But as the days passed we began to take heart again. The philosophers of the company were unanimously agreed that as the Titanic had suffered this great disaster through carelessness on the part of her officers, no doubt our own chances of safely reaching shore were thereby enhanced. We fell to gambling again, to flirting, to playing shuffle-board. By Saturday, when we were passing in the vicinity of where the Titanic went down, only much farther to the south, our fears had been practically dispelled.
It was not until we reached Sandy Hook the following Tuesday—a hard, bright, clear, blowy day, that we really got the full story. The customary pilot was taken on there, out of a thrashing sea, his overcoat pockets bulging with papers, all flaring with headlines describing the disaster. We crowded into the smoking-room for the last time and devoured the news. Some broke down and cried. Others clenched their fists and swore over the vivid and painful pen pictures by eye witnesses and survivors. For a while we all forgot we were nearly home. We came finally to quarantine. And I was amused to see how in these last hours the rather vigorous ardors of ship-friendship that had been engendered by the days spent together began to cool—how all those on board began to think of themselves no longer as members of a coördinated ship company bound together for weal or woe on the bosom of the great deep, but rather as individuals of widely separated communities and interests to which they were now returning and which of necessity would sever their relationship perpetually. I saw, for instance, the American judge who had unbent sufficiently after we had been three days out to play cards with so humble a person as the commission merchant, and others, begin to congeal again into his native judicial dignity. Several of the young women who had been generally friendly now became quite remote—other worlds were calling them.
And all of this goodly company were so concerned now as to whether they could make a very conservative estimate of the things they were bringing into America and yet not be disturbed by the customs inspectors, that they were a little amusing. What is honesty, anyhow? Foreign purchases to the value of one hundred dollars were allowed; yet I venture to say that of all this charming company, most of whom prided themselves on some form of virtue, few made a strictly honest declaration. They were all as honest as they had to be—as dishonest as they dared be—no more. Poor pretending humanity! We all lie so. We all believe such untrue things about ourselves and about others. Life is literally compact of make-believe, illusion, temperamental bias, false witness, affinity. The so-called standards of right, truth, justice, law, are no more than the wire netting of a sieve through which the water of life rushes almost uninterrupted. It seems to be regulated, but is it? Look close. See for yourself. Christ said, “Eyes and they see not; ears and they hear not.” Is this not literally true? Begin with number one. How about you and the so-called universal standards?
It had been so cold and raw down the bay that I could scarcely believe, as we neared Manhattan Island that it was going to be so warm and springlike on land as it proved. When we first sighted Long Island and later Long Beach it was over a thrashing sea; the heads of the waves were being cut off by the wind and sent flying into white spindrift or parti-colored rainbows. Even above Sandy Hook the wind made rainbows out of wave-tops and the bay had a tumbled surface. It was good to see again the stately towers of the lower city as we drew near—that mountain of steel and stone cut with its narrow canyons. They were just finishing the upper framework of the Woolworth Building—that first cathedral of the American religion of business—and now it reared its stately head high above everything else.
There was a great company at the dockside to receive us. Owing to the sinking of the Titanic relatives were especially anxious and all incoming ships were greeted with enlarged companies of grateful friends. There were reporters on hand to ask questions as to the voyage—had we encountered any bodies, had we struck any ice?
When I finally stepped on the dock, gathered up my baggage, called a few final farewells and took a taxi to upper Broadway, I really felt that I was once more at home. New York was so suggestively rich to me, this spring evening. It was so refreshing to look out and see the commonplace life of Eighth Avenue, up which I sped, and the long cross streets and later upper Broadway with its rush of cars, taxis, pedestrians. On Eighth Avenue negroes were idling at curbs and corners, the Eighth Avenue type of shopkeeper lolling in his doorway, boys and girls, men and women of a none-too-comforting type, making the best of a humdrum and shabby existence. In one’s own land, born and raised among the conditions you are observing, responsive to the subtlest modifications of speech, gesture, expression, life takes on a fresh and intimate aspect which only your own land can give after a trip abroad. I never quite realized until later this same evening, strolling out along Broadway to pay a call, how much one really loses abroad for want of blood affinity and years and years of residence. All the finer details, such as through the magnifying glass of familiarity one gains at home, one loses abroad. Only the main outlines—the very roughest details—stand revealed as in a distant view of mountains. That is why generalizations, on so short an acquaintance as a traveler must have, are so dangerous. Here, each sight and sound was significant.
“And he says to me,” said one little girl, strolling with her picturesque companion on upper Broadway, “if you don’t do that, I’m through.”
“And what did you say?”
“Good night!!!”
I was sure, then, that I was really home!