Blue Voyage

I

“Will you stop,” said William Demarest, leaning his head out of the taxi window, “at the corner drug store?” Just like a cuckoo clock, he thought.

It had suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten his sea sick pills — the little pink and green box was indispensable — oh, absolutely! A charm against sea serpents. As he stood on the marble floor, amid the thousand bottles and vials and jars, in a heavy smell of soap and disinfectant, watching the clerk wrap up and seal the box, the sound of the approaching voyage came loudly about him. Waves crashing against black portholes at midnight. Bugles blowing in sour corridors — red-carpeted corridors which suddenly, unaccountably, became hills to climb. O God, what a prospect! And the ship — what was the ship? A congregation of gigantic mushroomlike ventilators, red-throated, all belching a smell of hot oil and degenerate soup, with sounds of faint submarine clankings. Among them, a few pale stewards, faces like cauliflowers, carrying gladstone bags and hot-water bottles … He suddenly felt queasy. This would never do: it was all a matter of nerves. Day by day, and with every wave, the sea gets smoother and smoother. It might, in fact, be a regular yachting cruise — blue sky, blue sea, sunny decks, and a beautiful, mysterious young lady to talk to. Why not? It had happened before. “Thanks!” he said …

In the taxi, as they passed through Twenty-third Street, he lost fifteen years of his life, no less, and caught sight of himself (a very pale, sober-looking young man) mounting the stone steps of No. 421. The shy young widow was sitting in the garden watching her child. How had she managed to conceal so long from him, in their meetings in hall or on stairs, that she had only one hand?… And Stedman, the literary hack, came in at lunch-time to say, “Willst hog it with me over the way?”—his reference being to the free lunch at the saloon across the street. And the bedbugs! Stedman had left on his desk a small crystal vial, half full of bedbugs, alive, crawling, labeled, “Take one before retiring. Dr. Stedman.”—A gay time, then! Now those people were all gone. Stedman, in his spare time (of which there was precious little), made models of ships — exquisite little things. He had gone into an insurance office. The old painter was dead. What had become of the detective?… and his thin submissive little wife, who never lifted her eyes from her plate.

“Here you are, sir!” said the taxi driver, turning his head.

And there he was. The wharf. An enormous, depressing place, cavernous, engulfing bales and trunks by the cartload, but with no sign of a ship anywhere. Where should he enter? The usual terror assailed him. Everywhere stood uncompromising officials, emblems of stupidity. He carried his bag into the great sounding gloom, which was itself, with its smells of oakum and hemp and slimy piles, like a vast ship; dodged his way among thumping trucks — trucks were everywhere, each pushed by a pirate; and at last, through a great sea door, caught sight of the black iron side of the vessel, streaked with filth and rust. A qualm came over him. What disgusting animals ships were! always fouling their sides with garbage. However, perhaps the lavatory would smell of antiseptic … “Second cabin? Next gangway” … He crawled up the next gangway, steep as a funicular, and stepped onto the resilient deck. O Thalassa! Thalassa! Unmerciful sea. He was already fairly launched into the infinite, the immense solitude, which seemed (to the steward who took his bag) to mean so little. Yes: alone. Alone with the sea for eight days: alone in a cage with a world of tigers roaring outside.

“Am I alone in this cabin?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir. You’ll have to ask the cabin steward, after we start.”

Now, Demarest, survey this cabin which will be your cell for eight days. Running water? Yes. Four berths. Ring once for Mr. Tomkins, twice for Mrs. Atherton. No porthole, of course. Red carpet, and the usual smell. He poured out a glass of water, and took two pills, as prescribed. The water was cloudy and tepid. Footsteps rang on the deck over his head.… And suddenly a feeling of unutterable desolation came over him, a nostalgia made only the more poignant by the echoes it brought of other voyages. Ah, that incurable longing for escape, for a spider’s cable by which he might swing himself abruptly into space or oblivion! But this time, was it an escape or a return?… And the voices of his former fellow voyagers, fellow crawlers toward the infinite, came round him in melancholy chorus. “A safety razor? Just like a bally little lawn mower. And a thundering hot towel on your face.” That was the “pynter and gilder” on the Empress. And his poverty-stricken roommate, who had got a Marconigram — for which he had to pay — saying, “Have a Guinness on us, at your expense.” His comic fury, his bulging eyes! To make it worse, his only hat, left carelessly in a bunk, was a moment later sat upon and crushed beyond recognition … The German girl, with the long blue ribbons down the back of her skirt, deliciously fluttering as she walked, whom he had been too shy to speak to. She came and stood beside him while the stewards danced and sang below the hatch, stood very close to him, put her hands on the rope. “Curiously melancholy,” he had thought of saying, “all this folk music is!..” Melancholy it was. But his courage had failed him; and next day, as he passed her (she was walking — how buoyantly she walked! — with the Professor), he heard her saying, “No, he vas afraid!” She laughed as she said it. And afterwards she had married the Professor. He had watched them pacing the deck, pacing the deck, looking more and more earnestly at each other. One time as he passed them the flying word was “gymnasium.” The next time it was “But SHAW!” Were they falling in love? Yes — as the voyage drew to its end they became inseparable; inseparable because they saw the inevitability of separation. They stood together at the railing, looking sadly at the gray waste of water. “Oh, how persuasive is the sound of the sea!” And he had felt curiously sorry for them, somehow — as if they had become in a sense, the sea’s victims: nothing of them but doth change …

He edged his way along the corridor, past a continuous shuffling line of stewards carrying bags, and up the brass-edged stairs. The sun had come out; on the cool east wind sang the soft quarter bells of the Metropolitan; playing their melodius prelude to the solemn striking of the hour. Three o’clock. A few of his fellow passengers idled about on the deck, stood in groups talking, or watched the last trunks being swung in a great net over the opened hatch. A whistle blew, and the net, with its bulging catch of trunks, dropped soundlessly into the hold, the donkey engine emitting a rapid rattle. Stevedores pushed boxes down the polished gangway, caught them with hooks, and pulled them into the ship.

“Is this Mr. Demarest?” A young man stood before him, earnest, a little shy, deferential.

“Yes?”

“My name’s Roscoe — I’m on the News. Helen Shafter told me you were on the ship, and I thought I’d look you up.”

“How on earth did you know me?” (Demarest felt flattered.)

“Oh, I’ve seen photos of you!.. I’ve spoken to the purser about you — hope he’ll make you comfortable …”

“Helen Shafter? You know Helen Shafter?”

“Oh, I know Helen very well!”

One of Helen’s mutton chops? Had he been in love with her? Well, he must be discreet himself: it would never do to betray too great an intimacy with Helen.

“I hope,” said the young man, offering a cigarette, “you’re not joining the expatriates over there. Are you coming back?”

“Good Lord yes. I’m just going over for a—” Demarest laughed.

“Drink?”

“Yes, a drink! put it that way.… No, I’m too old to transplant. Too many roots to be broken, too much underground bleeding. Ten years ago — well, that would have been a different story.”

“I see … I’m glad to hear it. We don’t like to see our best men running away from us.”

“Oh! Best men!” Demarest felt a little idiotic.

“Your last book — I hope you don’t mind my saying so — I liked enormously.”

“I’m glad you liked it!”

“I certainly did … Hello! There’s the bugle!”

The bright brass notes came from a steward, who blew solemnly, facing the dock. The donkey engine had become silent. There was a rattle of chains, an air of poised expectancy.

“Well, so long,” said the young man, putting out his hand. “I hope you’ll have a good trip.”

“Thanks. So long!”

Roscoe disappeared down the deck stairs. Well, well — how remarkably pleasant. He was beginning to be a kind of celebrity. How fatuous it was! Pursers would bow to him, stewards would sing — Captains and second mates dance in a ring!.. And all because he was slightly, but uncontrollably, mad. Damned decent of Helen, too. He wished now that he hadn’t parted with her at eight o’clock on the subway stairs, last night — or had arranged to meet her later, at the hotel … Would she have come?… Perhaps not. An unaccountable, brooding, witty, perverse creature. “I’m becoming unduly agitated, Helen.” “Very well, then! — I’ll remove the immediate stimulus.” And she had withdrawn her hand, which, under the restaurant table, lay on his knee … Just like her!

A devastating roar came from the siren: it was prolonged, shook the ship, and he noticed that the dock had begun to glide away. They were being blasted away from America. Handkerchiefs were waved, then dashed at tears; there were calls and cries; children were held up, their puppet arms wagged by enthusiastic parents. Good-by, New York, city of cigar shops and marble towers! The sight of the hysterical crowd was painful to him, and he walked to the other side of the deck.

They were not a very promising-looking lot of passengers. He might, after all, have to look up Dr. Purington in the first class — a snob, but intelligent. Two solid prelates, with kind eyes and soft beards, stood talking to a girl, perhaps their niece. She, at any rate, was pleasant to look at — tall, straight, graceful, with innocent gray eyes and a mouth just amiably weak. Still, one couldn’t have a flirtation with the niece of two Irish prelates. Or was she merely a comparative stranger — traveling, by some remote arrangement, under their protection — and anxious, for other purposes, to be dissociated from them?

“Well, what kind of voyage we going to have?”

The old-middle-aged man with the gray mustache and cigar: he leaned on the railing, gently revolving the cigar in his mouth with thumb and finger, staring exophthalmically at Staten Island.

“Looks all right now,” said Demarest, with a little laugh. “Still, you never know.”

“No. You never know … Not very exciting, I guess — ship’s half empty.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s what they say. Off season.… Can’t go on too long for me though! Let her rip.”

“Good God, don’t suggest it.”

“Don’t you like a voyage? Nice ship, nice people? — just suits me. Yes, sir, it just suits me.”

“No. I’d like to be chloroformed, and called when we get to Liverpool … You heard about the man who said he wanted the easiest job on earth — calling the stations on an Atlantic liner?”

“Ha, ha. That’s good … Yes, that’d be a nice job for me … just let it go on forever.”

The old-middle-aged man turned a humorous beam on Demarest. An oblique purple scar cleft his mustache near the left nostril.

“Only one thing I regret,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t get myself a cap. I meant to do it — remembered it, too, last night on the train, when I was taking off my shoes. ‘Frank,’ I said to myself, ‘don’t forget that cap!’ But I did. It went clean out of my head. I don’t feel just right in this tweed hat. I hardly ever use it. Does it look all right?”

“Looks all right to me!”

“Well, guess it’ll have to do … Been over before?”

“Yes. This is my tenth trip.”

“Tenth! My Lord. You’re a fish.”

They both laughed lightly. A red ferryboat passed them, crowded with faces, the waves swashing under its blunt bow; a golden eagle flashed on the pilot house, where they could see the pilot shifting the easy wheel.

“Was that a reporter talking to you?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. I heard him mention the News … Well, there goes the Statue of Liberty — what’s she waving at, I wonder? Long may she wave. It’s about all she does … Fine piece of work, all the same … I’d like to have had the time to go out and see it.”

A flock of gulls sailed in the blue high over the Goddess; the towers of Manhattan began to soften in the October haze. The ship throbbed more palpably, the wind freshened. How quickly one forgets the sound of sea, thought Demarest — the death of a wave, the melancholy chorus of subsiding drops when wave breaks against wave, flinging white water into the air! There was Midland Beach — where he’d so often gone swimming, swimming among flotsam, old bottles and butter boxes. Was that the island he had swum across to?… Not so much of a swim after all. There, for the last time, he had seen Alan — Alan carrying a soiled towel, and grinning. Inconceivable vitality and charm: dead now, turned to ashes, fit to scatter on an icy sidewalk. He saw Alan leaning over the back of the sofa in the London boarding house, smiling amorously, with all his freckles, at the Welsh manageress. “What’s your hurry, Bill?… Mrs. Porter wants to talk to me — don’t you, Mrs. Porter!” And in the Underground, smirking ridiculously at the Great Lady, who blushed and smiled in answer. And in Piccadilly Circus, while waiting for a bus, bowing so elaborately to the girl who stood in the doorway. “Miss Simpkins, allow me to introduce my old friend Prince Schnitzkipopoff, sometime of Warsaw!..” Sometime of Warsaw! And where was Alan now, sometime of — life? Or was it Indiana?

“Have a cigar?” said Frank.

“Thanks! I don’t mind if I do. Have you got plenty?”

“More than I can smoke. I bought two boxes myself, and then the Boss, Mr. Charlton, gave me another. Pretty decent of him, wasn’t it? Havana too — expensive cigar. Well, it’s only natural — I’ve been in his employ for thirty years: Yes, sir, thirty years. A long time.” The old man looked wistfully at the water. “Yes, sir, thirty years. I felt bad about leaving — guess everybody felt bad about it. The Charltons gave a farewell party for me — I know them well, like one of the family. They know I’m crazy about cigars — and they had a little practical joke on me. You know those cigars that are loaded — explode? They gave me one after dinner—Bang! Gee whillikins, I was startled. And you know, even Selina, the old nigger cook, had been tipped off. She came to the door to see me light it. You ought to have heard her laugh!.. Well, you know, they’re nice people, fine people, and New Orleans seems like home to me; but you can’t go on forever. I thought I’d like to see the Old Country again … There goes Coney Island.”

“You were born in England?”

“Devonshire. Left it thirty years ago; went straight to New Orleans; and been there ever since.”

“You’ll find England changed.”

“You know, I’m sort of afraid, in a way — I don’t believe I’ll know a soul in my town.”

“No relatives?”

“All dead … Isn’t it funny? And yet I’ve got this craving to go back and walk round there. That’s what I’d like to do — walk over the country. I was a great walker then — knew every stick and stone. And I may hate it — be lonely — come running back inside a month.”

The wind whipped their coats about their knees. Green waves from the southeast, fluctuant pyramids of water tossing their points into the wind. The bow lifted gently, far ahead. The ship fell into a long leisurely swing, first greeting to the sea, the unvintagable sea … What was this strange passion for crucifixion that overcame the old man, as it overcame himself?

“You’re like Ulysses, setting out at last to find the rim of the world, the Pillars of Hercules.”

“Not much! No exploring for me. I want to get back, that’s all.”

The old man looked at him with brown eyes comically solemn, in which there was just a trace of something shy and fugitive. The arched gray eyebrows gave his eyes an odd startled roundness of appearance, childlike and charming.

“No, sir, I’m too old for any exploring!”

“But isn’t that just what you’re doing? You don’t know what you’re going to … I don’t believe we’re ever too old to explore — we’re always exploring something. There was an old ex-Senator on a ship with me once — by George, he was a wonder. Eighty years old, with gout so bad that he could hardly walk, and had to keep one leg up in a chair when he sat in the smoking room. He’d outlived all his relatives except one son, who’d taken over his law practice — outlived his friends, his own generation, every damned one. He fought in the Civil War, was one of the first Government surveyors of Arkansas — surveyed it when it was a wilderness, hostile Indians. He knew Walt Whitman — Walt used to come and see his aunt, he said. He didn’t have much use for Walt. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘why should I hang around Washington? I can’t live forever. There’s nothing for me to do here. I might as well die with my boots on. Besides,’ he said, ‘I haven’t seen Australia for thirty years, and I’d like to see it again. I hear it’s changed.’ So off he was going alone, eighty years old. A magnificent man, the kind we don’t seem to produce any more: huge frame, head like a lion, face like Gibraltar. He sat and listened to the arguments in the smoking room. When he said anything, it settled the discussion. We didn’t exist for him — were were just a lot of little yappers, still damp from the womb. I felt a sort of affection for him, and on the last morning as we were tying up, I hunted him out, on deck, to say good-by. ‘Oh, good-by!’ he said, sort of surprised, as if he’d never seen me before: and turned back to look at the landing stage … And you know, I don’t believe he ever had seen me — never bothered to focus his eyes on me, though we’d been talking together for a week.”

“Funny business,” said the old man. “How soon do they open the bar, I wonder? I wouldn’t mind a nice glass of Scotch.”

Demarest laughed. “And let there be no moaning at the bar, when we put out to sea!”

“Too deep for sound or foam, eh? That’s good — that’s good!”

“Guess I’ll go below and get a sweater. Maybe they’ll be giving out the seats in the saloon. Shall I get you one?”

“Thanks! I wish you would. My name’s Smith.”

In the smoking room half a dozen men were sitting carefully apart; they smoked meditatively, eying one another askance. They were waiting for conversational openings, each of them eager to pour forth his story. When Demarest put his head in to look round, they all regarded him simultaneously with a mute interrogation, a dumb wistful invitation: perhaps he was the necessary solvent; and at any rate the feeling was manifest that acquaintance would become easier as the room became crowded. A steel-faced clock ticked briskly on the wall of fluted and varnished wood. The small windows, with screw fastenings, were of cheap stained glass, vicious mustard yellows and bilious greens hideously devised into marine patterns. Anemic crabs, pale-ribbed scallop shells, star fish, weeds, cornucopias. The bar steward, tall and thin, leaning against a chair back, gave him an ironic smile, meant to be friendly: Malvolio. “Bar not open?” said Demarest. “Not yet, sir: waiting for the keys.” Tick-tick-tick-tick; and someone spat resonantly into a brass spittoon … Six tables … this would be his sitting room for eight days. The sound of the sea came softly here, muted, like the hush heard in a conch shell: Sh — sh — sh. A loose chair clicked gently as the floor inclined.

He descended the stairs into the main saloon, a wide, pillared room, red-carpeted, with long red-covered tables. Here the sound of the sea came fresher, through a long row of opened portholes. A palm tree stood by the pale piano, its branches faintly oscillating. Two bored-looking officers sat at the end of one of the tables with ship’s papers before them. Demarest gave his name, and Smith’s, to one of these. The other leaned forward and said in a subdued voice, “Oh — the Purser’s table. Demarest.” … So this is fame … A girl brushed his arm as he turned away. “Pardon ME!” she cried, drawling the “r” a little, and smiling. Then, to the bored officers, melodiously, extravagantly fluting—

“Are you giving out the seats?… ’Cause if you are, I want one!.. Pauline Faubion!”

Demarest was amused. A wild little person, he thought: a baggage. Small, impertinent, pretty, with large dark eyes far apart and challenging, and the full mouth a little somber. An actress perhaps. As he went out of the saloon into the corridor he heard her laughing — a fine bold trill, by George! She was losing no time … Crucifixion. Why do we all want to be crucified, to fling ourselves into the very heart of the flame? Empedocles on Etna. A moment of incandescent suffering. To suffer intensely is to live intensely, to be intensely conscious … Passionate, perverse refusal to give up the unattainable — dashing ourselves blindly against the immortal wall. “I will be crucified! Here are my hands! Drive nails through them — sharp blows!” … He looked at his face in the cabin mirror, under the caged electric light, and marveled that such madness could go on behind so impassive a forehead, eyes so profoundly serene. He looked long into his own eyes, so unfathomable, as if in an effort to understand himself, and — through his own transparent elusiveness — the world. What was it he wanted? What was it that was driving him back? What was this singular mechanism in him that wanted so deliberately, so consciously, to break itself? A strange, a rich, a deep personality he had — it baffled and fascinated him. Everybody of course, was like this, — depth beyond depth, a universe chorally singing, incalculable, obeying tremendous laws, chemical or divine, of which it was able to give its own consciousness not the faintest inkling … He brushed the dark hair of this universe. He looked into its tranquil black-pooled eyes. Its mouth was humorous and bitter. And this universe would go out and talk inanely to other universes — talking only with some strange minute fraction of its identity, like a vast sea leaving on the shore, for all mention of itself, a single while pebble, meaningless. A universe that contained everything — all things — yet said only one word: “I.” A music, an infinite symphony, beautifully and majestically conducting itself there in the darkness, but remaining forever unread and unheard. “Do you like cigarettes?” says one universe to another. “No, I prefer a pipe,” says the second. “And what is truth?” says one universe to another. “Truth is pleasure,” answers the second. Silence. The two universes smoke cigarettes and pipes … And this universe sees another, far off, unattainable, and desires passionately to approach it, to crash into it — why? To be consumed in the conflagration, to lose its identity?… Ah — thought Demarest, drawing on his sweater — if we stopped to consider, before any individual, his infinite richness and complexity, could we be anything but idolatrous — even of a fool? He looked again into his reflected eyes, but now with a long melancholy, a mingling of pity and contempt. Know thyself! That was the best joke ever perpetrated. A steaming universe of germ cells, a maelstrom of animal forces, of which he himself, his personality, was only the collective gleam. A hurricane of maggots which answered to the name of Demarest.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!”

“The bath steward, sir. Do you wish a bath in the morning?”

“What time is breakfast?”

“Eight o’clock, sir.”

“Then let me have it at seven-thirty.”

“Hot or cold, sir.”

“Cold.”

The footsteps went along the alley, another knock, the voice again, farther off. “The bath steward, miss,” a girl’s voice answering. A girl next door — that was good. Who was she? Another universe brushing its hair under an electric light, calmly, with vanity. And all of them crowded together in this small ship. What was it for? Everything seemed senseless. The ship throbbed, the bed curtains vibrated on their rings. The woodwork creaked gently, slowly, as the long ship rose to the sea. Thalassa! Thalassa! The wine-dark sea.

As he went out of his room the girl next door came forth also — the Irish girl. Shutting her door she eyed him with a sort of tentative candor, a smile withheld. A brown woolen scarf, brown woolen stockings, nice ankles. He felt shy and turned stiffly away, his head lowered a little. He heard her steps behind him, apologetic, unobtrusive, oddly contriving to say, “We’re not following you — no — no;” and his own steps, becoming lighter, replied, “We wouldn’t dream of assuming it.” Curious how such relations can spring into being!.. He went fugitively up the stairs and onto the deck.

It had grown cloudy and cold. The clouds were bringing an early dusk. Whitecaps, on a dark gray sea — lines of white on a sullen sea. Should he look up Purington? He walked to the companionway which led to the deck above, and there, of course, was the sign—“Second Cabin Passengers Not Allowed on This Deck.” Perhaps he would see Purington go by. He stood by the railing and watched a straggling procession of first-class men striding round the corner above. Their collars were turned up, hands in pockets. They eyed the sea with hostility. There was Purington. “Purington!” he called. But Purington didn’t hear. The words had been blown overboard. Two old ladies, passing, looked at him curiously, looked up at the first cabin deck, and smiled, as much as to say “Harmless!” … Disgusting old toads … Well, there was no rush about seeing Purington: he could wait. Besides, would Purington want to see him — a second-cabin passenger whom he didn’t know particularly well?… Perhaps not. He turned resolutely away and started to walk.

When he went down to dinner, he found himself sitting on the left of the Assistant Purser, who occupied the end seat. Old Man Smith was next to him, and opposite him were Mrs. Faubion (how delightful!) and another girl.

“No, sir,” the old man was saying with bantering severity. “I think you girls are too young to be traveling alone like this. It isn’t right.” He supped his soup loudly and intently.

“Too young! Well, I don’t know about Miss Dacey. But I’d like to tell you, Mr. Man, that I’m married; and if a married lady can’t travel by herself I’d like to know who can! And what right have you got, anyway, to talk to us like that — huh?” She glared at him with a comic imitation of anger.

“Married, eh? She says she’s married. I don’t believe she’s out of school … Besides, I’m old enough to be your father. I leave it to you, Mr. Captain, whether these girls aren’t too young to be traveling alone like this.”

The Assistant Purser, Mr. Barnes, red-faced and gray-eyed (sea-gazing eyes, thought Demarest — but they gazed for the most part at ledgers and passenger lists), was a little inclined to be stiff and pompous; reserved, perhaps. He laughed with uneasy amiability, looking from one face to another and crumbling his bread.

“But we mustn’t have a quarrel, must we, on the very first night of the voyage — what? Besides, where could Mrs. Faubion and Miss Dacey be safer than on a ship?”

“There!” cried Mrs. Faubion, triumphantly.

“I don’t know about a ship being so awfully safe though,” said Miss Dacey, wriggling and grimacing in a manner intended to be arch. “We know all about these sailors with a wife in every port — ha ha! Of course, I don’t mean you, Mr. Barnes!”

Mr. Barnes opened his mouth, a little taken back.

“Oh, of course not, Miss Dacey! How could you dream of such a thing!” He looked at Demarest, laughing. “The only ‘ports’ I know are New York, Liverpool and Southampton. So I suppose you credit me with three.”

Miss Dacey blushed furiously and gave another desperate wriggle. She was blue-eyed, anemic, with a long, thin mouth. She wore a bangle. Not more than twenty, thought Demarest.

“Now you know I didn’t mean that … How mean of you. I didn’t mean it at all. Though, of course, these handsome men—!” She gave a peculiarly vapid little laugh, and eyed Mr. Barnes sidelong.

“Now! Now!” cried Mr. Smith. “That’s enough! That’ll do for you. We can’t have our officers demoralized like this!”

“This is becoming a little personal,” said Barnes.

“Highly,” said Demarest. “You’re elected.”

Mrs. Faubion laughed absent-mindedly, looking rather hard at Demarest. She was handsome, saturnine, though her features were not particularly good. There was something brooding and dark about her which, combined with her extreme youth and brilliant vulgarity, intrigued him enormously. She was extraordinarily alive. And the fact that, although a mere girl, she was married, piqued him. What did she know? Certainly there was a good deal that was hard and blatant about her — and she had picked up, in America, an astounding vaudeville sort of accent. But at the same time there was something oddly unsophisticated in her somber eyes, a burning simplicity and candor. She looked now at Smith with amused suspiciousness, and asked him:

“Are you two traveling together?”

“Why, of course!” cried Demarest. “We’re father and son.”

“What! With different names! You’re kidding me. Is your name Smith?”

“Well, now, father, that’s a delicate question, isn’t it … Shall we tell the lady the truth?”

Smith laughed. “Go on — go on!”

“Oh, don’t be silly! I know you’re not father and son.”

She eyed him with a doubtful gleam, half smiling.

“Come now!” said Demarest, “don’t you observe the startling resemblance?… You see, it was like this.”

“Yes, it was!”

“Father, you see, had an unfortunate little affair some years ago — he has a peculiar psychological affliction — which caused him to spend two years in — er — jail. And when he came out, he changed his name.”

“Really!” cried Miss Dacey, leaning forward intensely. “How exciting! And what is the affliction?”

“Are you sure we ought to know about this, Mr. Smith?” asked the Purser, with a fine, grave air of concern.

“Oh — among friends—!” laughed Smith, flourishing his fork.

“Yes, it’s sad, it’s sad,” said Demarest, shaking his head. “No one knows what father has suffered — nor me either. You see, father is a kleptomaniac.”

“A what?” Mrs. Faubion cried. “What did you say?”

“He has, every now and then, an uncontrollable impulse to steal. Spoons and forks are a great temptation to him. We can’t let him go out to dinner alone — have to watch him every minute. And a restaurant or hotel! he goes simply cuckoo when he gets inside the door … It was a restaurant that undid him! A little restaurant on Sixth Avenue. And all for a couple of nickel-plated spoons!”

“Dear, dear,” murmured the Purser, “a year for each spoon, too! How unfortunate!”

“Oh, but be serious! You aren’t together, are you?”

She leaned back in the small swivel chair, and regarded him from an immense distance.

“Why, of course!.. Don’t you believe me?”

“No! I’m from Missouri,” she replied savagely. “And I think you’re real rude.”

Smith poked Demarest with his elbow, not spilling the potato from his fork.

“Now see what you’ve gone and done — made the little girl mad. Just when I was getting on so well, too.”

“Who was getting on so well?” … Mrs. Faubion glowered.

“Of all the conceited men—!” contributed Miss Dacey, bridling.

“Ah, father, you shouldn’t blame me like this … Is it my fault?… Is the child father to the man … No; if you’d only resisted those nickel spoons — sternly — walked out proudly with empty pockets and a pure heart—”

“Well, you don’t have to tell everybody, do you?… You’ve spoiled my chances. What hope is there for me now?” He looked sadly at Mrs. Faubion. “Me, an ex-convict, a kleptomaniac!”

“What a lovely word,” said Miss Dacey. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Barnes?”

Demarest thought she was about to lay her head on Mr. Barnes’s plate — so yearningly did she gush forward. Mr. Barnes leaned back a little.

“Oh, a lovely word!” he agreed. “Still, as Purser of this ship, I suppose I ought to be careful — what?… I must warn you, Mr. Smith, that everything you say will be held against you. It’s a beautiful word; but I’m a dutiful man.”

Miss Dacey clapped her hands, jingling the bangle.

“Oh, doesn’t he talk nicely! Beautiful — dutiful! Just like poetry! Do you like poetry, Mr. Barnes? Do you like poetry, Mr. Kleptomaniac? Do you like poetry, Mr. I-don’t-know-your-name”?

“Demarest?… Certainly. If I can have a little beer and cheese with it, or a game of billiards after it!”

“How vulgar of you!.. And you, Mr. Barnes?”

“Oh yes, yes!” cried Mr. Barnes.

“I don’t,” snapped Mrs. Faubion. “I think it’s all tosh. Me for a good dance, or a nice show, and plenty of jazz. On the beach at Wy-kee-kee!” She snapped her fingers lazily, dreamily, and gave a singular little “H’m’m!” like the dying-fall, cloying, of a ukelele.

“Twangle, twangle, little guitar!” said Smith. “I’m right with you, darling! Make it two!”

“Careful, father. Remember your years. Forgive him, Mrs. Faubion. He means well, — but you know — bubbles in the think-tank …”

“Yes, sir,” said Smith. “I sure do like a little jazz. Give me a good nigger orchestra every time. I remember once, at the Starcroft Inn, a dance hall — but no. No, I can’t tell it here. Too many ladies here.”

“Well! If that’s the way you feel about it!” … Mrs. Faubion folded her napkin, thrust it venomously into the ring, and rose. “Good night!” She walked away bristling. At the door she turned and looked hard at Demarest, who watching her. Their eyes met, then wavered apart. Smith laughed delightedly.

“That time, father, it was you.”

“Don’t call me father! — makes me feel too old. Brr!.. On the beach at Wai-ki-ki … Some girl!.. Have a cigar, Mr. Purser?… Mr. Demarest?” He beamed, offering cigars. Then he walked solemnly away, pinching the end of a cigar between finger and thumb.

“Jolly old boy that!” said Mr. Barnes. “Have you know him long?”

“Never saw him till today.”

“Jolly old boy!.. Are you going, Miss Dacey? Have we fed you well enough?”

“Oh, beautifully, thank you, Mr. Barnes! Do you have to go and do that awful work now?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

“Good night, then!”

“Good night!”

“Daisy Dacey,” said Mr. Barnes to Demarest. “How’s that for a name, eh? And look at her card, she gave it to me. ‘Miss Daisy Dacey. England and the United States!’ Isn’t that a scream?”

“The Western Hemisphere and Mars,” murmured Demarest.

Feeling suddenly that they had nothing more to say to each other, they drifted shyly apart. The orchestra, which had just come in from the first cabin, finished arranging its music on tripods, and struck loudly, coarsely into “My Little Gray Home in the West.” Flute, violin, piano and double-bass. The flute player, a young man with a pale, fine girlish face and a blond cascade of hair, hooked his lip earnestly over the flute: uncous lip. How white his hands were, too, on the black flute. My lit-tle gray ho-ome in the West. A brick vault in the cemetery, overgrown, oversnarled, with gaudy trumpet vine, steaming in the tropic sun. Bones in the tropic dust. My little red house in the south. Bees and bones and trumpet flowers: nostalgia, Gauguin, heart of darkness … Mrs. Faubion passed him, singing “My lit-tle gray ho’ome—” her eyes wide and … absorbent. Demarest felt like turning up his coat collar against a draft. A tall, dark, romantic young man came after her, carrying her coat and a steamer rug. Victim No. 1. Daisy Dacey stood at the corridor door, engaged in lively conservation with the Chief Steward. She pirouetted, slid, waved her arms, giggled, and the Chief Steward looked down at her intently, preening his little black mustache abstractedly, as if he weren’t so much listening as watching, waiting. “Hello!” she cried to Demarest as he passed. “Hello!” sang Demarest mockingly. After he had passed, he heard her crying, amid the harsh music, “Never — never—never!” At the same time, thin and far away, he heard the ship’s bell hurriedly striking eight: tin-tin, tin-tin, tin-tin, tin-tin. What watch was this — Dog Watch? No. The Watch of the Great Bear. The Watch of the Lion. The Watch of the Sphinx. The Queen of Sheba would be sitting in his stateroom, on a small golden chair, clawing a pomegranate on a golden dish. “Naughty, naughty!” she cried to her Sphinx cub, wagging a finger. Then she put down her locked hands, crying, “Jump, Sphinx!” and the little gray sphinx leapt, expressionless, over the alabaster hoop. “Mad, mad. I’m completely mad.”

He walked twice round the deck in the wind and dark. It was cold. The deck was dimly lighted, and everything looked a little fantastic — enormous ventilators, mysterious people stepping out of mysterious doors, a submarine murmur of ragtime. A cluster of tiny lights far away to port indicated Long Island. As he crossed the shelter deck behind the smoking room he saw Pauline Faubion, and the Romantic Young Man, sitting, well wrapped, in steamer chairs. The Young Man was leaning his head very close to her, talking in a low confidential voice — she regarded him with solemn probing indifference. Why was it not himself who sat beside her, talking? Oh, he knew well enough why — though he knew also, with conviction, that Pauline would have preferred him to her present company … The sea was black, with hints of white, and the wind brought unceasingly from it the fluctuatingly melancholy and savage sound of charging waves.

The smoking room had become noisy and cheerful. Bottles stood on the table with half-filled glasses, blue smoke drifted in long lazy-swirling parallels, like isobars on a weather chart. Four men played whist at the table in the far corner—bang! went down a card; knock! went down another. Card games as a form of physical exercise. In another corner, Smith sat back alone, solemnly and appreciatively smoking. He tapped indicatively the seat next to him, blowing a rich plume of smoke. Demarest sat down, feeling relaxed and melancholy.

“Well,” said Smith, after a pause. “I’ve told you what I’m going for — what are you going for?”

Demarest laughed, — looking through Smith, through the wall, through the sea, the night. He waved his hand weakly.

“Me?” he answered. “Oh, I’m going to see the chimera. The Great Chimera.”

“I didn’t know it was in captivity.”

“It isn’t.”

“A girl? I get you, Steve.”

“Yes.”

There was another pause, and Smith added humorously:

“Well, I’m an old man, but I keep my eyes open myself … Those girls at our table — they have the stateroom opposite mine. There’s some-think funny about those girls — something queer.” He eyed Demarest provocatively. “Don’t you think—”

Demarest thought, but did not answer … After a while they played checkers.