“Nonsense, John; it has simply given the sapling a bit of a twist.”
“That may be so. It is quite possible that by the time I touch at Southampton or Cherbourg I may be yearning for that stolid old statue of Liberty again, and perhaps I shall take the next steamer back. In that case Mr. Rockervelt will have had the disadvantage of endeavouring to run his system without me for three weeks or thereabouts, and so we will deal with him more effectually than we would the day after to-morrow, when he doesn’t know what a vacuum my absence has caused.”
“Don’t try to be cynical, John. It doesn’t sound convincing from the lips of so sensible and capable a young fellow as you are.”
“On the other hand,” John went on unheeding, “it may be that I have taken to the road; that I am in reality the tramp I feel myself to be. Perhaps there has been a mistake in the outset, and Europe is really my country, not America. My father was born over there, and who knows but that thousands of years of ancestry are calling to me. That is a question Europe will settle. I half suspect that I shall feel so out of it after a month over there that you’ll find me again coming up this express elevator before you realise I’ve been away. Any how, my steamer ticket is in my pocket, and I am off to Cherbourg or wherever they like to land me, in the morning. And now, Mr. Manson, you know this wicked city better than I do. Let’s get out to some good eating house and enjoy a substantial meal. What’s the best restaurant in town? It isn’t every day a capitalist asks you to lunch with him. I’m the prodigal son, so we’ll reverse the ancient parable and kill the fatted calf before I start on my travels.”
CHAPTER IX—LOVE’S SPECTRE
JOHN STEELE sat at one of the little round tables in the Café Germania, where a customer may have brown Munich beer in a big stone mug with a white metal lid. The café was very full, so also were some of the habitués; and on a raised platform at the corner were seated the members of a Viennese band, giving forth music in the smoke-beclouded room. Steele was waiting for a friend, and had turned a chair face forward against the little table, that a place might be ready for him when he arrived. With his fountain-pen the young man had just written a cable despatch, in answer to a transatlantic message that lay before him, mutilated somewhat in its English, as is the habit of Italian telegraph offices, but still understandable, which was lucky, for more often than not a telegram in a foreign language comes out second best after an encounter with the system of Italy.
A breezy individual made his way through the smoke and the throng to the vacant chair, tipped it back and sat down in it. “I’m late, as usual, John,” he said, “but that is one of my official prerogatives. So I won’t apologise, but will make it up in beer, now that I am here.”
“There is little use of being United States Consul at Naples if you can’t do as you like, Jimmy. There isn’t any too much money in the office, so one must seek compensation in other directions.”