Back at the hotel I encountered the Yankee vice-consul, a gentleman from Bedford, Indiana. I told him my sad plight, and he said if matters got too serious his office would undertake to help.
With his assurances to comfort me, I have retired to my room to write, to my room as big as Texas and furnished with all the modern inconveniences.
Saturday, August 18. Paris.
It is Saturday night and they have hot water, but before I take advantage of it I must recount the thrilling experiences of the day.
After a sidewalk breakfast of “oofs” and so-called café in Bordeaux, I went to keep my engagement at court. It was apparent that I was not the only suspect. The walk outside and the room within were crowded with shipmates, most of them from the second cabin, all looking scared to death.
I stood in line till I realized that I must make it snappy if I wanted to catch the eleven-five for Paris; then I butted my way into the august presence of Him of the Beard.
He recognized me at once and told me with his hands to go upstairs. In a room above I found the English-speaking cross-examiner, with the accent on the cross.
He waved me to a chair and began his offensive.
“Monsieur Laudanum,” he said, “when I asked you yesterday how you expected to get to Belgium, you said something about a taxi. That answer was not satisfactory. You have not explained anything to us. I do not believe we can allow you to leave Bordeaux.”
“All right, sir.” I arose.
“Sit down!” he barked. “Now tell me if you have any explanations to make.”
“Nothing beyond what I said yesterday. I have come here to write. I want to go to Paris, and when I arrive there I will find out where else I will be permitted to go.”
“It seems very strange to me that you have no papers.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you any?”
I searched my pockets and produced a used-up check book on a Chicago bank. The ogre read every little stub and I felt flattered by his absorbed interest. When he had spent some five minutes on the last one, which recorded a certain painful transaction between me and a man-eating garage, he returned my book and said: “You don’t satisfy me at all. You will have to stay here.”
“Suppose,” said I, “that the American consul vouches for me.”
“That will make no difference. You do not seem to realize that we are at war.”
“Not with America.”
“I don’t know your nationality.”
“I thought,” said I, “that my passport hinted at it.”
“You will have to stay in Bordeaux,” was his pertinent reply.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and arose again.
“Sit down,” said he, “and wait a minute.”
He was out of the room five years.
“If he ever does come back,” I thought, “it will be in the company of five or six large gendarmes.”
But when he came back he came alone.
“Here,” he said abruptly, “is your passport. You will be permitted to go to Paris. We will keep track of you there.” And he bowed me out of the joint.
The crowd downstairs seemed as great as ever, and as scared. I picked my way through it with my head held high, a free man.
I decided on a fiacre for my trip from hotel to station. It would be safer, I thought. But I learned, on our interminable way, that defensive fighting in the streets of Bordeaux is far more terrifying, far more dangerous than the aggressive taxi kind. We were run into twice and just missed more times than I could count, and besides my conveyance was always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ’Spite all the talk of periscopes and subs, the journey across the ocean was parlor croquet compared to my fiacre ride in Bordeaux.
While awaiting my turn at the ticket window I observed at the gate a French soldier wearing a large businesslike bayonet. “Probably to punch tickets with,” I thought, but was mistaken. Another gentleman attended to that duty, and the soldier did not give me so much as the honor of a glance.
Outside on the platform were a few of the Red Cross and Y.M.C.A. men of our ship, and I learned from them that one of their number had suffered a sadder fate than I. He had tried to get by on a Holland passport, viséed at the French consulate in New York, and been quietly but firmly persuaded to take the next boat back home.
I shared a compartment on the train with a native of the Bronx, and a French lady who just couldn’t make her eyes behave, and two bored-looking French gentlemen of past middle age, not to mention in detail much more baggage than there was room for. The lady and the two gentlemen wore gloves, which made the Bronxite and me feel very bourgeois.
Our train crew, with the possible exception of the engineer and fireman whom I didn’t see, was female, and, thinking I might some time require the services of the porter, I looked in my dictionary for the feminine of George.
To try my knowledge of française, I had purchased at the station a copy of Le Cri de Paris. I found that I could read it very easily by consulting the dictionary every time I came to a word.
But the scenery and the people were more interesting than Le Cri, the former especially. Perfect automobile roads, lined with trees; fields, and truck gardens in which aged men and women, young girls and little boys were at work; green hills and valleys; winding rivers and brooks, and an occasional château or a town of fascinating architecture—these helped to make us forget the heat and dust of the trip and the earsplitting shrieks of our engines.
