At the edge of the narrow strip of rock-strewn sand which constitutes the beach at Cherbourg, stands the Grand Hotel—familiar name to every traveller in Europe, where even the smallest hamlet has its "Grand." The one at Cherbourg is a rambling, three-storied frame structure, with a glass-enclosed dining-room overlooking the harbour, and here, at ten o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eleven, Daniel Webster was disconsolately eating that frugal meal which is the French for breakfast. Not the great Daniel—all well-informed persons are, of course, aware that he passed to his reward some sixty years ago—but a well-built, fresh-faced, rather good-looking young fellow, still on the right side of thirty, who had most inadvisedly chosen to appear in this world of trouble on the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great Daniel, and who had forthwith been handicapped with his name.
John Webster, an honest farmer of the Connecticut valley, had always been a worshipper at the shrine of the eloquent New Englander, to whom he fancied himself related, and when, having taken to himself a wife, that wife presented him with a son on the very day when the centenary of his hero's birth was being celebrated, the coincidence appeared to him too momentous to be disregarded, and the boy was christened Daniel.
It was a thing no thoughtful father would have done, and as Dan grew older, he resented his name bitterly. It was the subject of brutal jests from his playmates, resulting in numberless pitched battles, and of still more brutal hazing when he pursued his predestined way through the portals of the university at New Haven. Here he was promptly rechristened Ichabod, and his real name was gradually forgotten.
In the depths of his heart, John Webster may perhaps have hoped that this was to be a real reincarnation. If so, he was doomed to disappointment, for the younger Daniel gave no promise of being either a statesman or an orator. But he took to ink as a duck to water, was never so happy as when his pen was spoiling good white paper, was elected editor of the News, and, commencement over, took the first train for New York, stormed the office of the Record, for which he had acted as college correspondent, and demanded a job.
He got it; and began anew the task of living down his name. Always, when introduced or introducing himself, he saw in the eyes opposite his own that maddening glimmer of amusement. Then he gritted his teeth and waited for the joke. There were fourteen possible forms that it might take. Tempted often to return to that rocky Connecticut hillside, he nevertheless stuck it out, and, as time passed, found he didn't mind so much. He even reached the point where he made bets with himself as to which of the fourteen it would be. And he progressed in other ways: the material symbol of the progress being that, instead of cub reporter at twelve dollars a week, he was now one of the trusted members of the staff at six times that salary.
Also he was seven years older, and this had been his first long vacation—six weeks in England, Belgium, Holland and France—glorious weeks; but his eyes were aching for the lights of Broadway and his fingers itching for the pencil. The most exacting and bewitching of all professions was clamouring for him again.
Having disposed of the rolls and coffee, he rose reluctantly, stepped out upon the beach, and filled and lighted his pipe—with a grimace at the first puff, for French tobacco is the worst in the world, outside of Germany. Before him lay the mighty breakwater which guards the harbour, with its lighthouse in the middle and its fort at either end, while to his left were the great naval basins, hewn from the solid rock. To the right, below the high sea-wall, the narrow beach stretched away, empty and uninviting.
Dan felt depressed. Cherbourg, evidently, was not an exciting place. He had never seen an uglier beach, but, after a moment's hesitation, he started off along it. Perhaps, farther on, it might improve.
The tide was going out, and in the little basins in the sand minute crabs and strange sea-midgets scuttled about panic-stricken at finding themselves marooned; here and there a stranded jelly-fish glowed like an iridescent soap-bubble, and, farther out, an ugly mud flat began to be revealed by the retreating water. Some distance ahead, a ridge of tumbled rocks ran from the sea-wall down into the water, and, as he drew nearer, he saw that on one of the rocks a girl was sitting.
He glanced at her as he passed, and would have liked to glance again, for he had never met more arresting eyes, but he was going on with face rigidly to the front, when her voice startled him.