The boat was to leave at midnight and to make sure of being on time, John left his hotel and entered a taxi at half past ten. That is, he thought it was half past ten. His watch had always kept perfect time and he trusted it implicitly, paying no attention to the New York clocks. Actually it was half past eleven in New York, whatever it was in Michigan.
Moreover, the driver of the taxi he selected was very drunk. He did not help with the baggage; merely waited till John had put it in the car and then asked, “Where to, buddy?”
“The Cunard docks.”
“Oh, crossing the old pond, hey?”
“Yes.”
“America’s good enough for me.”
The starter wouldn’t work and the driver had to get out and crank. The first three attempts resulted in the crank slipping out of the cranker’s hand and the cranker sitting down abruptly on the pavement. In about twelve minutes he had the engine going.
“Now then, where did you say?”
“The Cunard Line.”
“Where is it at? What street? What pier?”
“I suppose I’ve got the number of the pier on my ticket, but it’s a lot of trouble to get it out. I don’t know what street it’s on, but you certainly ought to.”
“What do you want to see Europe for? Ain’t America good enough for you?”
“Come on; let’s go.”
“What’s the use of going if you don’t know where?”
“Ask somebody where the Cunard pier is.”
“Oh, we can do it easier than that. Let’s see, we’re at Seventieth Street. I’ll run over to the river and then cruise downtown till we see the sign. We can’t miss it that way.”
Well, the story goes that they got as far as Pier 97 and a big liner was just whistling its last warning, and by running as fast as he could with his heavy bags, John just managed to dash up the gangplank before they pulled it in.
In five minutes he learned from the purser that his watch was an hour slow, that he was aboard an Italian boat bound for Naples and that under no circumstances would the boat stop at any port in France and drop him off.
We know nothing of his experiences abroad excepting that he spent four months searching Paris for the composer and learned later that the latter had been in Naples all the time, but had completed his libretto and gone back to America; that this was such a blow to John that he stayed in Paris four years, drinking and writing French libretti, two of which were accepted, set to music and tried out at the Opéra Comique, where they were terrible flops; that he never found his trunk which had come to Cherbourg on the Cunard Line, and that he grew better-looking and more absentminded every day of his life.
He finally went to Havre and boarded a boat for home. Some of his friends said he probably thought the boat was bound for Finland. But the truth was that his mother had written to warn him that her investments had gone bad and she couldn’t send him any more money.
At the hometown station to meet him were his sister Charlotte and Beth Beasley, the latter squeezing his hand until it hurt and giving him a barrage of adoring looks that made him feel silly. He learned from Charlotte that his mother was bedridden and nearly broke. (She did not add that a great deal of the Knowles money had been burnt up in supplying her with sport cars, sport clothes, evening boyfriends, notably Wallie Blair.) It was, gowns and liquor with which to entertain her however, Miss Beasley’s car that they were using now, a car that couldn’t have cost under twelve thousand.
For Miss Beasley was the daughter of one of the town’s two wealthiest men, J. L. Beasley and H. N. Comerford. I mean she was J. L.’s daughter and not the daughter of both of them. H. N. had a daughter of his own, Irene. The Comerfords had moved to town a year or so after John Knowles’ departure, and Comerford and Beasley had established a brokerage office, with ticker service and a blackboard and everything. They couldn’t count the money they were making.
“Wait till you meet Irene Comerford,” said Charlotte. “She’s simply beautiful and all the men are crazy about her.”
“But you’d better not let yourself be,” said Beth. “She’s engaged to Sam Drake.”
“How long has Mother been sick?” asked John.
“Oh, since last winter.”
“Sam Drake is a regular Ed Wynn,” said Beth. “You’ll die!”
They were at the house. John jumped out, corralled his baggage and rushed in, forgetting to thank Miss Beasley for the ride.
“He’s just as absentminded as ever,” said Charlotte apologetically. “More so, I believe.”
“But oh! how wonderful-looking!” said Beth in a voice that contained a tear.
“You’ll come in a minute, won’t you?”
“Well, only for a minute, if you think I won’t be in the way. I’ve got to go for Daddy in a quarter of an hour.”
But if “Daddy” was really waiting for her, he waited two hours and a quarter, for Beth was not going to leave until she had seen John again, and John was upstairs a long time, talking to his mother.
When he came down, Charlotte went up, leaving Beth and him alone.
“Oh, John, it’s so heavenly to have you home again! We all missed you terribly, and I guess you know who missed you most.”
“Mother did seem glad to see me.”
“I wasn’t speaking of your mother.”
“Did you get over to Chicago during the opera season?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I was wondering if they did Taylor’s new
