V.—IN WHICH WE HAVE AN AMUSING VOYAGE
BETSEY had been a bit disturbed by the swiftness of my plans. On her arrival in town she said to me:
“Look here, Socrates Potter, I'm no longer a colt, and you'll have to drive slower. What are you up to, anyway?”
“A surprise-party!” I answered. “Cheer up! It's our honeymoon trip. I've decided that after a man has married a woman it's his duty to get well acquainted with her. What's the use of having a breastful of love and affection and no time to show it. To begin with we shall have the best dinner this hotel affords.”
Our table, which had been well adorned with flowers, awaited us, and we sat down to dinner. Richard Forbes came while we were eating our oysters and joined us.
We talked of many things, and while we were eating our dessert I sailed into the subject nearest my heart by saying:
“I kind o' guessed that you'd want to send a message.”
“How did you know it?” he asked.
“Oh, by sundry looks and glances of your eye when I saw you last.”
“They didn't deceive you,” said he. “Tell them that they may see me in Rome before long. Miss Norris was kind enough to say in a letter that they would be glad to see me. I haven't answered yet. You might gently break the news of my plan and let me know how they stand it.”
“I'll give them your affectionate regard—that's as far as I am willing to go—and I'll tell them to prepare for your presence. If they show evidence of alarm I'll let you know. I kind o' mistrust that you may be needed there and—and wanted.”
“No joking now!” he warned me.
“Those titled chaps are likely to get after her, and I may want you to help me head 'em off. You'd be a silly feller to let them grab the prize.”
“The trouble is my fortune isn't made,” said he. “I'm getting along, but I can't afford to get married yet.”
“Don't worry about that,” I begged him. “Our young men all seem to be thinking about money and nothing else. Quit it. Keep out of this great American thought-trust. Any girl that isn't willing to take hold and help you make your fortune isn't worth having. Don't let the vine of your thoughts go twining around the money-pole. If you do they'll make you a prisoner.”
“But she is used to every luxury.”
“And probably will be glad to try something new. Her mama is not looking for riches, but noble blood, I suppose. Norris's girl looks good to me—nice way of going, as they used to say of the colts. We ought to be able to offer her as high an order of nobility as there is in Europe.”
“I'm very common clay,” the boy answered, with a laugh.
“And the molding is up to you,” I said, as we rose to go.
“Tell them that Gwendolyn's heart is American territory and that I shall stand for no violation of the Monroe Doctrine,” said he.
We bade him good-by and went aboard the steamer in as happy a mood as if we had spent six months instead of six hours getting ready. So our voyage began.
Going over we felt the strong tides of the spirit which carry so many of our countrymen to the Old World. The Toltec was crowded with tourists of the All-Europe-in-three-weeks variety. There were others, but these were a small minority. Every passenger seemed to be loaded, beyond the Plimsoll mark, with conversation, and in the ship's talk were all the spiritual symptoms of America.
We chose partners and went into the business of visiting. The sea shook her big, round sides, immensely tickled, I should say, by the gossip. Our ship was a moving rialto. We swapped stories and exchanged sentiments; we traded hopes and secrets; we cranked up and opened the gas-valve and raced into autobiography. Each got a memorable bargain. We were almost dishonest with our generosity.
“Ship ahoy!” we shouted to every man who came our way and noted his tonnage and cargo, his home port and destination.
How American! God bless us all!
Within forty-eight hours it seemed to me that everybody knew everybody else, except Lord and Lady Dorris, who were aboard, and the adoring group that surrounded them.
The big, wide-world thought-trust was well represented in the smoking-room. There were business men and boys just out of college, all expressing themselves in terms of profit and loss—the wealth of this or that man and how he got it, the effect of legislation upon business, and all that kind of thing. Thirty-five years ago such a company would have been talking of the last speeches of Conkling and Ingersoll or the last poems of Whittier and Tennyson.
There were many keynotes in the conversation. If one sat down with a book in the reading-room he would abandon it for the better display of human nature in the crowd around him. There were some twoscore women all talking at the same time, each drenching the other in the steady flow of her conversational hose. The plan of it all seemed to be very generous—everybody giving and nobody receiving anything. I used to think that among women talk was for display or relief, and whispering for the transfer of intelligence. Since I got married I know better: women have a sixth sense by which they can acquire knowledge without listening in a talk-fest. They miss nothing.
It was interesting to observe how the edges of the conversations impinged upon one another, like the circles made by a handful of pebbles flung from a bridge into water. Now and then some strong-voiced lady dropped a rock into the pool, and the spatter went to both shores. The spray advertised the thought-trusts of the women:
“I felt so sorry for poor Mabel! There wasn't a young man in the party.”
“It was a capital operation, but I pulled through.”
“Yes, I've wanted to go to Italy ever since I saw 'Romeo and Juliet.' Those Italians are wonderful lovers.”
“It was so ridiculous to be throwing her at his head, and she with a weak heart and only one lung!”
“I don't know how I spend it, but somehow it goes.”
“Oh, they have been abroad, but anybody can do that these days.”
“Poor man! I feel sorry for him—she's terribly extravagant.”
“We don't see much of our home these days.”
“My twentieth trip across the ocean.”
“Our children are in boarding-schools, and my husband is living at his club.”
I wanted to smoke and excused myself from Betsey and went out on the deck, now more than half deserted, and stood looking off at the night. Family history was pouring out of the state-room windows, and I could not help hearing it. Grandma, slightly deaf, was saying to her daughter:
“Lizzie must be more careful when those young men come to the door. This morning she wasn't half dressed when she opened it.”
“Oh yes, she was.”
“No, she wasn't; I took particular notice. And every morning she wets her hair in my perfumery. Then, sadly, It's almost gone.”
I knew enough about the sins of Lizzie, and moved on and took a new stand.
An elderly lumber merchant from Michigan was saying to his companion in a loud voice:
“Yes, I retired ten years ago. I am studying the history of the world—all about the life of the world, especially the life of the ancients.”
I moved on to escape a comparison of the careers of Alexander and Napoleon, and settled down in a dusky corner near which a lady was giving an account of the surgical operations which had been performed upon her. So the conversation, which had begun at daybreak, went on into the night. It was all very human—very American.
The Litchmans of Chicago had rooms opposite ours. Every night six or eight pairs of shoes, each decorated with a colored ribbon to distinguish it from the common run of shoes, were ranged in a row outside their door. The lady had forty-two hats—so I was told—and all of them were neatly aired in the course of the voyage. The upper end of her system was not a head, but a hat-holder.
Their family of four children was established in a room next to ours. As a whole, it was the most harmonious and efficient yelling-machine of which I have any knowledge. Its four cylinders worked like one. At dinner it filled its tanks with cheese and cakes and nuts and jellies and milk, and was thus put into running order for the night. It is wonderful how many yells there are in a relay of cheese and cake and nuts and jelly and milk. When we got in bed the machine cranked up, backed out of the garage, and went shrieking up the hill to midnight and down the slope to breakfast-time, stopping briefly now and then for repairs.
A deaf lady next morning declared that she had heard the fog-whistles blowing all night.
“Fog-whistles! We didn't need 'em,” said Betsey.
It was a symptom of America with which I had been unfamiliar.
We were astonished at the number of manless women aboard that ship. Many were much-traveled widows whose husbands had fallen in the hard battles of American life; some, I doubt not, like the battle of Norris, with hidden worries that feed, like rats, on the strength of a man.
Many of the women were handsome daughters and sleek, well-fed mamas whose husbands could not leave the struggle—often the desperate struggle—for fame and fortune.
There were elderly women—well upholstered grandmamas—generally traveling in pairs.
One of them, a slim, garrulous, and affectionate lady well past her prime, was immensely proud of her feet. She was Mrs. Fraley, from Terre Haute—“a daughter of dear old Missouri,” she explained. It seemed that her feet had retained their pristine beauty through all vicissitudes, and been complimented by sundry distinguished observers. One evening she said to Betsey:
“Come down to my state-room, dearest dear, and I will show you my feet.”
She always seemed to be seeking astonishment, and was often exclaiming “Indeed!” or “How wonderful!” and I hadn't told any lies either.
We met also Mrs. Mullet, of Sioux City, a gay and copious widow of middle age, who appeared in the ship's concert with dark eyes well underscored to give them proper emphasis. She was a well-favored, sentimental lady with thick, wavy, brown hair. Her thoughts were also a bit wavy, but Betsey formed a high opinion of her. Mrs. Mullet was a neat dresser and resembled a fashion-plate. Her talk was well dressed in English accents. She often looked thoughtfully at my chin when we talked together, as if she were estimating its value as a site for a stand of whiskers. It was her apparent knowledge of art which interested Betsey. She talked art beautiful, as Sam Henshaw used to say, and was going to Italy to study it.
There were schoolma'ams going over to improve their minds, and romping, sweetfaced girls setting out to be instructed in art or music, beyond moral boundaries, and knowing not that they would take less harm among the lions and hyenas of eastern Africa. When will our women learn that the centers of art and music in Europe are generally the exact centers of moral leprosy?
There were stately, dignified, and inhuman people of the seaboard aristocracy of the East—the Europeans of America, who see only the crudeness of their own land. They have been dehorned—muleyed into freaks by degenerate habits of mind and body. A certain passenger called them the “Eunuchs of democracy,” but I wouldn't be so intemperate with the truth. One of them was the Lady Dorris, daughter of a New York millionaire, who came out of her own apartments one evening to peer laughingly into the dining-saloon, and say:
“I love to look at them; they're so very, very curious!”
Yes, we have a few Europeans in America, but I suspect that Europe is more than half American.
Then there was Mr. Pike, the lumber king, from Prairie du Chien, who stroked his whiskers when he talked to me and looked me over from head to toe as if calculating the amount of good timber in me. He had retired, jumped from the lumber business into ancient history, and was now reporting the latest news from Tyre and Babylon.
In this environment of character we proceeded with nothing to do but observe it, and with no suspicion that we were being introduced to the persons of a drama in which we were to play our parts in Italy.
So now, then, the orchestra has ceased playing and the curtain is up again, and, with all these people on the stage, in the middle of the ocean word goes around the decks that there is a ship off the port side very near us. We look and observe that we are passing her. It is the Caronia, and we ride the seas with a better sense of comfort, knowing that Wilton is behind us.
