Dinner that evening in the faded dining-room of the Hotel Splendide was in the way of being a doleful affair for the folk from Kewanee, aside from Captain Woodhouse, the only persons at table there. Woodhouse, true to the continental tradition of exclusiveness, had isolated himself against possible approach by sitting at the table farthest from the Shermans; his back presented an uncompromising denial of fraternity. As for Mrs. Sherman, the afternoon's visit to the bazaars had been anything but a solace, emphasizing, as it did, their grievous poverty in the midst of a plenty contemptuous of a mere letter of credit. Henry J. was wallowing in the lowest depths of nostalgia; he tortured himself with the reflection that this was lodge night in Kewanee and he would not be sitting in his chair. Miss Kitty contemplated with melancholy the distress of her parents.
A tall slender youth with tired eyes and affecting the blasé slouch of the boulevards appeared in the door and cast about for a choice of tables. Him Mr. Sherman impaled with a glance of disapproval which suddenly changed to wondering recognition. He dropped his fork and jumped to his feet.
"Bless me, mother, if it isn't Willy Kimball from old Kewanee!" Sherman waved his napkin at the young man, summoning him in the name of Kewanee to come and meet the home folks. The tired eyes lighted perceptibly, and a lukewarm smile played about Mr. Kimball's effeminate mouth as he stepped up to the table.
"Why, Mrs. Sherman—and Kitty! And you, Mr. Sherman—charmed!" He accepted the proffered seat by the side of Kitty, receiving their hearty hails with languid politeness. With the sureness of English restraint, Mr. Willy Kimball refused to become excited. He was of the type of exotic Americans who try to forget grandpa's corn-fed hogs and grandma's hand-churned butter. His speech was of Rotten Row and his clothes Piccadilly.
"Terrible business, this!" The youth fluttered his hands feebly. "All this harrying about and peeping at passports by every silly officer one meets. I'm afraid I'll have to go over to America until it's all over—on my way now, in fact."
"Afraid!" Sherman sniffed loudly, and appraised Mr. Kimball's tailoring with a disapproving eye. "Well, Willy, it would be too bad if you had to go back to Kewanee after your many years in Paris, France; now, wouldn't it?"
Kimball turned to the women for sympathy. "Reserved a compartment to come down from Paris. Beastly treatment. Held up at every city—other people crowded in my apartment, though I'd paid to have it alone, of course—soldier chap comes along and seizes my valet and makes him join the colors and all that sort——"
"Huh! Your father managed to worry along without a val-lay, and he was respected in Kewanee." This in disgust from Henry J.
Kitty flashed a reproving glance at her father and deftly turned the expatriate into a recounting of his adventures. Under her unaffected lead the youth, who shuddered inwardly at the appellation of "Willy," thawed considerably, and soon there was an animated swapping of reminiscences of the Great Terror—hours on end before the banks and express offices, dodging of police impositions, scrambling for steamer accommodations—all that went to compose the refugee Americans' great epic of August, 1914.
Sherman took pride in his superior adventures: "Five times arrested between Berlin and Gibraltar, and what I said to that Dutchman on the Swiss frontier was enough to make his hair curl."
"Tell you what, Willy: you come on back to Kewanee with us, and mother and you'll lecture before the Thursday Afternoon Ladies' Literary Club," Sherman boomed, with a hearty blow of the hand between Willy's shoulder blades. "I'll have Ed Porter announce it in advance in the Daily Enterprise, and we'll have the whole town there to listen. 'Ezra Kimball's Boy Tells Thrilling Tale of War's Alarms.' That's the way the head-lines'll read in the Enterprise next week."
The expatriate shivered and tried to smile.
"We'll let mother do the lecturing," Kitty came to his rescue. "'How to Live in Europe on a Letter of Discredit.' That will have all the gossips of Kewanee buzzing, mother."
The meal drew to a close happily in contrast to its beginning. Mrs. Sherman and her daughter rose to pass out into the reception room. Sherman and Kimball lingered.
"Ah-h, Willy——"
"Mr. Sherman——"
Both began in unison, each somewhat furtive and shamefaced.
"Have you any money?" The queries were voiced as one. For an instant confusion; then the older man looked up into the younger's face—a bit flushed it was—and guffawed.
"Not a postage stamp, Willy! I guess we're both beggars, and if mother and Kitty didn't have five trunks between them this Swiss holdup man who says he's proprietor of this way-station hotel wouldn't trust us for a fried egg."
"Same here," admitted Kimball. "I'm badly bent."
"They can't keep us down—us Americans!" Sherman cheered, taking the youth's arm and piloting him out into the reception room. "We'll find a way out if we have to cable for a warship to come and get us."
Just as Sherman and Kimball emerged from the dining-room, there was a diversion out beyond the glass doors on Waterport Street. A small cart drew up; from its seat jumped a young woman in a duster and with a heavy automobile veil swathed under her chin. To the Arab porter who had bounded out to the street she gave directions for the removal from the cart of her baggage, two heavy suit-cases and two ponderous osier baskets. These latter she was particularly tender of, following them into the hotel's reception room and directing where they should be put before the desk.
The newcomer was Jane Gerson, Hildebrand's buyer, at the end of her gasoline flight from Paris. Cool, capable, self-reliant as on the night she saw the bastions of the capital's outer forts fade under the white spikes of the search-lights, Jane strode up the desk to face the smiling Almer.
"Is this a fortress or a hotel?" she challenged.
"A hotel, lady, a hotel," Almer purred. "A nice room—yes. Will the lady be with us long?"
"Heaven forbid! The lady is going to be on the first ship leaving for New York. And if there are no ships, I'll look over the stock of coal barges you have in your harbor." She seized a pen and dashed her signature on the register. The Shermans had pricked up their ears at the newcomer's first words. Now Henry J. pressed forward, his face glowing welcome.
"An American—a simon-pure citizen of the United States—I thought so. Welcome to the little old Rock!" He took both the girl's hands impulsively and pumped them. Mrs. Sherman, Kitty and Willy Kimball crowded around, and the clatter of voices was instantaneous: "By auto from Paris; goodness me!" "Not a thing to eat for three days but rye bread!" "From Strassburg to Luneville in a farmer's wagon!" Each in a whirlwind of ejaculation tried to outdo the other's story of hardship and privation.
The front doors opened again, and the sergeant and guard who had earlier carried off Fritz, the barber, entered. Again gun butts thumped ominously. Jane looked over her shoulder at the khaki-coated men, and confided in the Shermans:
"I think that man's been following me ever since I landed from the ferry."
"I have," answered the sergeant, stepping briskly forward and saluting. "You are a stranger on the Rock. You come here from——"
"From Paris, by motor, to the town across the bay; then over here on the ferry," the girl answered promptly. "What about it?"
"Your name?"
"Jane Gerson. Yes, yes, it sounds German, I know. But that's not my fault. I'm an American—a red-hot American, too, for the last two weeks."
The sergeant's face was wooden.
"Where are you going?"
"To New York, on the Saxonia, just as soon as I can. And the British army can't stop me."
"Indeed!" The sergeant permitted himself a fleeting smile. "From Paris by motor, eh? Your passports, please."
"I haven't any," Jane retorted, with a shade of defiance. "They were taken from me in Spain, just over the French border, and were not returned."
The sergeant raised his eyebrows in surprise not unmixed with irony. He pointed to the two big osier baskets, demanding to know what they contained.
"Gowns—the last gowns made in Paris before the crash. Fashion's last gasp. I am a buyer of gowns for Hildebrand's store in New York."
Ecstatic gurgles of pleasure from Mrs. Sherman and her daughter greeted this announcement. They pressed about the baskets and regarded them lovingly.
The sergeant pushed them away and tried to throw back the covers.
"Open your baggage—all of it!" he commanded snappishly.
Jane, explaining over her shoulder to the women, stooped to fumble with the hasps.
"Seventy of the darlingest gowns—the very last Paul Poiret and Paquin and Worth made before they closed shop and marched away with their regiments. You shall see every one of them."
"Hurry, please, my time's limited!" the sergeant barked.
"I should think it would be—you're so charming," Jane flung back over her shoulder, and she raised the tops of the baskets. The other women pushed forward with subdued coos.
The sergeant plunged his hand under a mass of colored fluffiness, groped for a minute, and brought forth a long roll of heavy paper. With a fi............