There is a tide

by J. C. Snaith

However, there it was. European Correspondent, Cowbarn Independent. At the sight of the magic words the thoughts of Mame Durrance went rather wistfully back to the hard and dull and uncomfortable place in which she had been born and reared. After all it was home. And even if she was ready to die rather than go back to live there for keeps, it was nothing to be ashamed of, for there was no place like it.

The card looked so well in the hand of Mame that she decided to mail one as soon as she reached London, to Elmer P. Dobree, the young and aspiring editor of the Cowbarn Independent. Good old Elmer P.! It would simply tickle him to pieces. But it would show him the stuff she was made of. He had tried to dissuade her from quitting the safe anchorage of her stool in the Independent office, and when unable to do so, like the sport he was, had told her to send along a weekly letter of New York news, and if able to print it he would pay the top rate of four dollars a thousand words. The Cowbarn Independent was an influential journal, but it had never paid President Harding more than four dollars a thousand words.

Mame took the editor at his word. Sometimes her stuff was printed. Sometimes it wasn’t. But Elmer P.’s kindly interest in her had continued. She had been encouraged to let him know that she was going to Europe and that it would help her considerably if she could depend on his keeping a corner for her London Impressions which she would mail every Friday. Elmer P., before all things the man of affairs and the cautious editor, would not be drawn into a rash promise, but he would do his best. To this end he gave a bit of advice. Let her see to it that the doggone Britishers didn’t take the pep out of her style.

So far Miss Durrance had not realised that she had a style. Anyhow she had never aspired to one. She set down what she saw and heard and read in words that came just naturally. And she had a kind of hunch that the slick-a-lick New Yorkers always found something funny in the way those words came.

The Northwestern express steamed at last into Euston and Mame found herself up against the raw reality of London. From Crewe on the fog had been getting more and more businesslike. By the time the metropolis was reached a very fair imitation of a “London particular” was on the platform to receive her. It was almost the famous “pea-soup” variety, but not quite, which was just as well for Miss Durrance. All traffic would have been at a standstill had she been greeted by that luxury and the troubles of a stranger in a land of strangers increased a hundred-fold. Even as it was, for one used to clear skies the fog was pretty thick, yet the seasoned Cockney would have described it as not a bad day for the time of year.

A Cockney of that genus, in the person of a luggage porter, opened the carriage door. He took charge of Miss Durrance’s gear; also he took charge of Miss Durrance. Slow he was, very slow, to her way of thinking. As yet the alert traveller had not got the tempo of this nation of mossbacks; but the porter, if not exactly an Ariel, was sure as a rock. An earthquake or a landslide would not have hurried him and Mame had the wisdom not to try.

He got her trunk out of the van and put it on a taxi. She gave the address, 56 Carvell Street, Bloomsbury, in a tone of crisp importance; the taximan, who vied with the porter in deference, touched his cap and off they trundled into the fog. For London it was really nothing to speak of, but the acrid vapour caused the eyes of Mame to sting and her throat to tickle; and the combination of raw air, grimy buildings, and an endless mud-churning sea of vehicles, slow-moving and enormous in their bulk and mass, somehow filled her with an odd depression.

In spite of all checks to progress it was not long before they reached Carvell Street. The taxi stopped at 56. Mame sprang out and boldly attacked six bleak stone steps, at the top of which was a door in sore need of paint. Her ring was answered by a comic sort of hired girl, with cap and apron complete. When Mame asked if she might see Miss Valance she was very politely invited to come in.

As Mame went in she made a mental note that her first impression must record the civility of these Londoners. Somehow it had a quality riper and mellower than any brand she had met with on her native continent. Whether it came from the heart or was merely a part of the day’s work of a people addicted to “frills” or just a candid admission of the superiority of the race to which Mame herself belonged, must be left to the future to determine; but so far the critic was pleased with the universal Cockney politeness and she hoped it would pan out as good as it seemed.

The observer had not time to do justice to the small gas-heated anteroom into which she was shown before she was joined by the lady of the house. Miss Valance was a replica of all the Cockney landladies that ever were. Thin, angular, severe, a false front and an invincible red tip to a freely powdered nose masked immense reserves of grim respectability. In the view of Miss Durrance she was “a regular he-one.” All the same the pilgrim declined to be impressed by Miss Valance. It was part of her creed to be impressed by nothing that wore skirts. But had an exception been allowed to this article of faith Miss Valance would sure have put one over on her.