“Your age, sir?”
Mr. Iff enquired in simple surprise: “Do you really care to know?”
“It’s required, sir, by the – ”
“Oh, well – if I must! But, mind you, strictly as man to man: you may write me down a freeborn American citizen, entitled to vote and more ’n half white.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I say, I am an adult – ”
“Oh!” The clerk wrote; then, bored, resumed: “Married or single, please?”
“I’m a spinster – ”
“O-w?”
“Honestly – neither married nor unmarried.”
“Then-Q” – resignedly. “Your business – ?”
But here Staff’s clerk touched the exasperated catechist on the shoulder and said something inaudible. The response, while equally inaudible, seemed to convey a sense of profound personal shock. Staff was conscious that Mr. Iff’s clerk glanced reproachfully in his direction, as if to suggest that he wouldn’t have believed it of him.
Divining that he and Mr. Iff were bargaining for the same accommodations, Staff endeavoured to assume an attitude of distinguished obliviousness to the entire proceeding; and would have succeeded but for the immediate and impatient action of Mr. Iff.
That latter, seizing the situation, glanced askance at dignified Mr. Staff, then smiled a whimsical smile, cocked his small head to one side and approached him with an open and ingenuous air.
“If it’s only a question of which berth,” said he, “I’m quite willing to forfeit my option on the lower, Mr. Staff.”
That gentleman started and stared.
“Oh, lord, man!” said Iff tolerantly – “as if your portrait hadn’t been published more times than you can remember! – as if all the world were unaware of Benjamin Staff, novelist!”
There was subtle flattery in this; and flattery (we are told) will warm the most austere of authors – which Staff was not. He said “Oh!” and smiled his slow, wry smile; and Mr. Iff, remarking these symptoms of a thaw with interest and encouragement, pressed his point.
“I don’t mind an upper, really – only chose the lower because the choice was mine, at the moment. If you prefer it – ”
“The trouble is,” Staff interrupted, “I want the whole room.”
“Oh!.. Friend with you?”
“No; but I had some notion of doing a little work on the way over.”
“Writing? I see. But if that’s all – !” Mr. Iff routed a negligible quibble with an airy flirt of his delicate hand. “Trust me; you’ll hardly ever be reminded of my existence – I’m that quiet. And besides, I spend most of my time in the smoking-room. And I don’t snore, and I’m never seasick… By the way,” he added anxiously, “do or are you?”
“Never – ”
“Then we’ll get along famously. I’ll cheerfully take the upper, and even should I tumble out on top of you, you’d never know it: my weight is nothing – hardly that. Now what d’ you say? Is it a go?”
“But – I don’t know you – ”
“Business of making a noise like an Englishman!” commented Mr. Iff with bitter scorn.
“ – well enough to accept such a favour from you. I’ll take second choice myself – the upper, I mean.”
“You won’t; but we’ll settle that on shipboard,” said Mr. Iff promptly. “As for knowing me – business of introducing myself. Mr. Staff, I want you to shake hands with my friend, Mr. Iff. W. H. Iff, Whiff: sometimes so-called: merry wheeze based on my typographical make-up; once a joke, now so grey with age I generally pull it myself, thus saving new acquaintances the mental strain. Practical philanthropy – what? Whim of mine.”
“Indeed?”
“Believe me. You’ve no notion how folks suffer in the first throes of that giddy pun. And then when it falls flat – naturally I can’t laugh like a fool at it any longer —blooie!” said Mr. Iff with expression – “like that —blooie!– they do feel so cheap. Wherefore I maintain I do humanity a service when I beat it to that moth-eaten joke. You follow me?”
Staff laughed.
“Then it’s all settled. Good! We shan’t be in one another’s way. You’ll see.”
“Unless you talk in your sleep, too.”
Mr. Iff looked unspeakable reproach. “You’ll soon get accustomed to me,” he said, brightening – “won’t mind my merry prattle any more ’n the song of a giddy humming-bird.”
He turned and saw their booking-clerks in patient waiting behind the counter. “Ah, there you are, eh? Well, it’s all settled…”
Thus was the thing accomplished.
And shortly thereafter these two paused in parting at the door.
“Going my way?” enquired Mr. Iff.
Staff named whatever destination he had in mind.
“Sorry. I go t’other way. Take care of yourself. See you tomorrow.”
“Good-bye,” said Staff, and took himself briskly off.
But Mr. Iff did not at once go in the opposite direction. In fact, he moved no more than a door or two away, and then stopped, apparently fascinated by an especially stupid shop-window show.
He had very quick eyes, had Mr. Iff, so alert and observant that they had made him alive to a circumstance which had altogether escaped Staff’s notice – a trifling incident that took place just as they were on the point of parting.
While still they were standing in the doorway, a motor-cab, plunging down Haymarket, had swooped in a wide curve as if meaning to pull in at the curb in front of the steamship company’s office. The cab carried a solitary passenger – a remarkably pretty young woman – and on its roof a remarkably large and ornate bandbox.
It was, in fact, the bandbox which had first fixed the interest of Mr. Iff. Only an introspective vision, indeed, such as that of the imaginative and thoughtful Mr. Staff, could have overlooked the approach of a bandbox so big and upstanding, so profusely beflowered and so prominently displayed.
Now before the cab could stop, its fare, who had been bending forward and peering out of the window as if anxious to recognise her destination, started still farther forward, seized the speaking-tube and spoke into its mouthpiece in a manner of sharp urgency. And promptly the driver swerved out from the curb and swung his car away down Pall Mall.
If it was mere inquisitiveness that held Mr. Iff rooted to the spot, gaping at that uninteresting window show, it served to discover him in the guise of an admirably patient person. Fully fifteen minutes elapsed before the return of the motor-cab was signalled unmistakably by the blatant bandbox bobbing back high above the press of traffic. And when this happened, Mr. Iff found some further business with the steamship company, and quietly and unobtrusively slipped back into the booking-office.
As he did so the cab stopped at the curb and the pretty young woman jumped out and followed Mr. Iff across the threshold – noticing him no more than had Mr. Staff, to begin with.
II
THE BANDBOX
In the playhouses of France, a hammering on the stage alone