The sailors who passed their deck chairs, the officers on the bridge, they were all so sturdy, so mahogany-faced, so reliable, so British.
A man with a long blond mustache and a monocle strolled past. Fran insisted that he was Thomas Cook, of the Sons. And what was Karl Baedeker like? she speculated. Short and square, with a short square brown beard and double-thick spectacles through which he peered at menus and ruined temples and signs reading “Roma 3 chilometri.”
“Yes, and what is Mr. Bass like? And the Haig Brothers? I wonder if they’re like the Smith Brothers,” said Sam, and, “Gosh, I’m enjoying this, Fran!”
Then he saw a pale line, which was the coast of France.
But he tramped aft, to look back toward England. He fancied that he could see the shadow of its cliffs. Doubtless it was a distant cloud-bank that he saw, but he imagined the cool and endearing hills, the welcoming crooked streets, the wholesome faces.
“England! Perhaps I’ll never see it again. … Fran and Lockert, they’ve taken it from me. … But I love it. America is my wife and daughter, but England is my mother. And these fools talk about a possible war between Britain and America! If that ever came—I thought Debs was foolish to go to jail as a protest against war, but I guess I understand better how he felt now. ‘If I forget thee, O England, let my right hand forget her cunning, if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.’ How did that go, in chapel? Oh yes: ‘If I prefer not Jerusalem—London—above my chief joy’! Well. I never could prefer England above America. But next to America—Oh, Lord, I’d liked to’ve stayed there! The Dodsworths were in England three thousand years, maybe, where they’ve been in America only three hundred.
“England!”
Then he turned eagerly toward France.
They crept into harbor, past the breakwater with its tiny lighthouses, bumped along a rough stone pier, saw advertisements of strange drinks in a strange language, and were flooded with small, shrieking, blue-bloused porters; heard children speaking French as though it were a natural language; and for the first time in his life Samuel Dodsworth was in the grasp of a real Foreign Land.
XII
Sam had remained calm amid the frenzy of a Detroit Automobile Show; he had stalked through the crush of a New Year’s Eve on Broadway, merely brushing off the bright young men with horns and feather ticklers; but in the Calais customs-house he was appalled. The porters shrieked ferocious things like “attonshion” as they elbowed past, walking mountains of baggage; the passengers jammed about the low baggage platform; the customs inspectors seemed to Sam cold-eyed and hostile; all of them bawled and bleated and wailed in what sounded to him like no language whatever; and he remembered that he had four hundred cigarettes in his smaller bag.
The porter who had taken their bags on the steamer had shouted something that sounded like “catravan deuce”—Fran said it meant that he was Porter Number Ninety-two. Then Catravan Deuce had malignantly disappeared, with their possessions. Sam knew that it was all right, but he didn’t believe it. He assured himself that a French porter was no more likely to steal their bags than a Grand Central redcap—only, he was quite certain that Catravan Deuce had stolen them. Of course he could replace everything except Fran’s jewelry without much expense but—Damn it, he’d hate to lose his old red slippers—
He was disappointed at so flabby an ending when he found Catravan Deuce at his elbow in the customs room, beaming in a small bearded way and shouldering aside the most important passengers to plank their baggage down on the platform for examination.
Sam was proud of Fran’s French (of Stratford, Connecticut) when the capped inspector said something quite incomprehensible and she answered with what sounded like “ree-an.” He felt that she was a scholar; he felt that he was untutored and rusty; he depended on her admiringly. And then he opened the smaller bag and the four hundred cigarettes were revealed to the inspector.
The inspector looked startled, he gaped, he spread out his arms, and protested in the name of liberty, equality, fraternity, and indemnities. Fran tried to answer, but her French stumbled and fell, and she turned to Sam, all her airy competence gone, wailing, “I can’t understand what he says! He—he talks patois!”
At her appeal, Sam suddenly became competent, ready to face the entire European Continent, with all appertaining policemen, laws, courts, and penitentiaries.
“Here! I’ll get somebody!” he assured her, and to the customs inspector, who was now giving a French version of the Patrick Henry oration, he remarked, “Just a mo-ment! Keep your shirt on!”
He had a notion of finding the English vicar to whom he had listened on the Channel steamer. “Fellow seems to know European languages.” He wallowed through the crowd as though he were making a touchdown, and saw on a cap the thrice golden words “American Express Company.” The American Express man beamed and leaped forward at something in the manner with which Mr. Samuel Dodsworth of the Revelation Motor Company suggested, “Can you come and do a little job of interpreting for me?” … Sam felt that for a moment he was being Mr. Samuel Dodsworth, and not Fran Dodsworth’s husband. … And for something less than a moment he admitted that he was possibly being the brash Yankee of Mark Twain and Booth Tarkington. And he could not successfully be sorry for it.
The American Express man saw them on the waiting train (a very bleak and tall
