Part 11

"She's a grande dame," I said. "Now I know why your girls hold themselves so well. They're trying to live up to the Ideal American Woman. But she isn't as big as I thought she would be. Nothing ever is as big as you think it's going to be, especially when Americans have told you about it; for one has been brought up to believe that their big things are bigger than anybody else's in the whole world."

"So they are," said Mr. Doremus, "only where all the things are big, you don't notice them, for the high grass. And over there's some of the grass."

He pointed, and I saw a great number of enormous objects, shaped like chimneys, and apparently about a mile high, scattered aimlessly along the horizon, which was a brilliant, limpid blue.

"What are they?" I asked. "Great, strange, factories of some sort?"

"No. Houses where pretty women live, and offices where men make the money for them to live on."

"You must be joking. Women would be afraid to perch up there in the sky. Besides, it would take too long to go up and down."

"Nothing takes long in America. And it comes natural to our women to perch up high. Statues aren't the only things we buy pedestals for, this side of the porpoise-tank. You just wait and see."

"I don't need to wait to see that American men are nice to women," said I; "perhaps no nicer than Englishmen, really, only you seem to take a great deal more trouble. Fancy all the men at Mrs. Van der Windt's table drawing lots every night for the right to sit by her and the two Miss Eastmans; I don't believe it would have occurred to Englishmen. The ones who really wanted to sit there, would have tried to get to their places first, that's all. I do think it was pretty of you."

"Wasn't it? especially supposing none of us particularly wanted--but never mind. Talking of pretty things, here are the docks."

They were big enough to satisfy even my expectations, and I wished that I'd insisted on being taken by someone long ago, to visit the London docks, so that I might know whether ours were better or worse. One never thinks of going to see things at home; but I began to suspect that I might some day be stabbed with jealous pangs and need to be stuffed with a lot of facts about England--though until I knew Americans I've been in the habit of thinking facts the least interesting things in the world. They seemed like chairs to sit on or floors to walk on without noticing what you were doing; but I suppose it might be awkward without chairs and floors.

Soon we were near enough to New York to see the tremendous chimney things clearly, and they sharpened the impression that I was sailing straight into a dream. There could be no such things in the real world; they wouldn't be possible. But the dream felt very interesting and intense all of a sudden, and I didn't want to wake up from it just then, in spite of Mrs. Ess Kay.

The tall shapes were bright and vivid now, as giant hollyhocks growing in irregular rows. Still, they did not look one bit like houses, or offices where people could work without going stark, staring mad. I got a queer idea in my head that the houses themselves must be buried deep underground, like bulbs, with only their towers sticking up.

The next thing that happened in the dream, was slowing majestically into our own dock, and that was wonderful. The whole place was alive with faces, mostly pretty girls' faces, under fascinating hats, gay as flowers in a flower-show; parterre above parterre of brilliant blossoms; and they had all been grown in honour of us.

There was a wild waving of handkerchiefs on the ship, and a frantic fluttering of white among the flowers, as if a flock of butterflies had been frightened up into the air. Still we were a long time getting in, and I grew quite impatient; but finally Louise, who had attended to my packing, took charge of my handbag, my sunshade and coat, with her mistress's and Miss Woodburn's things. The moment had come to bid the ship good-bye.

"Now," said Mrs. Ess Kay, slipping her arm into mine, "I wonder, dear child, if you would mind being left alone to deal with the custom-house people? You'd stand under your own letter 'B,' of course."

"Oh, Katherine, do you think even Letter B, which sounds so like a warning to young men, a proper chaperon for a Duchess's daughter?" exclaimed Sally Woodburn.

I laughed, but Mrs. Ess Kay didn't. She evidently considers things connected with the American Custom House no fit subject for frivolity. She went on, without answering; "I'm under 'K,' and Sally 'W.' We'll both have all we can attend to wrestling with our own Fiends, and Louise will be just as busy. But you're a British subject, on a short visit to this country, and they won't be as diabolical to you, dear. I did all the swearing necessary for you in the saloon, with my own, when the tiresome man came on board, and there's really nothing left for you to bother with on the dock, except to open your boxes and say you have nothing to declare."

I was glad that since profanity had been called for in the saloon, owing to the tiresomeness of a man, it had been Mrs. Ess Kay who was obliged to give vent to it, not I; but I felt rather defrauded that I couldn't have heard, and I wondered if she had gone so far as to mention "damn." All I said out loud, however, was that I was sure I could manage very well in the docks, and Mrs. Ess Kay appeared much relieved. "That's perfectly sweet of you, Betty," she said, launching a daggery glance at poor, inoffensive Sally, for some reason which I couldn't understand. "I hope you won't think I'm horrid not to have asked you to label your baggage 'K,' so it could go with mine. It's better not, for everyone concerned; I'll explain afterwards why; and Louise shall take you to 'B.'"

Louise did take me to "B," which they had thoughtfully printed very large and black on a wooden wall of the dock, in a row with all the other letters of the alphabet. A good many people from the ship were collecting beneath theirs, as if they were animals getting ready to join the procession for the ark, under the heading of Cat or Elephant, as the case might be; and they all seemed worried and apprehensive, as you do at the dentist's, even when you try to distract your mind by looking at the pictures in Punch.

Louise put my bag on the wooden floor, and folded my coat on it. "Miladi will do well to sit down," said she. "It may be that the baggage do not come immediatement." With this she bustled away to the Louise rabbit warren, wherever it was, leaving me to the tender mercies of fellow "B's," who began to swarm round me and buzz distractedly.

I subsided on the bag, which was very like sitting on the floor; but it was stifling down there among people's feet; besides, mine soon got "pins and needles"; so presently I popped up like a Jack out of his Box, and almost knocked off a man's nose with the crown of my hat.

I said "I beg your pardon!" though what the nose was doing so near the top of my head I couldn't conceive, until its owner (fumbling with one hand for his handkerchief to staunch a drop of blood, and snatching off his straw hat with the other, already full of notebooks and things) blurted out abruptly: "Are you Lady Bulkeley?"

I was surprised!

"No," said I. "I'm Lady Betty Bulkeley."

"That's all right," said the nose man, as if he forgave me for being myself. "I didn't know but you'd want to be called Lady Bulkeley by strangers."

"It isn't my name," I said, more puzzled than ever. I would have tried to be dignified, as he was a perky-looking young man in an alpaca coat; but when you have just made a person's nose bleed with your hat, it would seem unfeeling to be too frigid,--though I believe an application of ice is supposed to be beneficial.

"Shall I call you Lady Betty then?" asked the man, patting his nose with his handkerchief, which luckily for my nerves had already a pattern of pink dots on it.

"I don't see why you should call me anything," said I.