Chapter 10

THE LAND OF FREEDOM

The old town of Cherbourg was experiencing its semi-weekly apotheosis. For five days of the seven a duller place would be difficult to find, but on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when the great trans-Atlantic liners were due to pause in the outer harbour and take aboard the multitudes homeward-bound to America, the town was transfigured. The transfiguration, indeed, began on the previous evenings, for it was then that the less-knowing and more timid of the tourists began to arrive.

The knowing ones, having once tasted the Lethe of Cherbourg, remained in Paris until the last minute, and stepped from the boat-train to the waiting tender. But the less well-informed came on the day before--and never, for the remainder of their lives, forgot the dulness of their last day in Europe. Then there were the nervously-anxious, their peace of mind already wrecked by the vagaries of the European baggage-system, who dared not run the risk of arriving at the last moment. So they, too, journeyed to Cherbourg the day before the sailing-date, in order to have a clear twenty-four hours in which to search for the pieces which were certain to be missing. That day at Cherbourg was always an expensive one, for the hotel-keepers of the place, having to live for seven days on the proceeds of two, arranged their rates accordingly.

At the edge of the narrow strip of rock-strewn sand which constitutes the beach at Cherbourg, stands the Grand Hotel--familiar name to every traveller in Europe, where even the smallest hamlet has its "Grand." The one at Cherbourg is a rambling, three-storied frame structure, with a glass-enclosed dining-room overlooking the harbour, and here, at ten o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eleven, Daniel Webster was disconsolately eating that frugal meal which is the French for breakfast. Not the great Daniel--all well-informed persons are, of course, aware that he passed to his reward some sixty years ago--but a well-built, fresh-faced, rather good-looking young fellow, still on the right side of thirty, who had most inadvisedly chosen to appear in this world of trouble on the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great Daniel, and who had forthwith been handicapped with his name.

John Webster, an honest farmer of the Connecticut valley, had always been a worshipper at the shrine of the eloquent New Englander, to whom he fancied himself related, and when, having taken to himself a wife, that wife presented him with a son on the very day when the centenary of his hero's birth was being celebrated, the coincidence appeared to him too momentous to be disregarded, and the boy was christened Daniel.

It was a thing no thoughtful father would have done, and as Dan grew older, he resented his name bitterly. It was the subject of brutal jests from his playmates, resulting in numberless pitched battles, and of still more brutal hazing when he pursued his predestined way through the portals of the university at New Haven. Here he was promptly rechristened Ichabod, and his real name was gradually forgotten.

In the depths of his heart, John Webster may perhaps have hoped that this was to be a real reincarnation. If so, he was doomed to disappointment, for the younger Daniel gave no promise of being either a statesman or an orator. But he took to ink as a duck to water, was never so happy as when his pen was spoiling good white paper, was elected editor of the _News_, and, commencement over, took the first train for New York, stormed the office of the _Record_, for which he had acted as college correspondent, and demanded a job.

He got it; and began anew the task of living down his name. Always, when introduced or introducing himself, he saw in the eyes opposite his own that maddening glimmer of amusement. Then he gritted his teeth and waited for the joke. There were fourteen possible forms that it might take. Tempted often to return to that rocky Connecticut hillside, he nevertheless stuck it out, and, as time passed, found he didn't mind so much. He even reached the point where he made bets with himself as to which of the fourteen it would be. And he progressed in other ways: the material symbol of the progress being that, instead of cub reporter at twelve dollars a week, he was now one of the trusted members of the staff at six times that salary.

Also he was seven years older, and this had been his first long vacation--six weeks in England, Belgium, Holland and France--glorious weeks; but his eyes were aching for the lights of Broadway and his fingers itching for the pencil. The most exacting and bewitching of all professions was clamouring for him again.

Having disposed of the rolls and coffee, he rose reluctantly, stepped out upon the beach, and filled and lighted his pipe--with a grimace at the first puff, for French tobacco is the worst in the world, outside of Germany. Before him lay the mighty breakwater which guards the harbour, with its lighthouse in the middle and its fort at either end, while to his left were the great naval basins, hewn from the solid rock. To the right, below the high sea-wall, the narrow beach stretched away, empty and uninviting.

Dan felt depressed. Cherbourg, evidently, was not an exciting place. He had never seen an uglier beach, but, after a moment's hesitation, he started off along it. Perhaps, farther on, it might improve.

The tide was going out, and in the little basins in the sand minute crabs and strange sea-midgets scuttled about panic-stricken at finding themselves marooned; here and there a stranded jelly-fish glowed like an iridescent soap-bubble, and, farther out, an ugly mud flat began to be revealed by the retreating water. Some distance ahead, a ridge of tumbled rocks ran from the sea-wall down into the water, and, as he drew nearer, he saw that on one of the rocks a girl was sitting.

He glanced at her as he passed, and would have liked to glance again, for he had never met more arresting eyes, but he was going on with face rigidly to the front, when her voice startled him.

"_Pardon, monsieur_," she said. It was a contralto voice, of a quality that made his pulses leap.

He stopped short and turned toward her, incredulous that it could be he to whom she had spoken. But there was no one else in sight; and then he saw that her hands were gripped tightly in her lap and that her lips were quivering.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, and took a step toward her. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Oh!" she cried, her face lighting, and a wave of colour sweeping into her cheeks. "Then you are an American!"

"Yes; thank God!"

"So say I!" she echoed. "For myself, I mean. I also am an American. We will speak English, then."

"I should much prefer it," he smiled. "My French is wholly academic--and covered with moss, at that. It doesn't even enable me to get my eggs turned!"

She looked at him, the colour deepening in her cheeks. Dan, looking back, decided that he had never seen such eyes; he could scarcely believe that she was an American. She did not look in the least like one. But she was speaking rapidly.

"I am in trouble," she said, "as the result of my own carelessness. I was crossing these rocks, without watching sufficiently where I was going, and my foot slipped. See," and she swept aside her skirts. "I cannot get it out."

Dan was on his knees in an instant.

"Is it hurt?" he asked.

"I think not; or at most only a little strained. But it is wedged between these big rocks, and I cannot move it."

Dan touched the foot, and found that it was, indeed, wedged fast. Then he examined the rocks, and finally, bending above the smaller one, placed his arms firmly about it, braced his feet and lifted. It would have been worth while to have seen the play of his back and shoulder muscles as the strain tightened, but it was over in a moment. For the rock rose slowly, slowly, and the foot was free. He let the rock drop softly back, stood up and brushed the sand from his sleeves. The girl bent and rubbed her ankle.

"Is it all right?" he asked.

"I think so," and she took an experimental step or two. "Yes; not even sprained. That reminded me of Porthos," she added, looking up at him, her eyes very bright.

He laughed.

"Porthos would have done it with one hand," he said, "while saluting you with the other."

She hesitated a little, looking along the beach; and he, guessing her thought, raised his cap and started to walk on. But again her voice stopped him. Perhaps she, too, was something of a mind-reader.

"I owe you some thanks, you know," she said. "You mustn't go off till I've paid them!"

Dan swung around, his face glowing.

"Not thanks!" he protested. "But if you would take pity on a lonely exile and talk to him a little, you'd certainly be doing a noble action!"

"Is it as bad as all that?" and Dan noticed how the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled.

"You can't imagine how lonely I've been!" he said. "Especially the past few days. I didn't feel it so much till I was starting home. America!" and he took off his hat.

"The land of freedom!" she added, softly.

"Do you feel it that way, too?" he asked eagerly. "I've never been much of a patriot--just took things as a matter of course, I guess; but six weeks in Europe is enough to make a patriot of any American. Whenever I see the old flag, I feel like going down on my knees and kissing it. I've just begun to realise what it stands for!"

She had turned back toward the hotel, walking slowly with Dan beside her, and her face was beaming as she looked up at him.

"You are right--oh, so right!" she cried. "And how much more would you realise it if, like me, you had been born in another country and felt for yourself the injustice, the oppression, of which you have seen only a little! For such as I, America is indeed the Promised Land!"

So she was foreign-born! Dan glanced at her with a shy curiosity.

"You are a Russian?" he asked. "Pardon me if I seem intrusive."

"You do not. No, I am not a Russian. Worse than that! I am a Pole!"

The words were uttered with a tragic emphasis which left him speechless. He could think of nothing to say that was not banal or superficial, and he realised that here were deep waters! He glanced once or twice at her face, which had grown suddenly dark and brooding; then, with a little motion of her hands, she seemed to push her thoughts away.

"You do not know much of Polish history, perhaps," she said, in a lighter tone. "But if you are fond of tales of heroism, you should read it, for it is one long heroism. It will help you to realise more fully what your flag stands for. It is my flag, too; I have lived in America nearly ten years; and never do I grow so angry as when I hear an American speak slightingly of his country. Here is the hotel. Forgive me for talking like this; but it has done me good to meet you!"

"And me!" he said. "Must you go in?"

"Yes; my father will be wondering where I am. Good-bye."

She held out her hand and gave his a frank little pressure. Then she turned and left him.

He watched until the door swung shut behind her; then he walked on slowly, past the great basins, over the drawbridge, along the crooked streets of the old town, past the station, and finally he stopped in the shadow of a crag of rock which sprang abruptly three hundred feet into the air. Its summit was crowned by the frowning walls of the great fort which commands the harbour, and along the face of the cliff, blue with heather, a narrow footpath wound deviously upward. He ascended this for a little way, and then stopped, his elbows on the wall which guarded it. Before him stretched the bay, shielded by its jetty, and beyond rolled the white-capped ocean. That way lay America.

"The land of freedom!" he murmured, and his eyes were bright. "The land of freedom!"