At half-past two of a sunny, sultry afternoon late in the month of
August, Mr. Benjamin Staff sat at table in the dining-room of the
Authors' Club, moodily munching a morsel of cheese and a segment of
cast-iron biscuit and wondering what he must do to be saved from the
death-in-life of sheer ennui.
A long, lank gentleman, surprisingly thin, of a slightly saturnine cast:
he was not only unhappy, he looked it. He was alone and he was lonely;
he was an American and a man of sentiment (though he didn't look _that_)
and he wanted to go home; to sum up, he found himself in love and in
London at one and the same time, and felt precisely as ill at ease in
the one as in the other of these, to him, exotic circumstances.
Inconceivable as it may seem that any rational man should yearn for New
York in August, that and nothing less was what Staff wanted with all his
heart. He wanted to go home and swelter and be swindled by taxicab
drivers and snubbed by imported head-waiters; he wanted to patronise the
subway at peril of asphyxiation and to walk down Fifth Avenue at that
witching hour when electric globes begin to dot the dusk of
evening--pale moons of a world of steel and stone; he wanted to ride in
elevators instead of lifts, in trolley-cars instead of trams; he wanted
to go to a ball-game at the Polo Grounds, to dine dressed as he pleased,
to insult his intelligence with a roof-garden show if he felt so
disposed, and to see for himself just how much of Town had been torn
down in the two months of his exile and what they were going to put up
in its place. He wanted, in short, his own people; more specifically he
wanted just one of them, meaning to marry her if she'd have him.
Now to be homesick and lovesick all at once is a tremendously disturbing
state of affairs. So influenced, the strongest men are prone to folly.
Staff, for instance, had excellent reason to doubt the advisability of
leaving London just then, with an unfinished play on his hands; but he
was really no more than a mere, normal human being, and he did want very
badly to go home. If it was a sharp struggle, it was a short one that
prefaced his decision.
Of a sudden he rose, called for his bill and paid it, called for his hat
and stick, got them, and resolutely--yet with a furtive air, as one who
would throw a dogging conscience off the scent--fled the premises of his
club, shaping a course through Whitehall and Charing Cross to Cockspur
Street, where, with the unerring instinct of a homing pigeon, he dodged
hastily into the booking-office of a steamship company.
Now Mystery is where one finds it, and Romantic Adventure is as a rule
to be come upon infesting the same identical premises. Mr. Staff was not
seeking mysteries and the last role in the world in which he could fancy
himself was that of Romantic Adventurer. But in retrospect he can see
quite clearly that it was there, in the humdrum and prosaic setting of a
steamship booking-office, that he first stumbled (all unwittingly) into
the toils of his Great Adventure.
When he entered, there was but one other person on the outer or public
side of the booking-counter; and he, sticking close in a far corner and
inaudibly conferring with a clerk, seemed so slight and unpretending a
body that Staff overlooked his existence altogether until circumstances
obliged him to recognise it.
The ignored person, on the other hand, showed an instant interest in the
appearance of Mr. Staff. You might have thought that he had been waiting
for the latter to come in--absurd as this might seem, in view of the
fact that Staff had made up his mind to book for home only within the
last quarter-hour. None the less, on sight of him this other patron of
the company, who had seemed till then to be of two minds as to what he
wanted, straightened up and bent a freshened interest on the cabin-plot
which the clerk had spread out upon the counter for his advisement. And
a moment after Staff had audibly stated his wishes, the other prodded a
certain spot of the chart with a thin and fragile forefinger.
"I'll take this one," he said quietly.
"Upper'r lower?" enquired his clerk.
"Lower."
"Then-Q," said the clerk....
Meanwhile Staff had caught the eye of an impregnable young Englishman
behind the counter; and, the latter coming forward, he opened
negotiations with a succinct statement:
"I want to book on the Autocratic, sailing tomorrow from Liverpool, if
I'm not mistaken."
"Quite so," said his clerk, not without condescension. "For yourself,
may I awsk?"
"For myself alone."
"Then-Q." The clerk fetched a cabin-plot.
"I'm afraid, sir," he said, removing a pencil from behind his ear the
better to make his meaning clear, "there's not much choice. It's quite
late to book, you know; and this is the rush season for westbound
traffic; everything's just about full up."
"I understand; but still you can make room for me somewhere, I hope."
"Oh, yes. Quite so, indeed. It's only a question of what you'd like. Now
we have a _cabine de luxe_--"
"Not for me," said Staff firmly.
"Then-Q.... The only other accommodation I can offer you is a two-berth
stateroom on the main-deck."
"An outside room?"
"Yes, sir. You can see for yourself. Here it is: berths 432 and 433.
You'll find it quite cosy, I'm sure."
Staff nodded, eyeing the cubicle indicated by the pencil-point.
"That'll do," said he. "I'll take it."
"Then-Q. Upper'r lower berth, sir?"
"Both," said Staff, trying not to look conscious--and succeeding.
"Both, sir?"--in tones of pained expostulation.
"Both!"--reiterated in a manner that challenged curiosity.
"Ah," said the clerk wearily, "but, you see, I thought I understood you
to say you were alone."
"I did; but I want privacy."
"I see. Then-Q."--as who should say: _Another mad Amayrican_.
With this the clerk took himself off to procure a blank ticket.
While he waited, Staff was entertained by snatches of a colloquy at the
far end of the counter, where the other patron was being catechised as
to his pedigree by the other booking-clerk. What he heard ran something
to the following effect:
"What did you say the name was, sir?"
"_The_ name?"
"If you please--"
"What name?"
"Your name, sir."
"I didn't say, did I?"
"No, sir."
"Ah! I thought not."
Pause; then the clerk, patiently: "Do you mind giving me your name, sir,
so that I may fill in your ticket?"
"I'd r'ally rather not; but seein' as it's you and you make a point of
it--Iff."