But Sam discovered that Ross Ireland was guilty of reading vast and gloomy volumes of history; that he admired Conrad more than Conan Doyle; that he had a sneaking preference of chess to poker; and that he was irritably proud of having his evening clothes made in London.
That such a man, violently American yet not untraveled in distant coasts, should so rejoice at going back made Sam the more convinced about returning to his own. Of the vast and polished elegancies of the Aquitania he had little impression, none of the excitement about the steely resolution of ships which he had known on the Ultima, because all his excitement was focused on the blessed people he was going to see.
Tub Pearson—
He heard himself saying, “Well, you fat little runt! You horse-thief! Golly, I’m glad to see you!”
He stood forward on the promenade deck, fancying that his heart beat in rhythm with the rise and the fall of the prow, exulting as the ship slashed through the miles between him and home. He seemed a kindly but stolid figure there, a big man in a gray Burberry and a gray cap, a competent and unsentimental man. But he was boiling with sentiment. Once at night, when he saw the lights of a ship ahead, he pretended that they were the shore lights of Long Island, and he ardently imagined the dear familiarities—wide streets, clashing traffic, brick garages, the insolent splendor of skyscrapers and, toward the country, miles of white and green little houses where the sort of men he understood played games he understood, poker and bridge, and listened on the radio to the sort of humor and music that he understood. And before every other bungalow was a Revelation car.
“—and I’m going to stay!” he exulted.
All the way over, Ross Ireland and he had boasted to such passengers as had never seen America that they would not “be able to believe their eyes” when they steamed up North River. Ross chanted, “Greatest sight in the world—skyscrapers one after another—thirty, forty, fifty stories high, and beautiful—say! they make Cologne Cathedral look like a Methodist chapel and the Eiffel Tower look like an umbrella with the cover off!”
They both, indeed, made so many protestations about the sight of New York harbor that Sam began to wonder whether he really was going to be as thrilled as he was going to be thrilled. He remembered how, after the most conversational anticipation with Fran, he had been disappointed by his first sight of Notre Dame. It had seemed low and hulking—not half so impressive as the lath-and-plaster Notre Dame in the movie film. He managed to fret rather ardently. He hoped to be uplifted by New York as a young lover hopes to be enraptured by the sight of his lady.
They came through the Narrows, into New York harbor, early in the June morning. Sam was up at five, delighted by the friendly green of the lawn at Fort Hamilton, after the shifting sea. It was extraordinarily hot for early summer, a bit uncomfortable even on deck, and a fog hid the horizon. Sam was afraid that he was not to have his rediscovery of New York. After quarantine, as they trudged from Staten Island toward North River, he could see only anchored tramp steamers, and a huge water-beetle of a ferry boat, hoarse-voiced and insulting. Then the fog lifted, and he cried “My God!” High up shone the towers and spires of an enchanted city floating upon the mist, pyramids and domes glistening in the early sun, vast walls studded with golden windows, spellbound and incredible.
Ross Ireland, beside him, muttered “Gee!” and then, “Say, does it make you proud to be coming home to that?”
It is true that when they swaggered up North River, the debris of docks and warehouses and factories on the riverbank seemed rather littered. The thickening heat glared round them, and the river was greasy with swirls of fantastically colored oil films. But as they were cumbersomely warped into the dock, as Sam heard the good American shouts from the dark hedge of people waiting on the pier; “Attaboy!” and “Where’d you get the monocle?” and “How’d you leave Mary?” and “Oh, come on—have a heart!—sneak me one bottle ashore!”—he muttered over and over, “It’s kind of nice to be home!”
Then there were the customs.
Not that the inspectors were so impolite as is fabled, but it is irritating to be suspected of smuggling liquor, particularly when, like Sam, you are smuggling liquor. He had a quart of prewar Scotch among the suits in a wardrobe trunk, and the inspector found it, immediately.
“What’s this? What d’you call this?”
“Why! It looks like a bottle!” said Sam, affably. “I can’t imagine how it got there! Let me present it to you.”
And they fined him five dollars. But what was worse was that being destitute of liquor caused in Sam a most indignant thirst—Sam Dodsworth, who had never in his life taken a drink before noon, except once after a certain football game in New Haven. He had to have—
The taxi-driver—Sam came to him after hours of paying customs-fees, of getting necessitous porters, in a high state of boredom, to trundle his luggage along the immensity of cement floor and through to freedom, of seeing it shot perilously down the most efficient
