"Thank you, sir - we are just off the Banks, thank you."
Lubly ran true to form. The British serving classes are ever like
that, whether met with at sea or on their native soil. They are
a great and a noble institution. Give an English servant a kind
word and he thanks you. Give him a harsh word and he still thanks
you. Ask a question of a London policeman - he tells you fully and
then he thanks you. Go into an English shop and buy something - the
clerk who serves you thanks you with enthusiasm. Go in and fail
to buy something - he still thanks you, but without the
enthusiasm.
One kind of Englishman says Thank you, sir; and one kind - the
Cockney who has been educated - says Thenks; but the majority brief
it into a short but expressive expletive and merely say: Kew. Kew
is the commonest word in the British Isles. Stroidinary runs it
a close second, but Kew comes first. You hear it everywhere.
Hence Kew Gardens; they are named for it.
All the types that travel on a big English-owned ship were on ours.
I take it that there is a requirement in the maritime regulations
to the effect that the set must be complete before a ship may put
to sea. To begin with, there was a member of a British legation
from somewhere going home on leave, for a holiday, or a funeral.
At least I heard it was a holiday, but I should have said he was
going home for the other occasion. He wore an Honorable attached
to the front of his name and carried several extra initials behind
in the rumble; and he was filled up with that true British reserve
which a certain sort of Britisher always develops while traveling
in foreign lands. He was upward of seven feet tall, as the crow
flies, and very thin and rigid.
Viewing him, you got the impression that his framework all ran
straight up and down, like the wires in a bird cage, with barely
enough perches extending across from side to side to keep him from
caving in and crushing the canaries to death. On second thought
I judge I had better make this comparison in the singular number
- there would not have been room in him for more than one canary.
Every morning for an hour, and again every afternoon for an hour,
he marched solemnly round and round the promenade deck, always
alone and always with his mournful gaze fixed on the far horizon.
As I said before, however, he stood very high in the air, and it
may have been he feared, if he ever did look down at his feet, he
should turn dizzy and be seized with an uncontrollable desire to
leap off and end all; so I am not blaming him for that.
He would walk his hour out to the sixtieth second of the sixtieth
minute and then he would sit in his steamer chair, as silent as a
glacier and as inaccessible as one. If it were afternoon he would
have his tea at five o'clock and then, with his soul still full
of cracked ice, he would go below and dress for dinner; but he
never spoke to anyone. His steamer chair was right-hand chair to
mine and often we practically touched elbows; but he did not see
me once.
I had a terrible thought. Suppose now, I said to myself - just
suppose that this ship were to sink and only we two were saved;
and suppose we were cast away on a desert island and spent years
and years there, never knowing each other's name and never mingling
together socially until the rescue ship came along - and not even
then unless there was some mutual acquaintance aboard her to
introduce us properly! It was indeed a frightful thought! It made
me shudder.
Among our company was a younger son going home after a tour of the
Colonies - Canada and Australia, and all that sort of bally rot.
I believe there is always at least one younger son on every
well-conducted English boat; the family keeps him on a remittance
and seems to feel easier in its mind when he is traveling. The
British statesman who said the sun never sets on British possessions
spoke the truth, but the reporters in committing his memorable
utterance to paper spelt the keyword wrong - undoubtedly he meant
the other kind - the younger kind.
This particular example of the species was in every way up to grade
and sample. A happy combination of open air, open pores and open
casegoods gave to his face the exact color of a slice of rare roast
beef; it also had the expression of one. With a dab of English
mustard in the lobe of one ear and a savory bit of watercress stuck
in his hair for a garnish, he could have passed anywhere for a
slice of cold roast beef.
He was reasonably exclusive too. Not until the day we landed did
he and the Honorable member of the legation learn - quite by chance
- that they were third cousins - or something of that sort - to one
another. And so, after the relationship had been thoroughly
established through the kindly offices of a third party, they
fraternized to the extent of riding up to London on the same
boat-train, merely using different compartments of different
carriages. The English aristocrat is a tolerably social animal
when traveling; but, at the same time, he does not carry his
sociability to an excess. He shows restraint.
Also, we had with us the elderly gentleman of impaired disposition,
who had crossed thirty times before and was now completing his
thirty-first trip, and getting madder and madder about it every
minute.
