The Affair at the Inn

When my poor father died five years ago, the doctor told my mother that she must have an entire change. We left America at once, and we have been travelling ever since, always in the British Isles, as the sound of foreign languages makes mamma more nervous. As a matter of fact, the doctor did not advise eternal change, but that is the interpretation mamma has placed upon his command, and so we are for ever moving on, like What's-his-name in Bleak House. It is not so extraordinary, then, that we are in the Devonshire moorlands, because one cannot travel incessantly for four years in the British Isles without being everywhere, in course of time. That is what I said to a disagreeable, frumpy Englishwoman in the railway carriage yesterday.

'I have no fault to find with Great Britain,' I said, 'except that it is so circumscribed! I have outgrown my first feeling, which was a fear of falling off the edge; but I still have a sensation of being cabined, cribbed, confined.'

She remarked that she had always preferred a small, perfectly finished, and well-managed estate to a large, rank, wild, and overgrown one, and I am bound to say that I think the retort was a good one. It must have been, for it silenced me.

We have done Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and having begun at the top of the map, have gone as far as Devon in England. We have been travelling by counties during the last year, because it seemed tidier and more thorough and businesslike; less confusing too, for the places look so alike after a while that I can never remember where we have been without looking in my diary. I don't know what will come after England, – perhaps Australia and New Zealand. I suppose they speak English there, of a sort.

If complete ignorance of a place, combined with great power of appreciation when one is introduced to it, – if these constitute a favourable mental attitude, then I have achieved it. That Devonshire produces Lanes, Dumplings, Cider, Monoliths, Clouted Cream, and Moors I know, but all else in the way of knowledge or experience is to be the captive of my bow and spear.

It is one of the accidents of travel that one can never explain, our being here on this desolate moor, caged, with half a dozen strange people, in a little inn at the world's end.

In the hotel at Exeter mamma met in the drawing-room a certain Mrs. MacGill, who like herself was just recovering from the influenza. Our paths have crossed before; I hope they'll not do so too often. Huddled in their shawls, and seated as near to the chilling hotel fire as was possible, they discussed their symptoms, while I read Lorna Doone. Mrs. MacGill slept ill at night and found a glass of milk-arrowroot with a teaspoon of brandy and a Bath Oliver biscuit a panacea; mamma would not allow that any one could sleep worse than she, but recommended a peppermint lozenge, as being simple, convenient, and efficacious. Mrs. MacGill had a slight cough, so had mamma; Mrs. MacGill's chest was naturally weak, so was mamma's. Startlingly similar as were the paths by which they were travelling to the grave, they both looked in average health, mamma being only prettily delicate and Mrs. MacGill being fat and dumpy, with cap ribbons and shoulder capes and bugles and brooches that bespoke at least a languid interest in life. The nice English girl who was Mrs. MacGill's companion in the railway train, sat in the background knitting and reading, – the kind of girl who ought to look young and doesn't, because her youth has been feeding somebody's selfish old age. I could see her quiet history written all over her face, – her aged father, vicar of some remote parish; her weary mother, harassed with the cares of a large family; and the dull little vicarage from whose windows she had taken her narrow peeps at life. We exchanged glances at some of Mrs. MacGill's reminiscences, and I was grateful to see that she has a sense of humour. That will help her considerably if she is a paid companion, as I judge she is; one would hardly travel with Mrs. MacGill for pleasure. This lady at length crowded mamma to the wall and began on the details of an attack of brain fever from which she had suffered at the Bridge of Allan thirty years ago, and I left the room to seek a breath of fresh air.

There is never anything amusing going on in an English hotel. When I remember the life one lives during a week at the Waldorf-Astoria or the Holland House in New York, it fairly makes me yearn with homesickness. It goes like this with a girl whose friends are all anxious to make the time pass merrily.

Monday noon.– Luncheon at the University Club with H. L. and mamma.

Monday afternoon.– Drive with G. P. in a hansom. Tea at Maillard's. Violets from A. B., American Beauty roses from C. D. waiting in my room. Dinner and the play arranged for me by E. F.

Tuesday.– One love-letter and one proposal by the morning mail; the proposal from a Harvard Freshman who wishes me to wait until he finishes his course. No one but a Freshman would ever have thought of that! G. H. from Chicago and B. C. from Richmond arrive early and join us at breakfast. B. C. thinks G. H. might have remained at home to good advantage. G. H. wonders why B. C. couldn't have stayed where he was less in the way. Luncheon party given by G. H. at one. Dinner by B. C. at seven.

Wednesday.– Last fitting for three lovely dresses.

Thursday.– Wear them all. The result of one of them attention with intention from the fastidious A. B.

And so on. It would doubtless spoil one in time, but I have only had two weeks of it, all put together.

The hall of the hotel at Exeter was like all other English hotel halls; so damp, dismal, dull, and dreary, that it is a wonder English travellers are not all sleeping in suicides' graves. Were my eyes deceiving me or was there a motor at the door, and still more wonderful, was there a young, good-looking man directly in my path, – a healthy young man with no symptoms, a well-to-do young man with a perfectly appointed motor, a well-bred, presentable young man with an air of the world about him? How my heart, starving for amusement, rushed out to him after these last weary months of nursing at Leamington! I didn't want to marry him, of course, but I wanted to talk to him, to ride in his motor, to have him, in short, for a masculine safety valve. He showed no symptom of requiring me for any purpose whatever. That is the trouble with the men over here, – so oblivious, so rigid, so frigid, so conventional; so afraid of being chloroformed and led unconscious to the altar! He was smoking a pipe, and he looked at me in a vague sort of way. I confess I don't like to be looked at vaguely, and I am not accustomed to it. He couldn't know that, of course, but I should like to teach him if only I had the chance and time. I don't suppose he knew that I was wearing a Redfern gown and hat, but the consciousness supported me in the casual encounter. Naturally he could not seek an introduction to me in a hotel hall, nor could we speak to each other without one.

His chauffeur went up to him presently, touched his hat, and I thought he said, 'Quite ready, Sir – Something'; I didn't catch the name.

Well, he bowled off, and I comforted myself with the thought that mamma and I were at least on our way to pastures new, if they were only Dawlish or Torquay pastures; or perhaps something bracing in the shape of Dartmoor forests, if mamma listens to Mrs. MacGill.

The owner of the motor appeared again at our dinner-table, a long affair set in the middle of the room, all the small tables being occupied by uninteresting nobodies who ate and drank as much, and took up as much room, as if they had been somebodies.

It is needless to say that the young Britisher did not, like the busy bee, improve the shining hour – that sort of bee doesn't know honey when he sees it. He didn't even pass me the salt, which in a Christian country is not considered a compromising attention. I think that too many of Great Britain's young men must have been killed off in South Africa, and those remaining have risen to an altogether fictitious value. I suppose this Sir Somebody thinks my eyes are fixed on his coronet, if he has one rusting in his upper drawer awaiting its supreme moment of presentation. He is mistaken; I am thinking only of his motor. Heigh ho! If marriage as an institution could be retained, and all thought of marriage banished from the minds of the young of both sexes, how delightful society could be made for all parties! I can see that such a state of things would be quite impossible, but it presents many advantages.

MRS. MACGILL

I have made out my journey from Tunbridge wells in safety, although there has been a breakdown upon the Scotch Express, which is a cause of thankfulness. There were two American women in the same carriage part of the time. The mother was, like myself, an invalid, and the daughter I suppose would be considered pretty. She was not exactly painted, but must have done something to her skin, I think, probably prejudicial like the advertisements; it was really waxen, and her hair decidedly dark – and such a veil! It reminded me of the expression about 'power on the head' in Corinthians – not that she seemed to require it, for she rang no less than eight times for the guard, each time about some different whimsey. The boy only grinned, yet he was quite rude to me when I asked him, only for the second time, where we changed carriages next. Cecilia spoke a good deal to the girl, who made her laugh constantly, in spite of her neuralgia, which was very inconsistent and provoking to me, as she had not uttered a word for hours after we left Tunbridge Wells. The mother seemed a very delicate, sensible person, suffering from exactly the same form of influenza as myself – indeed many of our symptoms are identical. They happened to be going to this hotel, too, so we met again in the afternoon. I had a bad night. Exeter is small, but the Cathedral chimes are very tiresome; they kept me awake as if on purpose; Cecilia slept, as neuralgic people seem often able to do.

Somehow I do not fancy the idea of Dartmoor at all. It may brace Cecilia, but it will be too cold for me, I'm sure. I must send for my black velvet mantle – the one with the beads at the neck, as it will be the very thing for the moor. At present I have nothing quite suitable to wear. There is a great deal of skirt about Americans, I see. Even the mother rustled; all silk, yet the dresses on the top were plain enough. As I had nothing to read in the train, I bought a sixpenny copy of a book called The Forest Lovers, but could not get on with it at all, and what I did make out seemed scarcely proper, so I took up a novel which Mrs. Pomeroy (the American) lent me, by a man with a curious Scriptural name – something like Phillpotts. It was entirely about Dartmoor, and gave a most alarming account of the scenery and inhabitants. I'm sure I hope we shall be safe at Grey Tor Inn. Some of the wilder parts must be quite dangerous – storms – wild cattle roaming about, and Tors everywhere.

MRS. MACGILL

I wish I had brought winter flannels with me. It is all very well to call it the middle of May on Dartmoor, but it is as cold as the middle of winter in Aberdeen. There may be something odd about the red soil that accounts for flowers coming out in spite of it, for certainly there are primroses and violets on the banks, a good many, – very like flowers in a hat.

We met Miss Pomeroy, the American girl, in the lobby of the hotel. She said that her mother was resting in the drawing-room. Like me, she seems to suffer from shivering fits. 'I can't imagine,' I said, 'why any doctor should have ordered me to such a place as this to recover from influenza, which is just another form of cold.' The windows look straight out on Grey Tor. It is, of course, as the guide-books say, 'a scene of great sublimity and grandeur,' but very dreary; it is not mountain, and not what we would call moor, either, in Scotland – just a crumpled country, with boulders here and there. Grey Tor is the highest point we can see – not very lonely, I am glad to say, for little black people are always walking up and down it, like flies on a confectioner's window, and there is a railing on the top.

There is a young man here, who, I was surprised to find, is a nephew of the uncle of my poor brother-in-law, Colonel Forsyth, who died in a moment at Agra. Sir William Maxwell Mackenzie used to be often at the Forsyths, before his death. This young man's name is Archibald, and he drives a motor. I sat next him at dinner, and we had quite a pleasant little chat about my poor brother-in-law's sudden death and funeral. Miss Pomeroy ate everything on the table and talked a great deal. Cecilia said she wasn't able to come down to dinner, but, as usual, ate more than I could, upstairs. Like me, Mrs. Pomeroy finds the Devonshire cream very heavy. The daughter and Sir Archibald finished nearly the whole dish, although it was a large china basin.

SIR ARCHIBALD MAXWELL MACKENZIE, Bart

I must get away from these women at all costs. People may say what they like, but there's no question that nothing is more destructive to comfort than the society of ladies. A man cannot smoke, nor wear the clothes nor use the language that he wants to when they are present, – so what is the use of pretending, as some fellows do, that they add to the pleasantness of life? I certainly thought that by coming to these out-of-the-way parts in the motor, with no one but my servant, I should be free of the women; but no such luck! In the hotel at Exeter there was a batch of them, – some Americans, of course, particularly a girl, so deuced lively she could not be ignored. I dislike the whole girl-tribe with all my heart, and I dislike the kittenish ones most: they're a positive pest.

This is a rum sort of country, – a sort of inferior Scotland, I should call it; but if you were to say that to the artist chaps and writing fellows you meet about here, they would murder you. There is a lot of rot talked about everything in this world, but there's more and worse rot talked about scenery than anything else. For instance, people will yarn away about 'the blue Mediterranean,' but it's not a bit bluer than any other sea, – the English Channel, for example; any sea will be blue if the sky is blue. I suppose it earns somebody's living to talk and write all this sort of stuff, and get idiots to believe it. Here they are always jawing away about 'giant monoliths' and wonderful colossal stone-formations on the moor, till you really think there's something rather fine to be seen. And what are the giant monoliths? Two or three ordinary sorts of stones set up on end on a mound! What rot!

This is a goodish hotel, and the roads so far have been all right for the motor; we have come along fairly well; Johnson can drive a bit now, and understands the machine.

The country was pretty decent for a while, before reaching this; plenty of trees, no good for timber, though, and there was a lot of that rotten holly – I'd have it all up if it grew on Kindarroch. And the gorse, too, was very bad. There was a fellow at Exeter – a sort of artist, I conclude, from the nonsense he talked – who said he was coming up here to see the gorse, – came every year, he said. To see the gorse! To see a lot of dirty weeds that every sensible man wants to root up and burn! O Lord!

This morning it was rather fine, and I was having a smoke after breakfast in the hall, when that American girl – the one I saw at Exeter – came down the staircase, singing at the top of her voice. I knew she was here, with a mother in the background; she had been fooling around the motor already, asking a lot of silly questions, and touching the handles and the wheels – a thing I can't bear – so we had made acquaintance in a kind of way. The artist at Exeter, I remember, asked me if I didn't think this girl remarkably pretty, and I told him I hadn't looked to see, which was perfectly true. But you can't help seeing a girl if she's standing plump in front of you. Of course these Americans dress well – no end of money to do it on. This one had a sort of Tam o' Shanter thing on her head, and a lot of dark hair came out under it, falling over her ears, and almost over her cheeks – untidy, I call it. She wore a grey dress, with a bit of scarlet near her neck, and a knot to match it under the brim of her cap. I can notice these things when I like. She has black eyes, and knows how to use them. I don't like dark women; if you must have a woman about, I prefer pink and white – it looks clean, at any rate. The name of these people is Pomeroy, Johnson told me; they appear to have got the hang of mine at Exeter; trust women for that sort of thing.

'Good morning, Sir Archibald,' said Miss Pomeroy now, as pat as you please. 'It's a mighty pretty morning, isn't it? Don't you long for a walk? I do! I'm going right up to that stone on the slope there. Won't you come along too?' A man can hardly refuse outright, I suppose, when a thing is put to him point blank like this, and we started together, I pretty glum, for I made up my mind I must give up my after-breakfast pipe, a thing which puts me out of temper for the day. However, Miss Pomeroy said she liked smoke, so there was a kind of mitigation in the boredom which I felt was before me.

Grey Tor, as the guide-books call it, is just above the hotel, a sort of knob of rock that is thought a lot of in these parts. (We make road metal of the same kind of thing in Scotland; I'd like to tell the chaps that who write all the drivel about Dartmoor.) There's an iron railing round the top of this Tor, to keep the tourists from falling off, though they'd be no loss if they did. Coach loads of them come every day, and sit on the top and eat sandwiches, and leave the paper about, along with orange and banana skins – same as they do at the Trossachs at home. There's a grassy track up to this blessed Tor, and Miss Pomeroy and I followed it; American women are no good at walking, and, in spite of her slight figure, she was puffing like a grampus in no time, and begging me to stop. We sat down on a rock, and soon she had breath enough to talk. The subject of names came up, I forget for what reason.

'I like your kind of name,' Miss Pomeroy was good enough to say. 'I call it downright sensible and clear, for it tells what you're called, and gives your background immediately, don't you see? Now, you couldn't tell what my Christian name is without asking – could you?'

'No, I couldn't,' I agreed, and was silent. I am no hand at small talk. She gave me rather a funny look out of her black eyes, but I took no notice. She seemed to want to laugh – I don't know why; there's nothing funny on Dartmoor that I can see. We got on to the Tor presently, and nothing would satisfy a woman, naturally, but climbing all over the beastly thing. She had to be helped up and down, of course. Her hands are very white and slim; they were not at all hot, I am glad to say, as she wore no gloves, and I had to clutch them so often. There was a very high wind up there, and I'm blessed if her hair didn't come down and blow about. It only made her laugh, but I considered it would be indecent to walk back to the hotel with a woman in such a dishevelled state.

'I will pick up the hairpins,' I said seriously, 'if you will – will do the rest.' She laughed and put up her arms to her head, but brought them down with a flop.

'I'm afraid my waist is too tight in the sleeves for me to do my hair up here; it'll have to wait till I get down to the hotel,' she said gaily. I suppose she meant that she tight-laced, though I couldn't see how her waist could be tight in the sleeves. I was quite determined she should not walk to the hotel in my company with her hair in that state.

'I will stick these in,' I said firmly, indicating the hairpins, of which I had picked up about a bushel, 'if you will do the rolling up.' It got done somehow, and I stuck in the pins. I never touched a woman's hair before; how beastly it must be to have all that on one's head – unhealthy, too. I dare say it accounts for the feebleness of women's brains. Miss Pomeroy's cheeks got pinker and pinker during this operation – a sort of rush of blood, I suppose; it is all right as long as it does not go to the nose. She is not a bad-looking girl, certainly.

We got back to the hotel without any further disagreeables.

CECILIA EVESHAM

If a policeman's 'lot is not a happy one,' neither is a companion's: I lay this down as an axiom. I have lived now for two years with Mrs. MacGill, and know her every frailty of character only too well. She has not a bad temper; but oh! she is a terrible, terrible bore! Not content with being stupid herself, she desires to make me stupid along with her, and has well-nigh succeeded, for life with her in furnished apartments at Tunbridge Wells would dull a more brilliant woman than I have ever been.

Mrs. MacGill has lately had the influenza; it came almost as a providential sending, for it meant change of air. We were ordered to Dartmoor, and to Dartmoor we have come. Now I have become interested in three new people; and that, after the life I have lived of late in Mrs. MacGill's sickroom, is like a draught of nectar to my tired fancy. We met these three persons for the first time in the train, and at the hotel at Exeter where we stopped for the night; or rather, I should say that we met two of them and sighted the third. The two were a mother and her daughter, Mrs. Pomeroy and Virginia Pomeroy by name, and Americans by nation; the third person was a young man, Sir Archibald Maxwell Mackenzie, of Kindarroch, N.B. The Americans were extremely friendly, after the manner of their nation; the young man extremely unfriendly, after the manner of his. We found that the Pomeroys were coming on to this inn, but the Scotchman whizzed off in his motor car, giving us no hint of where he intended to go. I thought we had seen the last of him, but it was to be otherwise.

The morning after our arrival at the Grey Tor Inn Mrs. MacGill assumed a Shetland shawl, closed the window of the sitting-room, and sat down to do a bit of knitting. I sat by the window answering her little vapid remarks and looking out. As I sat thus, I heard a puffing noise and saw a scarlet motor steam up to the door of the inn. It was, of course, Sir Archibald.

'What is that noise, Cecilia?' asked Mrs. MacGill.

'It's a motor car,' I replied.

'Oh, how curious! I never can understand how they are worked,' said she.

I was beginning to try to explain some of the mysteries of motoring when the door of the sitting-room opened, and Miss Virginia Pomeroy came in. Her appearance was a delight to the eyes; tall and full grown, yet graceful, and dressed to perfection. She had none of that meek look that even the prettiest English girls are getting nowadays, as if they would say, 'I'm pretty, but I know I'm a drug in the market, though I can't help it!' No, no, Virginia Pomeroy came into the room with an air of possession, mastery, conquest, that no English girl can assume. She walked straight up to the window and threw it open. 'How perfectly lovely!' she exclaimed. 'Why, there's a motor; I must have a ride in it before very long.' She turned pleasantly to me as she spoke, and asked me if I didn't adore motoring.