It would have been difficult to find a more congenial and vivacious group than Professor and Mrs. Cultus, Miss Winchester and Adele, with their friends the Doctor and Paul, as they met in the salon of the steamer on the eve of departure. Henri Semple, who looked forward to meeting them later on the other side, led the party of chosen friends who came to see them off, and while trying to aid the Doctor and Paul with their hand-baggage, kept dodging Mr. Hammond, one of those antipathetic, ghostly individuals who throw cold water upon such occasions. Mrs. Maxwell sent her butler with an exquisite kedge anchor in rose-buds for Adele, “in case you have no wireless telegraph when wrecked, my dear.”
Amid friends, and flowers sent in kind remembrance, with many kind messages “bon voyage,” there was, nevertheless, just a touch of regret when some one asked Adele how she liked leaving America. She had thus far thought of it as leaving home. Now home was “America” in reference to where she was going,—her first sensation of the broadening effects of travel.
A few moments later all were on deck in gay spirits, Miss Winchester striving to avoid an impolite kodak-fiend in search of celebrities, who was taking snap-shots from the bridge; but she only succeeded in getting herself into a most unconventional attitude, almost doubled up with laughter, strongly suggestive in a finished picture that some one had the mal de mer already. “One ought never to judge by appearances,” remarked the Doctor, as he attempted to shield Miss Winchester from the kodak.
The bell sounded, only passengers were permitted to remain longer on board. The Doctor was saying “I trust we meet again” to one of his trunks, when Semple hurried down the gang-plank waving back “au revoir”; a gamin on the dock instantly echoed back what sounded like “moo-swore, take moo-swore.” Adele waved her handkerchief to Semple, and a Frenchman near by took off his hat, smiling as if the salute were intended for him.
The steamer swung out from the wharf and glided into midstream; amid cheers, and adieus waved in many directions, and kisses thrown to loved ones left behind. America and home, now one and the same, began to recede. They were actually on their way to the Far East.
PART SECOND
VIII
A STUDIO FOR IMPRESSIONS
THE voyage across the Atlantic from New York to the Gibraltar proved a constant series of sapphire days. Skies light azure often cloudless, the ocean a richer shade with enough wind to curl the sea-foam into delicate lace-like patterns. When the billows rose into the domain of direct sunlight, myriads of brilliant points scintillated like sparkling gems decorating the wave crests,—the sea-foam not unlike flossy embroidery or ruffles of lace upon silk of blue.
Adele’s first experience of things as they are in the great motion constant, onward, ever forward, in the very being of the boundless deep; also her first impressions of the ways and means amid a cosmopolitan crowd on board an ocean-flyer. Nature and humanity, each in constant movement, the former with majesty and potency profound, the latter on the grand rush, often to obtain something to eat.
Towards sunset she stood with the Doctor watching the crimson disk grow less and less in brilliancy, and finally through a veil of luminous atmosphere disappear in the mysterious beyond.