“The trouble with this country is,” observed Herndon, “that there’re too many people going about saying: ‘The trouble with this country is—’ And too many of us, who should be ruling the country, are crabbed by being called ‘General’ or ‘Colonel’ or ‘Doctor’ or that sort of thing. If you have a handle to your name, you have to be so jolly and democratic that you can’t control the mob.”
“We’ll try to free you from that if you come to America,” said Fran. “I’ll introduce you as Mr. James Herndon, the pansy-grower, and I’ll tell my butler that you’re so fond of rude garden life that you’d be delighted to have him call you ‘Jimmy.’ ”
“Am I expected, Ma’am, to say that I’d be charmed by anything that your butler might care to call me? As a matter of fact, I’d ask him not to be so formal, but call me ‘Whiffins.’ However, unfortunately, I am not named James.”
“And unfortunately we haven’t a butler, but only a colored gentleman who condescends to help us with the cocktails at parties, if he isn’t too busy down in Shanty Town, preaching. But honestly—Am I in bad taste? If I’m not, isn’t it really rather pleasant to be known as Your Lordship?”
“Oh—I inherited the handle while a subaltern—no great day of mourning for lost dear ones, you know—I inherited from a most gloomy old uncle. I’d never been able to rebuke my colonel—tried to, in my eager boyish way, but he’d never noticed it. When I inherited, he used to go quite out of his way to rebuke me, so I knew I’d made an impression. Fact, he was so stiff with me that I became popular with the mess. But of course you Yanks, roving your broad steppes, never dream of such puerile triumphs.”
“Quite. They’re too busy punching cattle,” said Lockert; and Mr. Alls inquired, “Just how does one punch an unfortunate cow?”
“It’s now done with automatic punching-machinery,” explained Lockert. “Neat little hole right through the ear. Mrs. Dodsworth is an expert—punches six cattle simultaneously, while singing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and firing pistols.”
“But my real achievement,” asserted Fran, “is shooting Indians. I’d shot nine before I was five years old.”
“Is it true,” demanded Lord Herndon, “that the smarter American women always have girdles made of scalps?”
“Oh, absolutely—it’s as de rigueur as for an Englishwoman to carry a bouquet of Brussels sprouts at a lawn-party, or—”
“Oh, what a hell of a way to talk!” fretted Sam Dodsworth. “If they can’t talk sense, why don’t they dry up? What’s the use of talking, anyway, beyond ‘Pass the salt’ and ‘How much do you want a ton?’ Aren’t these folks ever serious?”
Suddenly they were serious, and he was even less comfortable.
“Mr. Dodsworth,” asked Mr. Alls (or Mr. Hoss), “why is it that America hasn’t recognized Soviet Russia?”
“Why, uh—we’re against their propaganda.”
“But who is really responsible for the American policy? Congress or the Foreign Department?”
“I’m afraid I don’t exactly remember.”
It occurred to Sam that he hadn’t the smallest information about Russian relations with America; only a thin memory of a conference about selling cars in Russia. He was equally shaky when they questioned him about the American attitudes toward the Allied war debt and toward Japan.
“Am I beginning to get old?” he wondered. “I used to keep up on things. Seems as though this last five years I haven’t thought of anything but selling cars and playing golf.”
He felt old—he felt older and older as Fran and Herndon slid over into a frivolous debate about lion hunting. He had never known that she could be so fantastic. Here she was telling some perfectly silly story about their having had a dear old lion for a pet; about Sam’s kicking it downstairs one frosty night when he was in a bad temper; the poor lion slinking down the street, pursued by a belligerent black kitten, fleeing to the Zoo, and whimpering to be let into a cage. (And there wasn’t even a Zoo in Zenith!)
Old! And out of it. He couldn’t join in their talk, whether it was nonsense or the discussion of nationalization of mines presently set going by Herndon, who announced himself a Socialist as fervently as twenty minutes before he had announced himself a Diehard Tory. It was one of the few conversations in years in which Sam had not had an important, perhaps a commanding position. At dinner in Zenith, if he didn’t feel authoritative when they talked of Stravinsky or the Algerian tour, soon or late the talk would return to motors and a mystery known as “business conditions,” and then he would settle all debates.
He suddenly felt insecure.
As they walked to church next morning, he felt for the Kentish village a tenderness as for a shrunken, tender old grandmother. And when he noted a Revelation car parked across from the church, he was certain again that he was Somebody. But amid the politely interested, elegantly pious congregation at Morning Prayer, glancing at him over their celluloid-covered prayer books, he felt insecurity again. He was overgrown, clumsy, untutored. He wanted to flee from this traditional stillness to the anonymity and shielding clamor of London.
They rode, for the hour between church and luncheon, on ragged but sturdy horses from the village stable. Mrs. Alls had lent a wreck of a riding-habit to Fran, who looked disreputable and gay in her orange tam o’ shanter—gayer than in her ordinary taut
