I
I had made up my mind that when my vacation came I would spend it
seeking adventures. I have always wished for adventures, but, though I
am old enough--I was twenty-five last October--and have always gone
half-way to meet them, adventures avoid me. Kinney says it is my fault.
He holds that if you want adventures you must go after them.
Kinney sits next to me at Joyce & Carboy's, the woollen manufacturers,
where I am a stenographer, and Kinney is a clerk, and we both have rooms
at Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house. Kinney is only a year older than myself,
but he is always meeting with adventures. At night, when I have sat up
late reading law, so that I may fit myself for court reporting, and in
the hope that some day I may become a member of the bar, he will knock
at my door and tell me some surprising thing that has just happened to
him. Sometimes he has followed a fire-engine and helped people from a
fire-escape, or he has pulled the shield off a policeman, or at the bar
of the Hotel Knickerbocker has made friends with a stranger, who turns
out to be no less than a nobleman or an actor. And women, especially
beautiful women, are always pursuing Kinney in taxicabs and calling upon
him for assistance. Just to look at Kinney, without knowing how clever
he is at getting people out of their difficulties, he does not appear to
be a man to whom you would turn in time of trouble. You would think
women in distress would appeal to some one bigger and stronger; would
sooner ask a policeman. But, on the contrary, it is to Kinney that women
always run, especially, as I have said, beautiful women. Nothing of the
sort ever happens to me. I suppose, as Kinney says, it is because he was
born and brought up in New York City and looks and acts like a New York
man, while I, until a year ago, have always lived at Fairport. Fairport
is a very pretty harbor, but it does not train one for adventures. We
arranged to take our vacation at the same time, and together. At least
Kinney so arranged it. I see a good deal of him, and in looking forward
to my vacation, not the least pleasant feature of it was that everything
connected with Joyce & Carboy and Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house would be
left behind me. But when Kinney proposed we should go together, I could
not see how, without being rude, I could refuse his company, and when he
pointed out that for an expedition in search of adventure I could not
select a better guide, I felt that he was right.
"Sometimes," he said, "I can see you don't believe that half the things
I tell you have happened to me, really have happened. Now, isn't that
so?"
To find the answer that would not hurt his feelings I hesitated, but he
did not wait for my answer. He seldom does.
"Well, on this trip," he went on, "you will see Kinney on the job. You
won't have to take my word for it. You will see adventures walk up and
eat out of my hand."
Our vacation came on the first of September, but we began to plan for it
in April, and up to the night before we left New York we never ceased
planning. Our difficulty was that having been brought up at Fairport,
which is on the Sound, north of New London, I was homesick for a smell
of salt marshes and for the sight of water and ships. Though they were
only schooners carrying cement, I wanted to sit in the sun on the
string-piece of a wharf and watch them. I wanted to beat about the
harbor in a catboat, and feel the tug and pull of the tiller. Kinney
protested that that was no way to spend a vacation or to invite
adventure. His face was set against Fairport. The conversation of
clam-diggers, he said, did not appeal to him; and he complained that at
Fairport our only chance of adventure would be my capsizing the catboat
or robbing a lobster-pot. He insisted we should go to the mountains,
where we would meet what he always calls "our best people." In
September, he explained, everybody goes to the mountains to recuperate
after the enervating atmosphere of the sea-shore. To this I objected
that the little sea air we had inhaled at Mrs. Shaw's basement
dining-room and in the subway need cause us no anxiety. And so, along
these lines, throughout the sleepless, sultry nights of June, July, and
August, we fought it out. There was not a summer resort within five
hundred miles of New York City we did not consider. From the information
bureaus and passenger agents of every railroad leaving New York, Kinney
procured a library of timetables, maps, folders, and pamphlets,
illustrated with the most attractive pictures of summer hotels, golf
links, tennis courts, and boat-houses. For two months he carried on a
correspondence with the proprietors of these hotels; and in comparing
the different prices they asked him for suites of rooms and sun parlors
derived constant satisfaction.
"The Outlook House," he would announce, "wants twenty-four dollars a day
for bedroom, parlor, and private bath. While for the same accommodations
the Carteret Arms asks only twenty. But the Carteret has no tennis
court; and then again, the Outlook has no garage, nor are dogs allowed
in the bedrooms."
As Kinney could not play lawn tennis, and as neither of us owned an
automobile or a dog, or twenty-four dollars, these details to me seemed
superfluous, but there was no health in pointing that out to Kinney.
Because, as he himself says, he has so vivid an imagination that what he
lacks he can "make believe" he has, and the pleasure of possession is
his.
Kinney gives a great deal of thought to his clothes, and the question of
what he should wear on his vacation was upon his mind. When I said I
thought it was nothing to worry about, he snorted indignantly. "_You_
wouldn't!" he said. "If _I'd_ been brought up in a catboat, and had a
tan like a red Indian, and hair like a Broadway blonde, I wouldn't worry
either. Mrs. Shaw says you look exactly like a British peer in
disguise." I had never seen a British peer, with or without his
disguise, and I admit I was interested.
"Why are the girls in this house," demanded Kinney, "always running to
your room to borrow matches? Because they admire your _clothes_? If
they're crazy about clothes, why don't they come to _me_ for matches?"
"You are always out at night," I said.
"You know that's not the answer," he protested. "Why do the typewriter
girls at the office always go to _you_ to sharpen their pencils and tell
them how to spell the hard words? Why do the girls in the lunch-rooms
serve you first? Because they're hypnotized by your clothes? Is _that_
it?"
"Do they?" I asked; "I hadn't noticed."
Kinney snorted and tossed up his arms. "He hadn't noticed!" he kept
repeating. "He hadn't noticed!" For his vacation Kinney bought a
second-hand suit-case. It was covered with labels of hotels in France
and Switzerland.
"Joe," I said, "if you carry that bag you will be a walking falsehood."
Kinney's name is Joseph Forbes Kinney; he dropped the Joseph because he
said it did not appear often enough in the _Social Register_, and could
be found only in the Old Testament, and he has asked me to call him
Forbes. Having first known him as "Joe," I occasionally forget.
"My name is _not_ Joe," he said sternly, "and I have as much right to
carry a second-hand bag as a new one. The bag says _it_ has been to
Europe. It does not say that _I_ have been there."
"But, you probably will," I pointed out, "and then some one who has
really visited those places--"
"Listen!" commanded Kinney. "If you want adventures you must be somebody
of importance. No one will go shares in an adventure with Joe Kinney, a
twenty-dollar-a-week clerk, the human adding machine, the hall-room boy.
But Forbes Kinney, Esq., with a bag from Europe, and a Harvard ribbon
round his hat--"
"Is that a Harvard ribbon round your hat?" I asked.
"It is!" declared Kinney; "and I have a Yale ribbon, and a Turf Club
ribbon, too. They come on hooks, and you hook 'em on to match your
clothes, or the company you keep. And, what's more," he continued, with
some heat, "I've borrowed a tennis racket and a golf bag full of sticks,
and you take care you don't give me away."
"I see," I returned, "that you are going to get us into a lot of
trouble."
"I was thinking," said Kinney, looking at me rather doubtfully, "it
might help a lot if for the first week you acted as my secretary, and
during the second week I was your secretary."
Sometimes, when Mr. Joyce goes on a business trip, he takes me with him
as his private stenographer, and the change from office work is very
pleasant; but I could not see why I should spend one week of my holiday
writing letters for Kinney.
"You wouldn't write any letters," he explained. "But if I could tell
people you were my private secretary, it would naturally give me a
certain importance."
"If it will make you any happier," I said, "you can tell people I am a
British peer in disguise."
"There is no use in being nasty about it," protested Kinney. "I am only
trying to show you a way that would lead to adventure."
"It surely would!" I assented. "It would lead us to jail."
The last week in August came, and, as to where we were to go we still
were undecided, I suggested we leave it to chance.
"The first thing," I pointed out, "is to get away from this awful city.
The second thing is to get away cheaply. Let us write down the names of
the summer resorts to which we can travel by rail or by boat for two
dollars and put them in a hat. The name of the place we draw will be the
one for which we start Saturday afternoon. The idea," I urged, "is in
itself full of adventure."
Kinney agreed, but reluctantly. What chiefly disturbed him was the
thought that the places near New York to which one could travel for so
little money were not likely to be fashionable.
"I have a terrible fear," he declared, "that, with this limit of yours,
we will wake up in Asbury Park."
Friday night came and found us prepared for departure, and at midnight
we held our lottery. In a pillow-case we placed twenty slips of paper,
on each of which was written the name of a summer resort. Ten of these
places were selected by Kinney, and ten by myself. Kinney dramatically
rolled up his sleeve, and, plunging his bared arm into our grab-bag,
drew out a slip of paper and read aloud: "New Bedford, via New Bedford
Steamboat Line." The choice was one of mine.
"New Bedford!" shouted Kinney. His tone expressed the keenest
disappointment. "It's a mill town!" he exclaimed. "It's full of cotton
mills."
"That may be," I protested. "But it's also a most picturesque old
seaport, one of the oldest in America. You can see whaling vessels at
the wharfs there, and wooden figure-heads, and harpoons--"
"Is this an expedition to dig up buried cities," interrupted Kinney, "or
a pleasure trip? I don't _want_ to see harpoons! I wouldn't know a
harpoon if you stuck one into me. I prefer to see hatpins."
The _Patience_ did not sail until six o'clock, but we were so anxious to
put New York behind us that at five we were on board. Our cabin was an
outside one with two berths. After placing our suitcases in it, we
collected camp-chairs and settled ourselves in a cool place on the boat
deck. Kinney had bought all the afternoon papers, and, as later I had
reason to remember, was greatly interested over the fact that the young
Earl of Ivy had at last arrived in this country. For some weeks the
papers had been giving more space than seemed necessary to that young
Irishman and to the young lady he was coming over to marry. There had
been pictures of his different country houses, pictures of himself; in
uniform, in the robes he wore at the coronation, on a polo pony, as
Master of Fox-hounds. And there had been pictures of Miss Aldrich, and
of _her_ country places at Newport and on the Hudson. From the afternoon
papers Kinney learned that, having sailed under his family name of
Meehan, the young man and Lady Moya, his sister, had that morning landed
in New York, but before the reporters had discovered them, had escaped
from the wharf and disappeared.
"'Inquiries at the different hotels,'" read Kinney impressively,
"'failed to establish the whereabouts of his lordship and Lady Moya, and
it is believed they at once left by train for Newport.'"
With awe Kinney pointed at the red funnels of the _Mauretania_.
"There is the boat that brought them to America," he said. "I see," he
added, "that in this picture of him playing golf he wears one of those
knit jackets the Eiselbaum has just marked down to three dollars and
seventy-five cents. I wish--" he added regretfully.
"You can get one at New Bedford," I suggested.
"I wish," he continued, "we had gone to Newport. All of our _best_
people will be there for the wedding. It is the most important social
event of the season. You might almost call it an alliance."
I went forward to watch them take on the freight, and Kinney stationed
himself at the rail above the passengers' gangway where he could see the
other passengers arrive. He had dressed himself with much care, and was
wearing his Yale hat-band, but when a very smart-looking youth came up
the gangplank wearing a Harvard ribbon, Kinney hastily retired to our
cabin and returned with one like it. A few minutes later I found him and
the young man seated in camp-chairs side by side engaged in a
conversation in which Kinney seemed to bear the greater part. Indeed, to
what Kinney was saying the young man paid not the slightest attention.
Instead, his eyes were fastened on the gangplank below, and when a young
man of his own age, accompanied by a girl in a dress of rough tweed,
appeared upon it, he leaped from his seat. Then with a conscious look at
Kinney, sank back.
The girl in the tweed suit was sufficiently beautiful to cause any man
to rise and to remain standing. She was the most beautiful girl I had
ever seen. She had gray eyes and hair like golden-rod, worn in a fashion
with which I was not familiar, and her face was so lovely that in my
surprise at the sight of it, I felt a sudden catch at my throat, and my
heart stopped with awe, and wonder, and gratitude.
After a brief moment the young man in the real Harvard hat-band rose
restlessly and, with a nod to Kinney, went below. I also rose and
followed him. I had an uncontrollable desire to again look at the girl
with the golden-rod hair. I did not mean that she should see me. Never
before had I done such a thing. But never before had I seen any one who
had moved me so strangely. Seeking her, I walked the length of the main
saloon and back again, but could not find her. The delay gave me time to
see that my conduct was impertinent. The very fact that she was so
lovely to look upon should have been her protection. It afforded me no
excuse to follow and spy upon her. With this thought, I hastily returned
to the upper deck to bury myself in my book. If it did not serve to keep
my mind from the young lady, at least I would prevent my eyes from
causing her annoyance.
I was about to take the chair that the young man had left vacant when
Kinney objected.
"He was very much interested in our conversation," Kinney said, "and he
may return."
I had not noticed any eagerness on the part of the young man to talk to
Kinney or to listen to him, but I did not sit down.
"I should not be surprised a bit," said Kinney, "if that young man is no
end of a swell. He is a Harvard man, and his manner was most polite.
That," explained Kinney, "is one way you can always tell a real swell.
They're not high and mighty with you. Their social position is so secure
that they can do as they like. For instance, did you notice that he
smoked a pipe?"