He was more bewildered when Fish of the American Forwarding Company—big jovial Fish, who had played center for the University of the Western Conference—chuckled:
“You bet! First year I was here, I was homesick all the time. I went home, and I intended to stay there. Well, I lasted just one year in that dear old Chicago! God, the Loop, the elevated, driving through that traffic out to Wilmette every evening, the eternal yow-yow-yow about investments and bridge! Didn’t even enjoy golf! Golly, fellows worked at it! Felt guilty as hell if they were one stroke over yesterday! And most of ’em took up playing to get acquainted with possible customers at the club—sell ’em eighteen bonds in eighteen holes. I got transferred back here. I guess I’d enlist to fight for America against any blooming country in the world, but—Maybe America will get civilized. I hope so. I’m going to send both my boys back home to American universities, and then let ’em decide whether they want to remain or come back here. Maybe we ought to stay home and fight the bluenoses, not let ’em exile us. But life’s short. Want to be a good patriot, but—Say! I wish you could see my house in Chelsea—twenty minutes from Trafalgar Square, even in one of these non-motorized London taxis, and yet it’s as quiet as a hick town in Nebraska. Quieter! Because there’s no kids drinking gin and hollering in flivvers, and no evangelist in the big tent raising hell. Yes sir!”
Sam was pondering.
He was coming to like England. Perhaps he really would live here. Take an interest in some motor agency. Have an Elizabethan black-and-white house in Kent, with ten acres. Join the American Club. These were good fellows—perhaps there were three or four who would even pass the censorship of Fran. He would not be lonely here. He would learn leisure. And think of getting old Tub to come over for a while in the summer! Trot all round England and Scotland with Tub in a car—play golf at St. Andrews—
Yes.
But he recalled the horrors of an arty tea to which Jack Starling had taken them in St. John’s Wood. He recalled the tedium of dinner-parties—people dining solitarily in public. He recalled his discomfort in being unable to understand the violent differences between an Oxford man and a graduate of the University of London, between a public school man and one who abysmally was not. And yet—There was something about life here—
He didn’t feel that he had to hustle, when he walked the London streets. He didn’t, just now, want to return to an office in Zenith and listen to vehement young men who made Patrick Henry orations about windshield-wipers; he didn’t long again to study the schedules of a company which would provide seat-upholstery at .06774 cents cheaper a yard, or to listen to Doc Wimpole, the cut-up of the golf club, in his Swedish imitations or his celebrated way of greeting you: “Well, here’s the old cutthroat! How many widows and orphans have you stuck with your rotten old Revs this week?”
No!
He went home, after tremendously cordial handshakings, more blissful about his new role of required adventurousness than ever before … and hoping that Fran would not say, “Did you have an agreeable time with the great American commercial intellects?”
She would! She’d wake up, no matter how softly he came into the bedroom, and she’d say—(He had it all out, there in the taxicab.) She’d say, “Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself with Mr. Hurd and all the other hearty Rotarians!”
“Now you look here! I heard more good talk tonight, more talk that really got down to cases, than I’ve heard at any of your dinners where gentlemen try to talk like Members of Parliament and Members of Parliament try to talk like gentlemen—”
“Why, my dear Sam, we’re becoming positively literary! The influence of dear Mr. Hurd is astonishing! Was his wife there? She’d do perfectly at a bachelor dinner!”
“Now you look here! I know what a profound scholar you are, and I know I’m a roughneck business man, but may I remind you that I did go to a quite well-known institution for young gentlemen in New Haven, and I have actually read several books, and furthermore—”
It was a complete triumph, there in the taxicab.
He came radiantly into their suite. On the couch, crushing her golden evening wrap, Fran lay sobbing.
He gaped from the doorway five full seconds before he chucked his opera hat at the table, dashed to her, plumped down on the couch, and cried:
“What is it? Sweet! What is it?”
She convulsively raised her face just enough to burrow it against his knee while she whimpered:
“I’ve always said—oh, damn!—I’ve always said it was really a compliment to a woman to be what they call ‘insulted.’ Well, maybe it is, but oh, Sam, I don’t like it! I don’t! Oh, I want to go home! Or anyway leave England. I can’t face it. Probably it was my fault that—
“No, it wasn’t! I swear it wasn’t! I never gave him the slightest, littlest excuse to suppose that His Grace—Oh, God, how I hate that man! He’s so supercilious, and what about? I ask you, what about? What is the fool after all but a failure, an international hobo? Even if his cousin is the real thing! What is he? I ask you!
“It was like this. Oh, Sam, Sam darling, I hate to tell you, because I must have been at fault—partly. It was after the opera. I suggested to Clyde—to Major Lockert—that we might go somewhere and dance, but he said all the good places were so noisy—couldn’t we just come up here and have a drink and talk. I didn’t mind; I was a little tired. Well, at first, he was awfully nice. (Oh, I can see his line so clearly now, and it wasn’t so bad, considering!) He sat—he sat right there in that chair—he sat there and he
