Yesterday evening when we started out on a walk, at dusk, a party
appeared and waylaid us on our path, they had with them some children,
to whom they wished,--they said--to show Charlie Chaplin.
It was a painful moment, he was shy and unprepared, the children gaped,
conversation was halting.
[Illustration: “CHARLIE” TELLS DICK THE STORY OF THE WRECKED SHIP ON
THE BEACH
(Photograph by Clare Sheridan)
]
This morning five motors full of children arrived, being the entire
family, nephews and nieces of the landowner. The camp was disarrayed,
we had planned our departure. Later two reporters appeared and
undaunted by the fact that Charlie was not in camp they set out over
the dunes in search of him.
I watched them walking back together, Charlie, head bowed the picture
of dejection. His last morning had been spoiled, the beauty and peace,
so hard to attain, seemed to have been a little tarnished. We left
hurriedly, leaving the reporters in possession of the cherished spot
that we had not time to look at lingeringly.
“It was time we left--” he said, and I visualised to myself, Charlie
hunted, flying from pursuers, lost to view for perhaps 4 days, maybe 5,
then discovered, and fleeing again “ad infinitem.” For him no peace.
When at the end of a 70 mile drive we reached his house he ordered
tea. We sat in chairs by an electric lamp, and tried to talk. We found
ourselves making conversation to one another with difficulty. He looked
at me as strangely as I looked at him, and then he said:
“You know what’s the matter--We don’t know each other.”
And it was true. I was talking not with the elemental wild-haired
Charlie of the campfire, nor yet with Charlie Chaplin of the films, but
with a neatly dressed, smooth-haired sophisticated young man I didn’t
even know by sight. Civilization and its trappings have changed us
both. The past seemed tinged with unreality.
* * * * *
The next day (Nov. 12, 1921) we said goodbye to the sunshine, the
orange trees, the avenues of date palms and took the “sunset route” for
New York. Charlie came to see us off, and was allowed past the barrier
onto the departure platform, a privilege which made him conspicuous.
Later, the conductor took Dick aside and asked him if he was Jackie
Coogan’s brother! Four whole days and nights we travelled over this
endless and tremendous country. Dick said he wished the train were a
Mexican train, and I knew what he meant. In Mexico the monotony would
have been relieved by an occasional good breakdown, which would have
enabled us to bathe in wayside ponds and rivers, or explore woods.
But the “Sunset Express” went on and on, day after day, hardly ever
stopping. Little by little the dust of the desert and the sunshine of
California gave way to greyness and cold, until suddenly one morning we
found ourselves in Chicago.
There was no temptation to linger in Chicago. We went to a store and
bought some warm clothes, and caught the very next train out.
We got back to New York just in time for Louise and Dick to sail for
England on the _Baltic_. I had made up my mind some time before that
I must have Margaret. The ache caused by our separation grew worse,
not better. So I risked the possibility of Dick being kidnapped by the
family in England and sent him to fetch her.
During the ten days he was there I received about three cables a day
from various relations, containing every variety of excuse for the
children remaining over there. I was denying them “their British
birthright” was the grandiose statement. I felt none too happy and
secure until a few days before Xmas a wireless from the _Celtic_
announced their triumphant return. It was a triumph indeed, after
six years work, the realisation of this dream, that we should have a
home together. As the ship came gliding alongside the quay I saw the
pink radiant face, the luminously bright eyes of the little daughter
I had not seen for a year. L. and she shouted to me across the narrow
water space: “Mummie! Am I ever to leave you again?” I was struck
by the strangeness of her English accent. “It will soon go!” she
said when I commented on it (and it surely is fading fast!). Dick
meanwhile, according to the letters that accompanied him, scandalised
the already overstrained English relations by saying that “God save
the King” was quite “dreadfully awful,” and preferring America to
England when asked his opinion. They do not understand that we do not
love England less, nor America more; we regard the world as ours and
our right is to take the best wherever we find it. Why should one be
confined to one country? Italy is my garden, Russia is my church,
England is my sleeping-chamber, the United States my work-shop. In
my mother’s country there is an atmosphere of hope, a vitality and a
work incentive that does not exist any more in the old world. This is
called “the land of promise” and people come as to no other country--in
thousand and thousands, of all races, creeds and classes. There is
no disloyalty implied to the land of one’s birth in seeking fortune
beyond its shores. The blood in the veins of some of us may belong to
varying countries and conflicting races, and as the only hope for the
future peace of the world is in internationalism this spirit should be
encouraged--not deplored.