A Cathedral Courtship

There were prayer-books and guide-books, a Bath bun, a bottle of soda-mint tablets, a church calendar, a bit of gray frizz that Aunt Celia pins into her cap when she is travelling in damp weather, a spectacle-case, a brandy-flask, and a bon-bon-box, which broke and scattered cloves and peppermint lozenges. (I hope he guessed Aunt Celia is a dyspeptic, and not intemperate!) All this was hopelessly vulgar, but I wouldn’t have minded anything if there had not been a Duchess novel. Of course he thought that it belonged to me. He couldn’t have known Aunt Celia was carrying it for that accidental Mrs. Benedict, with whom she went to St. Cross Hospital.

After scooping the cloves out of the cracks in the stone flagging—and, of course, he needn’t have done this, unless he had an abnormal sense of humour—he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of ‘A Modern Circe,’ with a bow that wouldn’t have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after Aunt Celia and her verger.

* * * * *

Memoranda: The Winchester Cathedral has the longest nave. The inside is more superb than the outside. Izaak Walton and Jane Austen are buried here.

He

    Winchester, May 28,
    The White Swan.

As sure as my name is Jack Copley, I saw the prettiest girl in the world to-day—an American, too, or I am greatly mistaken. It was in the cathedral, where I have been sketching for several days. I was sitting at the end of a bench, at afternoon service, when two ladies entered by the side-door. The ancient maiden, evidently the head of the family, settled herself devoutly, and the young one stole off by herself to one of the old carved seats back of the choir. She was worse than pretty! I made a memorandum of her during service, as she sat under the dark carved-oak canopy, with this Latin inscription over her head:

Carlton cum

Dolby

Letania

IX Solidorum

Super Flumina

Confitebor tibi

Dūc probati

There ought to be a law against a woman’s making a picture of herself, unless she is willing to allow an artist to ‘fix her’ properly in his gallery of types.

A black-and-white sketch doesn’t give any definite idea of this charmer’s charms, but sometime I’ll fill it in—hair, sweet little hat, gown, and eyes, all in golden brown, a cape of tawny sable slipping off her arm, a knot of yellow primroses in her girdle, carved-oak background, and the afternoon sun coming through a stained-glass window. Great Jove! She had a most curious effect on me, that girl! I can’t explain it—very curious, altogether new, and rather pleasant. When one of the choir-boys sang ‘Oh for the wings of a dove!’ a tear rolled out of one of her lovely eyes and down her smooth brown cheek. I would have given a large portion of my modest monthly income for the felicity of wiping away that teardrop with one of my new handkerchiefs, marked with a tremendous ‘C’ by my pretty sister.

An hour or two later they appeared again—the dragon, who answers to the name of ‘Aunt Celia,’ and the ‘nut-brown mayde,’ who comes when she is called ‘Katharine.’ I was sketching a ruined arch. The dragon dropped her unmistakably Boston bag. I expected to see encyclopædias and Russian tracts fall from it, but was disappointed. The ‘nut-brown mayde’ (who has been trained in the way she should go) hastened to pick up the bag for fear that I, a stranger, should serve her by doing it. She was punished by turning it inside out, and I was rewarded by helping her gather together the articles, which were many and ill-assorted. My little romance received the first blow when I found that she reads the Duchess novels. I think, however, she has the grace to be ashamed of it, for she blushed scarlet when I handed her ‘A Modern Circe.’ I could have told her that such a blush on such a cheek would almost atone for not being able to read at all, but I refrained. It is vexatious all the same, for, though one doesn’t expect to find perfection here below, the ‘nut-brown mayde,’ externally considered, comes perilously near it. After she had gone I discovered a slip of paper which had blown under some stones. It proved to be an itinerary. I didn’t return it. I thought they must know which way they were going; and as this was precisely what I wanted to know, I kept it for my own use. She is doing the cathedral towns. I am doing the cathedral towns. Happy thought! Why shouldn’t we do them together—we and Aunt Celia? A fellow whose mother and sister are in America must have some feminine society!

I had only ten minutes to catch my train for Salisbury, but I concluded to run in and glance at the registers of the principal hotels. Found my ‘nut-brown mayde’ at once in the guest-book of the Royal Garden Inn: ‘Miss Celia Van Tyck, Beverly, Mass., U.S.A. Miss Katharine Schuyler, New York, U.S.A.’ I concluded to stay over another train, ordered dinner, and took an altogether indefensible and inconsistent pleasure in writing ‘John Quincy Copley, Cambridge, Mass.,’ directly beneath the charmer’s autograph.

* * * * *

She

    Salisbury, June 1,
    The White Hart Inn.

We left Winchester on the 1.16 train yesterday, and here we are within sight of another superb and ancient pile of stone. I wanted so much to stop at the Highflyer Inn in Lark Lane, but Aunt Celia said that if we were destitute of personal dignity, we at least owed something to our ancestors. Aunt Celia has a temperamental distrust of joy as something dangerous and ensnaring. She doesn’t realize what fun it would be to date one’s letters from the Highflyer Inn, Lark Lane, even if one were obliged to consort with poachers and trippers in order to do it.

Better times are coming, however, for she was in a melting mood last evening, and promised me that wherever I can find an inn with a picturesque and unusual name, she will stop there, provided it is clean and respectable, if I on my part will agree to make regular notes of travel in my Russia-leather book. She says that ever since she was my age she has asked herself nightly the questions Pythagoras was in the habit of using as a nightcap: