“Excuse me, sir! But can you tell me just where the scaffold was erected on which Charles the First was executed?”
The Average Briton stared bovinely. Be sure he did not touch his hat to me, nor echo the “sir,” nor yet betray how flatteringly it fell upon his unaccustomed ear. Being short of stature, he stared at an angle of forty-five degrees to gain his interlocutor’s face, unlocked his shaven jaws and uttered in a rumbling stomach-base the Shibboleth of his tribe and nation:
“I really carnt say!”
Caput fell back in good order—i. e., raising his hat again to the Complete British Matron, whose face had not changed by so much as the twitch of an eyelid while the colloquy was in progress. She paid no attention whatever to the homage offered to the sex through “the muchness of her personality,” nor were the creases in her lord’s double chin deepened by any inclination of his head.
“The fellow is an underbred dolt!” said Caput, looking after them as they sailed along the walk.
“In that case it is a pity you called him ‘sir,’ and said ‘erected’ and ‘executed,’” remarked I, with excruciating mildness. “Here comes another! Ask him where King Charles was beheaded.”
No. 2 was smugger and smoother than No. 1. He had silvery hair and mutton-leg whiskers, and a cable watch-chain trained over a satin waistcoat, adjuncts which imparted a look of yet intenser respectability. There was a moral and social flavor of bank-directorships and alder-manic expectations about him, almost warranting the “sir” which slipped again from the incorrigible tongue.
We had the same answer to a word and intonation. The formula must be taught to them over their crib-rails as our babies are drilled to lisp—“Now I lay me.” Grown reckless and slightly wicked, we accosted ten others in quick succession in every variety of phraseology, of which the subject was susceptible, but always to the same effect. Where stood the scaffold of Charles the First, Charles Stuart, Charles the Martyr, Charles, father of the Merry Monarch, the grandparent of Mary of Orange and Good Queen Anne? Could any man of British mould designate to us the terminus of that quick step over the snowy park on the morning of the 30th of January, 1649, the next stage to that “which, though turbulent and troublesome, would be a very short one, yet would carry him a great way—even from earth to Heaven?”
Eight intelligent Londoners said, “I really carnt say!” more or less drawlingly. Two answered bluntly, “Dawnt know!” over their shoulders, without staying or breaking their saunter. Finally, we espied a youth sitting under a tree—one of those from which the melting snow might have dropped upon the prisoner’s head—why not the thrifty oak he had pointed out to Bishop Juxon in nearing Whitehall, as “the tree planted by my brother Henry?” The youth was neatly dressed, comely of countenance, and he held an open book, his eyes riveted upon the open page.
“That looks promising!” ejaculated Caput. There was genuine respect in his address: