CHAPTER IV
A DISILLUSIONMENT MADE GOOD
THE next morning the rising bell rang uncomfortably early, and everybody dressed and breakfasted in nervous haste, pursued by the fear of not being ready to get off the boat at the critical moment. And then there was nothing to do for an hour or so but “just wait and wait and wait,” as Babe complained dolefully. Babe was dreadfully impatient to “land in Europe,” and found it simply tantalizing to have to hang over the railing and look at the shores of Scotland, with the little gray town of Greenock hardly a stone’s throw off. Betty, on the other hand, was willing to wait because she thought Greenock so pretty, with its curving bay, edged by a stone promenade, and its gray stone houses, all very much alike, standing in a neat row encircling the shore.
“It’s a summer resort,” she announced, having consulted her Baedeker, which she had brought up on deck to see just where they were on the map of Scotland. “I wish we could stay there for awhile. It looks so quiet and quaint.”
“It doesn’t look very exciting to me,” objected Babe. “The idea of building summer cottages of stone!”
“They aren’t cottages,” explained Babbie, “they’re villas. Don’t you know how people in English novels always go and take lodgings in a villa by the sea?”
“Oh, do let’s do that,” cried Betty eagerly. “It sounds so perfectly English.”
“I’ve been looking over some Scotch addresses that Mary Brooks gave me,” said Madeline, “and I think we ought to go to Oban. She and Marion Lawrence both said it was the most fascinating spot they’d ever seen. It’s a seaside resort too, Betty, and the address they gave me is villa something or other, so it answers all your requirements.”
“Why, that’s the place mother’s doctor spoke about,” put in Babbie. “I told him I wanted to go to little out-of-the-way villages, and he mentioned that one. How do you get there, Madeline?”
“Why, by boat, I think Mary said. Let me take your Baedeker, Betty.”
“Oh, I’m so glad she can make out trains and things,” said Babbie, with a sigh of relief. “Mother can’t and I can’t, and it’s such a bother always to have to ask the hotel people.”
Presently Madeline announced that she knew just how to go to Oban by boat, and how to come back by train, and then Marie appeared with a message from Mrs. Hildreth that it was time for the girls to come down-stairs and get their hand-baggage together.
“But we’re not within ten miles of Glasgow yet,” objected Babe, proud of her newly-acquired knowledge of the geography of the region.
“Oh, we go there from Greenock on a boat-train,” Babbie told her. “And here comes a tender or a ferry, or whatever they call it, to take us ashore.”
So there was only time to say good-bye to the funny old Scotch stewardess, who had told them to “Come awa’” to their baths every morning, to the other Harding girls, and to the senator, who gave Betty his card and made her promise to let him know when she came to Washington; and then they were chug-chugging over to the Greenock station, where Madeline instructed the novices in the art of getting one’s trunks through the customs, while Babbie established her mother comfortably on the train. Madeline had quite given up finding her trunk and was congratulating herself on having put so many things into her “carry-all,” when she heard the senator protesting volubly that his name wasn’t Ayres and that he hadn’t brought a trunk anyway, whereupon she pounced joyously on her property and refused to let it out of her sight again until it had been put aboard the Glasgow train.
Betty and Babe found the train very amusing. Instead of long cars with rows of seats on either side of the aisle, there were funny little compartments, each holding eight or ten people, half of whom were obliged to ride backward whether they liked it or not. But as this train wasn’t crowded, Mrs. Hildreth’s party had a compartment all to themselves, and Betty and Babe were free to exclaim as much as they liked over the delightful queerness of European travel. Foxgloves and chimney-pots were the two objects of greatest interest en route. Babbie discovered the foxgloves growing in a pretty little grove close by the railroad track; the chimney-pots jostled one another on the roof of every cottage they passed, and as they came into Glasgow made such an impression on Babe that she could think of nothing else and almost fell out the window in her efforts to count the most imposing clusters.
“It’s queer,” she said, leaning back wearily as the train swept into a tunnel, “how nobody ever tells you about the things you notice most. Now I’ve talked to quantities of people who’ve traveled in Europe, and not one of them ever so much as mentioned chimney-pots.”
“Well, now you can make yourself famous for your originality by mentioning them to everybody,” said Babbie consolingly. “Here we are in Glasgow. Who’s going to see about the trunks?”
“Oh, let me,” volunteered Betty. “Somebody will have to show me how the first time, but I want to learn.”
So Madeline and Betty went off to find the trunks and have them sent to the station hotel, where Mrs. Hildreth had decided to stay while they were in Glasgow.
“It was too comical for anything,” Betty told Babe afterward. “They just dumped all the trunks and bags in a heap on the platform, and each person picked out whatever ones he pleased, and said they were his, and got a porter to carry them away for him. The English people must be very honest. Imagine doing that way in America!”
“We’ve been ‘booked’ for rooms at the hotel,” said Babe, laughing over the queer word. “And that’s luggage that you’re carrying,—not baggage any more, please remember. So come along and have lunch and then we can go out and see the sights.”
Mrs. Hildreth was quite willing that the girls should explore Glasgow without her, and spend the next day in Ayr, if they pleased.
“I don’t need to worry about you,” she told them, “for I’m sure you are all too sensible to do any foolish or foolhardy things. On the continent you may have to be a little more particular, but here and in England you can do about as you like.”
“I wish you could come too, Mrs. Hildreth,” said Betty, when they were ready to start.
Mrs. Hildreth smiled at her. “So do I, my dear. Just as soon as I’m a little rested, I shall be delighted to go with you whenever you’ll take me. I quite look forward to seeing Europe in such good company.”
“Poor little mother!” said Babbie, as they went off. “She never had a chance to do as she liked when she was a girl. She always had nurses and governesses trailing around after her, and then she went to a fashionable school in Boston, where you take walks two and two and never stir without a chaperon. After that she had to ‘come out’ in society, though she hated it as much as Bob does, and wanted to study art in Paris. But her mother thought that was all nonsense for a girl who had plenty of money. So when I wanted to go to college mother let me, and she often says she’s awfully glad that my best friends are girls who can go ahead and have a good time anywhere—not the helpless society kind.”
“I say, where are we aiming for?” Babe demanded suddenly.
“For the Glasgow Cathedral,” answered Madeline placidly. “This way, please.”
“This way please! Follow the man from Cook’s,” chanted Babbie mockingly. And after that Madeline was known as “the man from Cook’s,” because her easy fashion of finding her way around each place they visited, whether or not she had been there before, rivaled the omniscience of the great tourist agency.
So under Madeline’s capable guidance they visited the beautiful old cathedral and then took an electric tram, which is like an electric car with seats on the roof and a spiral stairway at the back leading up to them, out to the park and the art gallery. After Babe had looked at the one great treasure of the gallery, Whistler’s portrait of Thomas Carlyle, she announced that she had seen enough for one day, and would wait for the others outside.
“Let’s all say ‘enough,’” suggested Babbie, “and go for a tram-ride. I move that the man from Cook’s be censured for telling us that it wasn’t far enough out here to pay us for climbing to the top-story of the tram. Hereafter it is going to be a rule that we always ride on top.”
“I should say it was,” Babe seconded her eagerly. “My father owns a trolley line in Rochester, New York, and I’m going to write and tell him about this second-story idea. I’m sure people would flock from all over the country to ride up on the roof of the cars. Then he’d make piles of money and I could go abroad every summer, the way Babbie does.”
“Let’s just ride back to town on top,” suggested Betty, “and then go and have tea at the address Mary Brooks gave us. She said it was the nicest tea-shop they went to anywhere.”
This suited everybody, and they had all climbed up on the second story of the tram, and were settling themselves for the ride back, when Babbie gave an exclamation of delight. “Why, that’s John Morton standing on the steps of the art gallery. Oh, do let’s get off! I want to go back and talk to him. Why, I hadn’t the least idea he was in Europe!”
“Oh, don’t let’s get down again,” wailed Betty, who had stepped on her skirt-braid in climbing up, and was trying to repair damages with pins. “It’s such dreadfully hard work.”
“We can’t,” declared Madeline decisively. “We’ve paid our tuppences, and we couldn’t get them back.”
“I wish I could remember to say tuppence,” sighed Babe enviously. “Who is John Morton, Babbie? Are you sure it’s he on the steps?”
“Oh, I think so,” said Babbie eagerly. “I wish he’d turn around again, and I could be sure. He’s just the jolliest fellow, and I haven’t seen him for two years. Oh, dear, we’re starting!” as the tram gave a jerk and a lurch, and was off.
“Never mind, Babbie,” teased Babe. “Remember your dear Jack and the touching farewell that caused us all so much anxiety. We can’t be bothered with another of your suitors so soon.”
“Don’t apply the title of suitor to John, please,” laughed Babbie, leaning over for a last look at the figure on the steps. “He’s as much of a professed woman-hater as you are man-hater, but he makes an exception of me because I like to tramp and ride horseback. You’d like him, Babe. Madeline, do you know where to get off for this tea place?”
Madeline didn’t; and as the conductor didn’t see fit to come up, Babbie had to climb down, while the tram was going at full speed, to find out.
“I wouldn’t have missed this for anything,” said Madeline, when they were settled at one of the tables in Miss Jelliff’s Tea Rooms. The seats were carved oak settles, there were wonderful brass candlesticks in niches by the door, and on the tables were bunches of pale blue irises, to match the blue china. The bread was in what Babe called a “three-story revolving bread-case,” the toast in a quaint little English toast-rack, and the jam, pepper and mustard in fascinating pots, while the cups, though all blue, were of different shapes and patterns.
“Let me pour the tea,” begged Betty. “Which cup do you each choose?”
“I’m so glad we came,” said Babe. “First maxim for travelers: When you have had enough, stop. As I thought of that, I demand first choice of cups.”
“All right,” conceded Madeline. “Second maxim for travelers: When in doubt, drink afternoon tea. I demand second choice of cups.”
“I shall get third choice, anyway, shan’t I?” said Babbie. “So I needn’t weary my brains thinking of maxims.”
So Betty poured the tea, and Madeline told fortunes for all the party in the grounds, after which the smiling waitress appeared and asked them how much bread they had eaten.
“I hated to own up to five pieces,” sighed Babe, “not because I begrudged the beggarly pence they cost, but because I am ashamed of my appetite. Girls, there are more rooms up-stairs.”
“Let’s have breakfast here to-morrow before we go to Ayr,” suggested Betty. “Mrs. Hildreth won’t be up early enough to eat with us at the hotel, so we might just as well come here.”
“All right,” agreed Babbie. “Does the man from Cook’s know when trains leave for Ayr?”
He didn’t, and there was a rush to find out and purchase tickets before dinner-time.
“I’m crazy to see Ayr,” said Babe the next day. “I’m very fond of Burns’s poems, and I can just imagine the sleepy, old-fashioned little hamlet he was born in. His birthplace and the haunted kirk and the bridges across the Doon and all the other Burns relics are out in the country, about two miles from the station. Let’s buy some fruit and sweet chocolate and eat our lunch on the way. It will be a lovely walk, I’m sure.”
“Along English lanes, with tall hedgerows on each side,” added Babbie dreamily. “What a pity it’s too late for primroses.”
So great was their disappointment, when the train stopped at Ayr, to find themselves in a busy, prosperous, specklessly clean town, with a paved square just back of the station, where one was expected to sit and wait for the tram that ran out to the birthplace of Robert Burns once in ten minutes.
“There’s nothing to do but take their old tram, I suppose,” sighed Babe disconsolately. “It’s no fun walking along a car-track. Fancy this smug, bustling factory-town being Ayr! Is all Europe fixed up like this, Madeline?”
Madeline assured her that it wasn’t, and Babbie declared that if Oban was horrid and new they would go straight to London by the first train. “For there’s nothing horrid and new about London,” she declared.
When they arrived at the house where Burns was born, Babe objected again because the thatched roof and the whitewashed walls looked so new; but the churchyard was beautiful and the “Auld Brig” picturesque, and they were just beginning to enjoy themselves, when two heavily-loaded trams came up, and soon the place was swarming with talkative Americans, most of them from the same boat that the girls had crossed on.
“It’s a party,” explained Babe, when she had escaped from the embraces of a pretty young girl who had taken a fancy to her on shipboard. “That fat man with spectacles is the conductor. See them all gather around him while he reads selections from Tam O’Shanter. Goodness! Wouldn’t I hate to do Europe with a bunch like that!”
“Let’s go back,” said Babbie sadly. “Haven’t we seen everything?”
“And if we hurry we may get there in time for tea at Miss Jelliff’s,” added Betty. “There’s a room we haven’t been in yet, you know.”
Babbie was very quiet all the way back. As they took their places around the tea-table she announced proudly, “Third maxim for tourists: Avoid birthplaces. Now I can have first choice of cups.”
“Don’t you think we ought to have a maxim about avoiding conducted parties?” asked Babe, helping herself to bread.
“No,” said Madeline decisively, “I don’t. The kind of tourists that our maxims are intended for would know better than that without being told. Girls, do you want to know what I’m going to do next year?”
“Of course,” chorused her three friends eagerly.
“Start a fascinating tea-room like this in either Harding or New York.”
“But I thought you were going to live in Sorrento with your family.”
“Don’t all Bohemians have to be artists?”
“Then will you come back to America when we do?”
Madeline laughed at the avalanche of questions. “All good Bohemians are artists,” she explained, “but not necessarily in paint. You can be an artist in tea-rooms, too, you know. I suppose I shall try to write more or less, since my family seem to expect it of me, but until I’ve made my everlasting reputation as a short-story writer I should like to have a steady source of income, which is a thing that most Bohemians don’t have. Besides, think what fun it would be buying the china.”
“It would be great,” declared Babbie solemnly. “Don’t you want a partner, Madeline?”
Madeline laughed. “Wait until I’ve broken the news to my family, Babbie. As I only thought of it this afternoon, my ideas of what I want—except this darling china—are somewhat vague.”
“Well, anyhow,” persisted Babbie, “let’s have tea-rooms for one of the dominant interests of our trip. Don’t you remember in one of Roberta’s books it says that every traveler should have a dominant interest in order to get the most profit and pleasure out of his journey.”
“Well, what can the rest of us have?” asked Betty, turning her teacup upside down and twirling it around three times, ready for Madeline to tell her fortune in the mystic leaves.
“Oh, we’ll get them as we go along, I guess,” said Babbie easily. “I already know what mine won’t be. It won’t be birthplaces.”
Mrs. Hildreth was much amused at the story of the day’s disillusionments.
“It’s very hard nowadays to get away from other American tourists,” she warned the girls. “You mustn’t expect to have exclusive possession of all these beautiful old pilgrimage places.”
Babbie groaned. “Suppose that awful conducted party should go up to Oban on the boat with us.”
“If they should dare to do such a thing, we’ll wait over a day,” Babe threatened savagely.
But no such drastic measures proved necessary.
“In spite of what your mother said, I verily believe we’re the only Americans on board,” said Babe gleefully, as they swung out of Greenock harbor next morning. It was a glorious day, with fleecy white clouds scudding across a blue sky and the sun turning the sea to a sheet of sparkling silver. As they got further out into the Firth of Clyde the wind blew the clouds up over the sun and wrapped the craggy islands in purple mists. The scenery grew wilder and more magnificent every moment, and the girls more enthusiastic. Every time the boat stopped at a pretty watering-place or a lonely fishing village, Betty wished they could get off. “For I don’t see how it can be any nicer than this around Oban,” she said, “and what if it should be like Ayr?”
But all day the purple headlands grew bolder and more beautiful, and when at last Oban came into view it proved to be the crowning glory of the day’s trip. The crescent-shaped bay had a great rock to guard it on one side and an ivy-covered ruin on the other. Between them the little town clung to the hills above the sea, its villas almost hidden among the trees, and a huge stone amphitheatre, which the girls couldn’t even guess the meaning of, crowning the highest slope.
Madeline had written ahead to “Daisybank Villa,” so there was a boy to meet them at the landing, take charge of their bags, and show them the way up a steep, winding road, to the house—such a pretty house, with roses climbing around the door and real Scotch daisies starring the turf of the tiny lawn.
“Oh, see the ‘daisies pied,’” cried Babe in great excitement. “There’s more of Robert Burns in this yard than there was in the whole of that horrid old Ayr. Do let’s have dinner right off, so we can go and explore.”
But dinner was at noon in “Daisybank Villa,” so the pretty young housekeeper explained apologetically. What they had now was “tea,”—which meant bread and butter, even nicer, if possible, than Miss Jelliff’s; hot scones and bannocks—Babe demanded the names of the blushing little waitress—the nicest orange marmalade, fresh strawberries smothered in thick cream, and tea with a “cozy” to keep the pot warm.
But the real feature of the occasion was the bell which one rang by getting up from the table and pulling a heavy red tassel that hung behind a curtain by the door.
“Exactly as they always do on the stage,” said Babe in ecstasy, manfully resisting the temptation to summon the waitress again just for the fun of pulling the bell.
“And we’re living in lodgings in a villa by the sea,” added Betty. “I feel like the heroine of a Jane Austen novel, and I’m going to write to Nan this very evening. She’ll be so pleased to think that I’ve at last had a literary sensation.”
After tea Babe and Madeline went out to explore Oban, while Babbie helped Marie to make Mrs. Hildreth’s room comfortable, and Betty made a pretext of the letter to Nan to wait for her.
When the four girls met half an hour later on the promenade Madeline and Babe were laughing over a little adventure they had had.
“We were walking along that road off there,” Babe explained, “hurrying pretty fast, because we wanted to go into that lovely ivy-covered castle and be back here in time to meet you. And as we passed two awfully nice-looking youths, one said something to the other in Dutch, and Madeline, having spent a summer in Holland, understood it.”
“And translated it into the American idiom for Babe’s benefit,” Madeline took her up, “as ‘Get on to their stride,’—never thinking, of course, that the men also understood English. But they did, because the one who had said that in Dutch had the audacity to smile and remark to his friend in Italian that we were the first Americans he’d ever met who understood Dutch.”
“And we couldn’t get into the ruin,” Babe went on, “because the gate was locked, so we came back and sat down here by the water to watch the sunset. And by and by they came back too, and that time they were talking English—not for our benefit either, because they didn’t see us.”
“Well, were they Americans after all?” asked Babbie.
“Oh, no,” Madeline explained, “they were Dutch, I suppose. The Dutch are great linguists, you know.”
“They looked awfully jolly,” said Babe regretfully, “especially the one who admired our stride. If he’d been an American he’d have stopped and apologized for his rude remark, and helped us climb the wall into the castle gardens. It’s awfully high and it has broken glass on top just like a story-book, and you can go in only on Tuesdays and Fridays.”
“How disgusting for a castle to have at-home days!” said Babbie. “I love ruins, and we passed so many nice ones on the way up. Isn’t there any other near Oban, man from Cook’s?”
“I’ll find out in the morning,” Madeline promised. “At present I feel more like bed. It’s half-past nine, if it is broad daylight.”