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Pomona's Travels, a fiction by Frank R Stockton |
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Letter Number Twenty-six |
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_ 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. It was very lovely down there with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer, although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching Italy. You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to see the world, and I shall take her. Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain, which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which hurt nobody, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment as this. _ |
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