Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/29

18 I told him that I believed I had a handkerchief.

He asked me: "Have you anything in your shoes?"

"My feet," I said, gently.

"Come this way," he said frigidly, opening a door which I had not remarked. I bowed in acknowledgment of the courtesy, and entered room number 2.

I looked into six eyes which sat at a desk.

Two belonged to a lawyerish person in civilian clothes, with a bored expression, plus a moustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to a splendid old dotard (a face all ski-jumps and toboggan slides), on whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted. Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur, who had seated himself before I had time to focus my slightly bewildered eyes.

Monsieur spoke sanitary English, as I have said.

"What is your name?" —"Edward E. Cummings."

—"Your second name?"—"E-s-t-l-i-n," I spelled it for him.—"How do you say that?"—I didn't understand.—"How do you say your name?"—"Oh," I said; and pronounced it. He explained in French to the moustache that my first name was Edouard, my second "A-s-tay-l-ee-n," and my third "Kay-umm-ee-n-gay-s"—and the moustache wrote it all down. Monsieur then turned to me once more:

"You are Irish?"—"No," I said, "American."—"You are Irish by family?"—"No, Scotch."—"You are sure that there was never an Irishman in your parents?"—"So far as I know," I said, "there never was an Irishman there." —"Perhaps a hundred years back?" he insisted.—"Not a chance," I said decisively. But Monsieur was not to be denied: "Your name it is Irish?"—"Cummings is a very old Scotch name," I told him fluently, "it used to be Comyn. A Scotchman named The Red Comyn was killed by Robert Bruce in a church. He was my ancestor and a very well-known man."—"But your second name, where have you got that?"—"From an Englishman, a friend of my father." This statement seemed to produce a very favorable impression in the case of the rosette, who mur-