With the Procession | Page 2

polished with scrupulous care. It advances with some deliberation, and
one might fancy hearing in the rattle of its tires, or in the suppressed
flapping of its rear curtain, a word of plaintive protest. "I am not of the
great world," it seems to say; "I make no pretence to fashion. We are
steady and solid, but we are not precisely in society, and we are far,
very far indeed, from any attempt to cut a great figure. However, do not
misunderstand our position; it is not that we are under, nor that we are
exactly aside; perhaps we have been left just a little behind. Yes, that
might express it--just a little behind."
How are they to catch up again--how rejoin the great caravan whose
fast and furious pace never ceases, never slackens? Not, assuredly, by
the help of the little sorrel mare, whose white mane swings so mildly,
and whose pale eyelashes droop so diffidently when some official hand
at a crowded crossing brings her to a temporary stand-still. Not by the
help of the coachman, who wears a sack-coat and a derby hat, and
whose frank, good-natured face turns about occasionally for a friendly
participation in the talk that is going on behind. Can it be, then, that any
hopes for an accelerated movement are packed away in the bulging
portmanteau which rests squeezed in between the coachman's legs?
Two stout straps keep it from bursting, and the crinkled brown leather
of its sides is completely pasted over with the mementoes used by the
hosts of the Old World to speed the parting guest. "London" and
"Paris" shine in the lustre of the last fortnight; "Tangier" is distinctly
visible; "Buda-Pest" may be readily inferred despite the overlapping
labels of "Wien" and "Bâle"; while away off to one corner a crumpled

and lingering shred points back, though uncertainly, to the Parthenon
and the Acropolis. And in the midst of this flowery field is planted a
large M after the best style of the White Star Line.
Who has come home bearing all these sheaves?
Is it, to begin with, the young girl who shares the front seat with the
driver, and who faces with an innocent unconcern all the clamor and
evil of a great city? There is a half-smile on her red lips, and her black
eyes sparkle with a girlish gayety--for she does not know how bad the
world is. At the same time her chin advances confidently, and her dark
eyebrows contract with a certain soft imperiousness--for she does not
know how hard the world is nor how unyielding. Sometimes she
withdraws her glance from the jostling throng to study the untidy and
overlapping labels on the big portmanteau; she betrays a certain
curiosity, but she shows at the same time a full determination not to
seem over-impressed. No, the returned traveller is not Rosy Marshall;
all that she knows of life she has learned from the broadcast cheapness
of English story-tellers and from a short year's schooling in New York.
Is it, then, the older girl who fills half of the rear seat and who, as the
cruel phrase goes, will never see thirty again? She seems to be tall and
lean, and one divines, somehow, that her back is narrow and of a
slab-like flatness. Her forehead is high and full, and its bulging outlines
are but slightly softened by a thin and dishevelled bang. Her eyes are of
a light and faded blue, and have the peculiar stare which results from
over-full eyeballs when completely bordered by white. Her long fingers
show knotted joints and nails that seem hopelessly plebeian; sometimes
she draws on open-work lace mitts, and then her hands appear to be
embroiling each other in a mutual tragedy. No, poor Jane is thoroughly,
incorruptibly indigenous; she is the best and dearest girl in half the
world, as you shall see; but all her experiences have lain between
Sandusky and Omaha.
Perhaps, then, the returned traveller is the elderly woman seated by her
side. Perhaps--and perhaps not. For she seems a bit too dry and sapless
and self-contained--as little susceptible, in fact, to the gentle dews of
travel as an umbrella in a waterproof case. Moreover, it is doubtful if

her bonnet would pass current beyond the national confines. One
surmises that she became years ago the victim of arrested development;
that she is a kind of antiquated villager--a geologic survival from an
earlier age; that she is a house-keeper cumbered and encompassed by
minute cares largely of her own making. It is an easy guess that, for
Eliza Marshall, London is in another world, that Tangier is but a remote
and impracticable abstraction, and that all her strength and fortitude
might be necessary merely to make the trip to Peoria.
There