Читать книгу American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' - Julian Street - Страница 6

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On journeys through the States we start,

… We willing learners of all, teachers of all, lovers of all.

We dwell a while in every city and town …

—Walt Whitman.

Had my companion and I never crossed the continent together, had we never gone "abroad at home," I might have curbed my impatience at the beginning of our second voyage. But from the time we returned from our first journey, after having spent some months in trying, as some one put it, to "discover America," I felt the gnawings of excited appetite. The vast sweep of the country continually suggested to me some great delectable repast: a banquet spread for a hundred million guests; and having discovered myself unable, in the time first allotted, to devour more than part of it—a strip across the table, as it were, stretching from New York on one side to San Francisco on the other—I have hungered impatiently for more. Indeed, to be quite honest, I should like to try to eat it all.

Months before our actual departure for the South the day for leaving was appointed; days before we fixed upon our train; hours before I bought my ticket. And then, when my trunks had left the house, when my taxicab was ordered and my faithful battered suitcase stood packed to bulging in the hall, my companion, the Illustrator, telephoned to say that certain drawings he must finish before leaving were not done, that he would be unable to go with me that afternoon, as planned, but must wait until the midnight train.

Had the first leap been a long one I should have waited for him, but the distance from New York to the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line is short, and I knew that he would join me on the threshold of the South next morning. Therefore I told him I would leave that afternoon as originally proposed, and gave him, in excuse, every reason I could think of, save the real one: namely, my impatience. I told him that I wished to make the initial trip by day to avoid the discomforts of the sleeping car, that I had engaged hotel accommodations for the night by wire, that friends were coming down to see me off.

Nor were these arguments without truth. I believe in telling the truth. The truth is good enough for any one at any time—except, perhaps, when there is a point to be carried, and even then some vestige of it should, if convenient, be preserved. Thus, for example, it is quite true that I prefer the conversation of my fellow travelers, dull though it may be, to the stertorous sounds they make by night; so, too, if I had not telegraphed for rooms, it was merely because I had forgotten to—and that I remedied immediately; while as to the statement that friends were to see me off, that was absolutely and literally accurate. Friends had, indeed, signified their purpose to meet me at the station for last farewells, and had, furthermore, remarked upon the very slight show of enthusiasm with which I heard the news.

The fact is, I do not like to be seen off. Least of all, do I like to be seen off by those who are dear to me. If the thing must be done, I prefer it to be done by strangers—committees from chambers of commerce and the like, who have no interest in me save the hope that I will live to write agreeably of their city—of the civic center, the fertilizer works, and the charming new abattoir. Seeing me off for the most practical of reasons, such gentlemen are invariably efficient. They provide an equipage, and there have even been times when, in the final hurried moments, they have helped me to jam the last things into my trunks and bags. One of them politely takes my suitcase, another kindly checks my baggage, and all in order that a third, who is usually the secretary of the chamber of commerce, may regale me with inspiring statistics concerning the population of "our city," the seating capacity of the auditorium, the number of banks, the amount of their clearings, and the quantity of belt buckles annually manufactured. When the train is ready we exchange polite expressions of regret at parting: expressions reminiscent of those little speeches which the King of England and the Emperor of Germany used to make at parting in the old days before they found each other out and began dropping high explosives on each other's roofs.

Such a committee, feeling no emotion (except perhaps relief) at seeing me depart, may be useful. Not so with friends and loved ones. Useful as they may be in the great crises of life, they are but disturbing elements in the small ones. Those who would die for us seldom check our trunks.

By this I do not mean to imply that either of the two delightful creatures who came to the Pennsylvania Terminal to bid me good-by would die for me. That one has lived for me and that both attempt to regulate my conduct is more than enough. Hardly had I alighted from my taxicab, hardly had the redcap seized my suitcase, when, with sweet smiles and a twinkling of daintily shod feet, they came. Fancy their having arrived ahead of me! Fancy their having come like a pair of angels through the rain to see me off! Enough to turn a man's head! It did turn mine; and I noticed that, as they approached, the heads of other men were turning too.

Flattered to befuddlement, I greeted them and started with them automatically in the direction of the concourse, forgetting entirely the driver of my taxicab, who, however, took in the situation and set up a great shout—whereat I returned hastily and overpaid him.

This accomplished, I rejoined my companions and, with a radiant dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde, equally delectable, at the other, moved across the concourse.

How gay they were as we strolled along! How amusing were their prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South. Small wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going.

Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great vaulted chamber, we stopped.

"Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly followed.

Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention of the subject distracted my attention for the moment from the Loreleien, stirred my drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check.

My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly brushed aside.

"Oh, no!" they cried. "We shall go with you."

I gave in at once—one always does with them—and inquired of the porter the location of the baggage room. He looked somewhat fatigued as he replied:

"It's away back there where we come from, boss."

It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have been delightful.

"Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled windows. He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible.

As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the morning's shopping expedition—hat-hunting, they called it—in the rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman, perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch and demanded:

"Baggage checked?"

Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the claim checks.

"How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the girl with the gray eyes.

"Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the checks.

"That doesn't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the checks and handed them to the baggageman. "She asked how long you'd stay in Baltimore, and you said: 'Yes, indeed.'"

"About a week I meant to say."

"Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes.

"We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep pushing on. There are so many places in the South to see."

"My sister has just been there, and she—"

"Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman.

"Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid attention to our conversation he might have known.

"You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your sister—?"

"She just came home from there, and says that—"

"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience.

"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience. I began to feel in various pockets

I began again to feel in various pockets.

"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too."

I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.

"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.

"Like what?"

"Why, the southern accent."

"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.

"Yes," I answered them both at once.

"Oh, you do?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.

"Why, yes; I think—"

"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.

I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk. I judged that he had finished with me for the moment.

"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?"

"Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for doing so?"

"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such egotism?"

"He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I wouldn't be a man for—"

"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.

I paid him.

"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we started to move off.

"I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door.

"Hay!" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks!"

I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman.

This time the porter meant to take no chances.

"What train, boss?" he asked.

"The Congressional Limited."

"You got jus' four minutes."

"Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes.

"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you prided yourself on always having time to spare?"

"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case—"

"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.

Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in my change pocket. I can't imagine how I came to put them there.

"But in this case—what?" The violet eyes looked threatening as their owner put the question.

"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: "In this case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by."

There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses. Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to be kissed, and that the other very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed them both.

Then I bolted toward the gate.

"Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me.

At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket.

As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.

There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New Jersey meadows. The city is gone. You are even in another State. Far, far behind, bathed in glimmering haze which gives them the appearance of palaces in a mirage, you may see the tops of New York's towering sky-scrapers, dwarfed yet beautified by distance. Outside the wide car window the advertising sign-boards pass to the rear in steady parade, shrieking in strong color of whiskies, tobaccos, pills, chewing gums, cough drops, flours, hams, hotels, soaps, socks, and shows.