"Now then," said Mr. Brandish, "there you are, madam. There is a line
all the way down from the Conqueror to the end of the sixteenth
century, scarcely one man's lifetime before the Pilgrims landed on
Plymouth Rock."
I now began to calculate in my mind. I was thirty years old; my mother,
most likely, was about as old when I was born; that made sixty years.
Then my grandfather might have been forty when my mother was born, and
there was a century. As for my great-grandfather and his parents, I
didn't know anything about them. Of course, there must have been such
persons, but I didn't know where they came from or where they went to.
"I can go back a century," said I, "but that doesn't begin to meet the
end of the line you have marked out. There's a gap of about two hundred
years."
"Oh, I don't think I would mind that," said Mr. Brandish. "Gaps of that
kind are constantly occurring in family trees. In fact, if we was to
allow gaps of a century or so to interfere with the working out of
family lines, it would cut off a great many noble ancestries from
families of high position, especially in the colonies and abroad. I beg
you not to pay any attention to that, madam."
My nerves was tingling with the thought of the Spanish Armada, and
perhaps Bannockburn (which then made me wish I had known all this
before I went to Stirling, but which battle, now as I write, I know
must have been fought a long time before any of the Dorks went to
Scotland), and I expect my eyes flashed with family pride, for do what
I would I couldn't sit calm and listen to what I was hearing. But,
after all, that two hundred years did weigh upon my mind. "If you make
a family tree for me," said I, "you will have to cut off the trunk and
begin again somewhere up in the air."
"Oh, no," said he, "we don't do that. We arrange the branches so that
they overlap each other, and the dotted lines which indicate the
missing portions are not noticed. Then, after further investigation and
more information, the dots can be run together and the tree made
complete and perfect."
Of course, I had nothing more to say, and he promised to send me the
tree the next morning, though, of course, requesting me to pay him in
advance, which was the rule of the office, and you would be amazed,
madam, if you knew how much that tree cost. I got it the next morning,
but I haven't shown it to Jone yet. I am proud that I own it, and I
have thrills through me whenever my mind goes back to its Norman roots;
but I am bound to say that family trees sometimes throw a good deal of
shade over their owners, especially when they have gaps in them, which
seems contrary to nature, but is true to fact.
Letter Number Twenty-six
SOUTHWESTERN HOTEL, SOUTHAMPTON
To-morrow our steamer sails, and this is the last letter I write on
English soil; and although I haven't done half that I wanted to, there
are ever so many things I have done that I can't write you about.
I had seen so few cathedrals that on the way down here I was bound to
see at least one good one, and so we stopped at Winchester. It was
while walking under the arches of that venerable pile that the thought
suddenly came to me that we were now in Hampshire, and that, perhaps,
in this cathedral might be some of the tombs of my ancestors. Without
saying what I was after I began at one of the doors, and I went clean
around that enormous church, and read every tablet in the walls and on
the floor.
Once I had a shock. There was a good many small tombs with roofs over
them, and statues of people buried within, lying on top of the tombs,
and some of them had their faces and clothes colored so as to make them
look almost as natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
spirits rose.
[Illustration: "This might be a Dorkminster"]
We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of
Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all
night at the little town of Bonchurch.
