“Isn’t he well?”
“Yes, he’s well enough. That isn’t it.”
As she did not explain, I refrained from asking further, not because I didn’t want to know, but because I knew she would tell me.
It was our usual trysting-place, the deck rail, though not now that which ran along the side of the ship, but the one across the portion of the upper deck toward the bow, allowing us to look down on the pit in which the few steerage passengers took the air. They were standing about in helpless, idle groups, some ten or twelve oddly clad, oddly hatted men, with three or four of their women, and a white staring baby, whose fingers, as it hung over its mother’s shoulder, dangled like bits of string.
We were in the Gulf Stream, so that the day was comparatively mild. A north wind not too violent blew away the possibility of fog and sent an occasional shaft of sunshine through the rifts in the great gray clouds. The swell left over from the gale of the past few days tossed the ship’s nose into the air with a long, slow, rhythmic heave, slightly to port, and gave to good sailors like ourselves that pleasant sensation of swinging which a bird must get on a tree.
Wind and water were fraught with the nameless peaceful intimations of the New World after the turmoil of the Old one. It is difficult to say how one seizes them, but they come with the Gulf Stream. I have always noticed that half-way over there is a change in the aura, the atmosphere. It throws a breath of balsam on the wind, and flashes on the waves that gleam which Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and the Pilgrims saw when they sighted land.
It is that wonderful sense of going westward which, I suppose, is primal to the instinct. Going eastward, one is going back to beginnings, to things lived, to things over and done with. Going westward, all is hope. It is the onward reach, the upward grasp, the endless striving. It is the lifting of the hands, the straining of the power to achieve, the yearning of the inner man. The thing that is finished is left behind, and the thing to be wrestled with and done is in front of one. The very sun goes before one with a splendid gesture of beckoning—on to work, on to self-denial, on to triumph and success—and when it sets it sets with a promise of a morrow.
We had already begun to feel that; and on my part in a spirit of compunction. I was going, as far as lay within my small powers, to turn the west back upon the east again, to reverse nature by making the stream flow toward its source. I was far from insensible to the pity of it, for I had seen the effect on my own country.
I had seen my own country—that baby giant, whose very existence as a country antedated but little the year when I was born—I had seen it pause in its work, in its play, in its task of self-development—listen—shiver—thrill—throw down the ax, the spade, the hammer, the pick—go up from the field, the factory, and the mine—and offer itself willingly. It was to me as if that was fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: