At luncheon next day the little girl is the soul of the party. We discuss everything from Art to ambitions. At one moment she is full of musical laughter, and the next she is excitedly discussing some happening aboard ship. Her stories are always interesting. How do children see so much more than grown-ups?
She has a great time. I must visit her father, he is so much like me. He has the same temperament, and is such a great daddy. He is so good to her. And she rattles on without stopping.
Then again she thinks I may be tired. "Sit back now." And she puts a pillow behind my head and bids me rest.
These moments with her make days aboard pass quickly and pleasantly.
Carl Robinson and I are strolling around the top deck the next day in an effort to get away from everyone, and I notice someone looking up at a wire running between the funnels of the ship. Perched on the wire is a little bird, and I am wondering how it got there and if it had been there since we left England.
The other watcher notices us. He turns and smiles. "The little bird must think this is the promised land."
I knew at once that he was somebody. Those thoughts belong only to poets. Later in the evening he joins us at my invitation and I learn he is Easthope Martin, the composer and pianist. He had been through the War and it had left its stamp on this fine, sensitive soul. He had been gassed. I could not imagine such a man in the trenches.
He is very frail of body, and as he talks I always imagine his big soul at the bursting point with a pent-up yearning.
There is the inevitable concert on the last night of the voyage. We are off the banks of Newfoundland, and in the midst of a fog. Fog horns must be kept blowing at intervals, hence the effect on the concert, particularly the vocal part, is obvious.
We land at seven in the morning of a very windy day, and it is eleven before we can get away. Reporters and camera men fill the air during all that time, and I am rather glad, because it shows Miss Taylor and Mr. Hepworth a glimpse of what America is like. We arrange to meet that night at Sam Goldwyn's for dinner.