a month he felt an appetite.