Part 8

The light--standing, they told me, on Fire Island--winked at us repeatedly, unaware, perhaps, that we were all married. I’ll confess we didn’t mind at all and would have winked back if we could have winked hard enough to carry nineteen nautical miles.

Ring Once was waiting at the stateroom door to tell me to have all baggage packed and outside first thing in the morning.

“I’ll see that it’s taken off the ship,” he said. “You’ll find it under your initial on the dock.”

“What do you mean, under my initial?”

He explained and then noticed that my junk was unlabeled. I’d worried over this a long while. My French Line stickers had not stuck. And how would New Yorkers and Chicagoans know I’d been abroad? I couldn’t stop each one and tell him.

The trusty steward disappeared and soon returned with four beautiful labels, square, with a red border, a white star in the middle, and a dark blue L, meaning me, in the middle of the star.

“Put those on so they’ll stay,” I instructed him. “There’s no sense in crossing the ocean and then keeping it a secret.”

_Tuesday, October 2. A Regular Hotel._

M. de M. Hanson, looking as if he’d had just as much sleep as I, was in his, or somebody else’s deck chair, reading a yesterday’s New York paper, when I emerged to greet the dawn.

“I don’t know where this came from,” he said, “but it’s got what you want to know. The series opens in Chicago next Saturday. They play there Saturday and Sunday, jump back to New York Monday and play here Tuesday and Wednesday.”

“And,” said I, “may the better team win--in four games.”

We were anchored in the harbor, waiting for a pilot, that was, as usual, late. I was impatient but M. de M. didn’t seem to care. He’s wild about ocean travel so long as it’s stationary.

Presently the youngest of the food commissioners, one Mr. Bowron, joined us. He asked the name of every piece of land in sight. We answered all his questions, perhaps correctly.

“That one,” said M. de M., pointing, “is Staten Island. Of course you’ve heard of it.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Bowron.

“What!” cried Mr. Hanson. “Never heard of Staten Island!”

“The home of Matty McIntyre,” I put in. “One of the greatest outside lefts in the history of soccer. He played with the Detroit and Chicago elevens in the American League.”

Mr. Bowron looked apologetic.

“And in that direction,” said Mr. Hanson, pointing again, “is Coney Island, where fashionable New York spends its summers.”

“Except,” said I, “the aristocratic old families who can’t be weaned away from Palisades Park.”

Mr. Bowron interviewed us on the subject of hotels.

“There are only two or three first-class ones,” said Mr. Hanson. “The Biltmore’s fair. It’s got elevators and running hot water.”

“But no electric lights,” I objected.

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Hanson. “They put in electricity and set the meter the week we left.”

Breakfast was ready, and for the first time on the trip Mr. Hanson ate with a confidence of the future. For the first time he ordered food that was good for him. Previously it hadn’t mattered.

When we went back on deck, the world’s largest open-face clock was on our left, and on our right the business district of Pelham’s biggest suburb. And immediately surrounding us were Peter James and Ring Once and the lounge steward and the deck steward and the dining-room stewards--in fact, all the stewards we’d seen and a great many we hadn’t.

“We’re trapped,” said Mr. Hanson. “Our only chance for escape is to give them all we’ve got. Be ready with your one-pounders and your silver pieces.”

At the end of this unequal conflict--the Battle of the Baltic--Rear-Admiral Lardner’s fleet was all shot to pieces, most of them the size of a dime, and when Mr. Brennan of Yonkers announced that his car would meet the ship and that he would gladly give me a ride to my hotel I could have kissed him on both cheeks. It took my customs inspector about a minute to decide that I was poor and honest. The baroness, though, when we left the dock, was engaged in argument with half a dozen officials, who must have been either heartless or blind.

Mr. Brennan’s chauffeur drove queerly. He insisted on sticking to the right side of the street, and slowed up at busy intersections, and he even paid heed to the traffic signals. In Paris or London he’d have been as much at home as a Mexican at The Hague.

The hotel gave me a room without making me tell my age or my occupation or my parents’ birthplace. The room has a bath, and the bath has two water faucets, one marked hot and one marked cold, and when you turn the one marked hot, out comes hot water. And there’s no Peter James around to make you bathe when you don’t feel the need.

The room has a practical telephone too, and pretty soon I’m going to start calling up acquaintances with kind hearts and good cooks. The first who invites me to dinner is in tough luck.

_Friday, October 5. Chicago._

“Miner” Brown, the great three-fingered pitcher, used to be asked the same questions by every one to whom he was introduced. As a breath-saving device he finally had some special cards printed. On one side was his name. On the other the correct replies:

1. Because I used to work in a mine.

2. It was cut off in a factory when I was a kid.

3. At Terre Haute, Ind.

4. Rosedale, right near Terre Haute.

5. Not a bit.

When he left home in the morning he was always supplied with fifty of these cards, and sometimes he got rid of the whole supply before bedtime.

* * * * *

I departed from New York Wednesday night. Our train picked up the New York Baseball Club at Philadelphia. I was acquainted with about fifteen of the twenty (odd) athletes. Every one of the fifteen, from Mr. Zimmerman down, shot the same queries at me. Every person I’ve encountered here at home too, and usually in the same order:

1. How’d you like it over there?

2. Did you see any subs?

3. Did you see any fighting?

4. Could you hear the guns?

5. How close did you get to the front?

6. Did you see any American soldiers?

7. How many men have we got over there?

8. How are things in Paris?

9. Were you in England?

10. How are things in London?

11. Were you in any air raids?

12. How long is it going to last?

Now truth may be stranger than fiction, but it’s also a whole lot duller. Most of my answers have very evidently bored my audiences to the point of extinction. Yet I hesitate to start weaving the well-known tangled web. I’d be bound to trip in it sooner or later. Last night, in desperation, I drafted a card along the line of Mr. Brown’s. But it lacked wallop, as you can see for yourself.

1. Oh, pretty well.

2. No.

3. A little.

4. Oh, yes.

5. A mile and a half, on the observation hill.

6. Oh, yes.

7. That’s supposed to be a secret.

8. Pretty gay.

9. Yes.

10. All right, so far as I could see.

11. No.

12. I don’t know.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations.