I remembered what old Lord Steyne had said to Becky: “You poor little earthen pipkin. You want to swim down the stream with great copper kettles. All women are alike. Everybody is striving for what is not worth the having.”
I was quite sure I did not want to drift down the stream with copper kettles. I only wanted to be with Tom, to see England with him, to enjoy Dr. Johnson's haunts, to go to the “Cheddar Cheese” and the Strand, to Waterloo Bridge, and down the road the Romans built before England was England.
I wanted to see the world without the world seeing me. In my heart was no desire to be a copper kettle. But I had been cast into the stream, and down it I must go, like a little fungus holding to the biggest copper kettle I knew.
I told my husband this. It was the first time he had been really irritated with me. “Why do you worry about these things?” he protested. “You have a good head and a good education. You are the loveliest woman in England. Be your own natural self and the English will love you.” But I remembered another occasion when he had told me to be my own natural sweet self.
“How about what happened to Becky?” I asked.
Tom went into a rage. “Why do you insist on comparing yourself with that little ———!” The word he used was an ugly one. I did not speak to him again until after we had passed the government inspectors.
I shall never forget my first day in London, the old, quiet city where everybody seemed so comfortable and easy-going. There was no show, no pretense. The people in the shops and on the street bore the earmarks of thrift. I understood where New England got its spirit.
The first morning at the Alexandra Hotel, Tom fell naturally into the European habit of having coffee and fruit and a roll brought to his bed. I wanted to go down to the dining room. My husband said it was not done and I would be lonesome. The days of ranch life had taught me to get up with the chickens. But it was not done in London. The second morning the early sun was too much for me. I dressed, left the hotel, and walked for several hours before a perfect servant brought shining plates and marmalade, fruit and coffee to my big husky football player's bedside. I have lived many years in Europe, but I have never grown used to having breakfast brought to my room.
That second rainy morning Tom left me alone with the promise of being back for luncheon. I picked up a London morning paper and glanced at the personal column. I have read it every day since when I could get hold of the London Times. All of human nature and the ups and downs of man are there, from secondhand lace to the mortgaged jewels of broken-down nobility, from sporting games and tickets for sale to relatives wanted, and those mysterious, suggestive, unsigned messages from home or to home. I read the news of the war. We in America did not know there was a war. But Greece and Crete were at each other's throats, and Turkey was standing waiting to crowd the little ancient nation into Armenia or off the map. There was the Indian famine—We did not talk about it at home, but it had first place in the London paper. And the Queen's birthday,—it was to be celebrated by feeding the poor of East London and paying the debts of the hospitals. There was something so humane, so kindly, so civilized about it all! “I love England,” I said, and that first impression balanced the scale many a time later when I did not love her.
The third or fourth day brought an invitation to dine at a famous house on Grosvenor Square—with a duke!