A Voyage of Consolation | Page 4

million other Americans, and the language of Abraham Lincoln is good enough for me. But I suppose I, like the other sixty million, emit it through my nose!"
"I should be sorry to contradict you," I said.
Arthur folded his arms and gathered himself up until he appeared to taper from his stem like a florist's bouquet, and all the upper part of him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain corpulence; he is already well rounded.
"I need hardly say," he said majestically, "that when I did myself the honour of proposing, I was under the impression that I had a suitable larynx to offer you."
"You see I didn't know," I murmured, and by accident I dropped my engagement ring, which rolled upon the carpet at his feet. He stooped and picked it up.
"Shall I take this with me?" he asked, and I said "By all means."
That was all.
I gave ten minutes to reflection and to the possibility of Arthur's coming back and pleading, on his knees, to be allowed to restore that defective larynx. Then I went straight upstairs to the telephone and rang up the Central office. When they replied "Hello," I said, in the moderate and concentrated tone which we all use through telephones, "Can you give me New York?"
Poppa was in New York, and in an emergency poppa and I always turn to one another. There was a delay, during which I listened attentively, with one eye closed--I believe it is the sign of an unbalanced intellect to shut one eye when you use the telephone, but I needn't go into that--and presently I got New York. In a few minutes more I was accommodated with the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
"Mr. T.P. Wick, of Chicago," I demanded.
"Is his room number Sixty-two?"
That is the kind of mind which you usually find attached to the New York end of a trans-American telephone. But one does not bandy words across a thousand miles of country with a hotel clerk, so I merely responded:
"Very probably."
There was a pause, and then the still small voice came again.
"Mr. Wick is in bed at present. Anything important?"
I reflected that while I in Chicago was speaking to the hotel clerk at half-past nine o'clock, the hotel clerk in New York was speaking to me at eleven. This in itself was enough to make our conversation disjointed.
"Yes," I responded, "it is important. Ask Mr. Wick to get out of bed."
Sufficient time elapsed to enable poppa to put on his clothes and come down by the elevator, and then I heard:
"Mr. Wick is now speaking."
"Yes, poppa," I replied, "I guess you are. Your old American accent comes singing across in a way that no member of your family would ever mistake. But you needn't be stiff about it. Sorry to disturb you."
Poppa and I were often personal in our intercourse. I had not the slightest hesitation in mentioning his American accent.
"_Hello, Mamie! Don't mention it. What's up? House on fire? Water pipes burst? Strike in the kitchen? Sound the alarm--send for the plumber--raise Gladys's wages and sack Marguerite_."
"My engagement to Mr. Page is broken. Do you get me? What do you suggest?"
I heard a whistle, which I cannot express in italics, and then, confidentially:
"You don't say so! Bad break?"
"Very," I responded firmly.
"Any details of the disaster available? What?"
"Not at present," I replied, for it would have been difficult to send them by telephone.
I could hear poppa considering the matter at the other end. He coughed once or twice and made some indistinct inquiries of the hotel clerk. Then he called my attention again.
"Hello!" he said. "_On to me? All right. Go abroad. Always done. Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, and the other places. I'll stand in. Germanic sails Wednesdays. Start by night train to-morrow. Bring momma. We can get Germanic in good shape and ten minutes to spare. Right?_"
"Right," I responded, and hung up the handle. I did not wish to keep poppa out of bed any longer than was necessary, he was already up so much later than I was. I turned away from the instrument to go down stairs again, and there, immediately behind me, stood momma.
"Well, really!" I exclaimed. It did not occur to me that the privacy of telephonic communication between Chicago and New York was not inviolable. Besides, there are moments when one feels a little annoyed with one's momma for having so lightly undertaken one's existence. This was one of them. But I decided not to express it.
"I was only going to say," I remarked, "that if I had shrieked it would have been your fault."
"I knew everything," said momma, "the minute I heard him shut the gate. I came up immediately, and all this time, dear, you've been confiding in us both. My dear daughter."
Momma carries about with her