Jone went and had a
smoke in a small room at one end of the car.
We thought it was strange that there should be so few people travelling
on this train, but when we came to a town where we made a long stop
Jone got out to talk to Mr. Poplington, supposing it likely that he'd
have a carriage to himself; but he was amazed to see that the train was
jammed and crowded, and he found Mr. Poplington squeezed up in a
carriage with seven other people, four of them one side and four the
other, each row staring into the faces of the other. Some of them was
eating bread and cheese out of paper parcels, and a big fat man was
reading a newspaper, which he spread out so as to partly cover the two
people sitting next to him, and all of them seemed anxious to find
some way of stretching their legs so as not to strike against the legs
of somebody else.
Mr. Poplington was sitting by the window, and Jone couldn't help
laughing when he said:
"Is this what you call being private, sir? I think you would find a
caravan more pleasant. Don't you want to come to the Pullman with us?
There are plenty of seats there, nice big armchairs that you can turn
around and sit any way you like, and look at people or not look at
them, just as you please, and there's plenty of room to walk about and
stretch yourself a little if you want to. There's a smoking-room, too,
that you can go to and leave whenever you like. Come and try it."
"Thank you very much," said Mr. Poplington, "but I really couldn't do
that. I am not prejudiced at all, and I have a good many democratic
ideas, but that is too much for me. An Englishman's house is his
castle, and when he's travelling his railway carriage is his house. He
likes privacy and dislikes publicity."
"This is a funny kind of privacy you have here," said Jone. "And how
about your big clubs? Would you like to have them all divided up into
little compartments with half a dozen men in each one, generally
strangers to each other?"
"Oh, a club is a very different thing," said Mr. Poplington.
Jone was going to talk more about the comfort of the Pullman cars, but
they began to shut the carriage doors, and he had to come back to me.
We like English railway carriages very well when we can have one to
ourselves, but if even one stranger gets in and has to sit looking at
us for all the rest of the trip you don't feel anything like as private
as if you was walking along a sidewalk in London.
But Jone and I both agreed we wouldn't find any fault with English
people for not liking Pullman cars, so long as they put them on their
trains for Americans who do like them. And one thing is certain, that
if our railroad conductors and brakes-men and porters was as polite and
kind as they are in England, tips or no tips, we'd be a great deal
better off than we are.
Whenever we stopped at a station the people would come and look through
the windows at us, as if we was some sort of a travelling show. I don't
believe most of them had ever seen a comfortable room on wheels before.
The other people in our car was all men, and looked as if they hadn't
their families with them, and was glad to get a little comfort on the
sly. When we got to Rowsley we saw Mr. Poplington on the platform,
running about, collecting all his different bits of luggage, and
counting them to see that they was all there, and then, as we had a
window open and was looking out, he came and bid us good-by; and when
I asked him to, he looked into our car.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he said. "What a public apartment! I could not
travel like that, you know. Good-by; I will see you at Buxton in a few
days."
[Illustration: Mr. Poplington looking for the luggage]
We talked a good deal with Mr. Poplington about the hotels of Buxton,
and we had agreed to go to one called the Old Hall, where we are now.
There was a good many reasons why we chose this house, one being that
it was not as expensive as some of the others, though very nice; and
another, which had a good deal of force with me, was, that Mary Queen
of Scots came here for her rheumatism, and the room she used to have is
still kept, with some words she scratched with her diamond ring on the
window-pane. Sometimes people coming to this hotel can get this room,
and I was mighty sorry we couldn't do it, but it was taken. If I could
have actually lived and slept in a room which had belonged to the
beautiful Mary Queen of Scots, I would have been willing to have just
as much rheumatism as she had when she was here.
Of course, modern rheumatisms are not as interesting as the rheumatisms
people of the past ages had; but from what I have seen of this town, I
think I am going to like it very much.
Letter Number Seventeen
BUXTON
When we were comfortably settled here, Jone went to see a doctor, who
is a nice, kind old gentleman, who looks as if he almost might have
told Mary Queen of Scots how hot she ought to have the water in her
baths.
