Blue Voyage

II

It was manifest to Demarest that he had got into the wrong place. It was totally unfamiliar. He walked quietly along the side of the grape arbor and then, cautiously, passed under a fragrant trellis overgrown with roses. He emerged upon a wide lawn enclosed with trees and flowers, where a garden party was in progress. A score of glitteringly dressed men and women stood talking, sauntered here and there, or set cups down on flower-decked tables. How horrible! He felt out of place, furtive and shabby, an intruder. But how was he to escape? He couldn’t recall where he had got in. Was it over a wall?… He turned back through the trellis, hearing behind him a mild laughter. He looked down, and saw that his shoes were covered with mud and that his trousers were torn. Passing this time to the left of the grape arbor, he hurried along the narrow path of deep, soft turf, and was horrified to encounter a group of ladies coming in. They looked at him with hard eyes. Perhaps they thought he was some kind of a gardener?… This, then, might be the way out?… A flunky in knee breeches eyed him suspiciously. Then he saw a green wooden gate; but just as he was about to open it, there came a loud knock at the other side, which was at once terrifyingly repeated, repeated—

“Bath’s ready, sir.”

He groaned with relief, waking … The ship, of course! he was on a ship. He relaxed, becoming conscious of the regular remote throbbing of the engines. His coat, hanging on the stateroom door, sidled a little … That curious dream! It was just a new version, nevertheless, of the familiar theme — his absurd “inferiority complex.” Good God! Was he destined never to escape it? Why was it that he never could be at his ease with those who were socially his equals — only at ease with his “inferiors”? It was very strange. Formal occasions, polite people, froze him to the marrow: he couldn’t remain himself … It was not that he hadn’t had every opportunity to become accustomed to them — for all the rest of his family were happily and intensely social … Mary and Tom adored parties, and so had his mother … But he had always been instinctively hostile to such things; and while he recognized in himself a passionate attachment for the fine and rich — by way of environment — he wanted the fine and rich freed from the “social”; and moreover, every so often he wanted a good deep foaming bath in the merely vulgar. An occasional debauch was imperative — whether it was only a visit to a cheap vaudeville, with its jazz, its spangles, its coarse jokes, its “Chase me, boys — I issue trading stamps”—or a shabby little clandestine adventure of his own, in which his motive was largely, if not entirely, curiosity … It was precisely this damned inferiority complex that had put him at such an initial disadvantage with Cynthia. By the time he had succeeded in adjusting himself, psychologically, to her exquisite old worldliness, the dim, deep constellations of refinements and manners amid which she so statelily moved, and by the time he had put out of his mind the feeling that he was a mere ugly duckling, and had scraped from his shoes (metaphorically speaking) the mud of the brief, violent, disgusting Helen Shafter affair: by this time Cynthia had left London and gone to the continent. Gone! and that was the end.… He shut his eyes in a spasm of pain.

Presently he put on his ancient slippers and his raincoat and shuffled along the corridor, inhaling a dreadful odor of coffee. The bath was green, deep, dazzling: electrically cold. He was inclined to yelp like a dog, as he emerged — or no — to blaff like a seal. Blaff! Superb word. It suggested the blowing away of the water from mouth and nostrils, and also a certain joie de vivre. Laughter. He overheard, as he was drying himself, a fragment of conversation.

“… She says she’s married to an American naval M.D.”

“Oh, does she? Well, maybe she is … She looks to me like a wild one. You’d better be careful.”

“Oh, I know the ropes … She told me last night she was going back to visit her family.”

“She’s English?”

“Yep … though you wouldn’t guess it. That accent! You could cut it with a knife.”

“I’d like to meet her — introduce me, will you?”

“Sure — if you like.”

One of the men, Demarest saw as he came out, was the Romantic Young Man. The other was a short plump individual, swarthy and sleepy, with a walrus mustache and small green cupidinous eyes … He gathered that they were merely ship acquaintances.

“The Lord’s Day,” murmured the plump one through his lather. “Guess I’ll go to church. They say there’s a good stewards’ choir quartet. Anything to pass the time.”

“Well, put sixpense in the plate for me. I’ll be among the missing.”

“I’ll pray for you — for those lost at sea.”

“Do.”

Demarest shaved, glancing now and then at the smoke-blue Atlantic framed in an open porthole. A glittering day. A pleasant, soft, surfy sound came through the port and filled the white-floored bathroom, giving it oddly the air of an aquarium. Pale water lights danced on the ceiling.

“And who’s that other one — the girl with her?”

“Dacey, her name is. I haven’t talked with her.”

“A silly-looking cat of a girl.”

“By Jove, she is.”

Rasp, rasp — the bally little lawn mower. “A pynter an’ gilder, I am, an’ I’ve been to Vancouver.”…

Walking the deck after his breakfast — at which he had sat alone — Demarest gave himself up, for the first time, to the enjoyment of the full salt flavor of sea voyage. The sun was hot, the breeze was cold, the sea was an immense disc of blue light, just sufficiently rough to escape monotony; and the bright ship burned and sparkled in the midst of the infinite, swaying its high yellow masts ever so slightly against a witch’s fingernail of white moon, lifting and declining its bows against the cloudless horizon. The long white deck, polished like bone, rose and fell just perceptibly, and with immense leisure, to the soft irregular accompaniment of waves broken and falling; and with it rose and fell the promenading passengers. The sense of the infinite, and of being isolated in its garish and terrifying profundity, was beginning to work upon them. Delighted with the ship and the sea, inquisitive and explorative, nevertheless they were restless; they paced the deck, climbed the companionway, walked through the smoking room and out at the other side, as if driven by a secret feeling of being caged. It amused Demarest to watch them. It amused him to see them, like imprisoned animals, furtively try a bar, when none was looking, elaborately pretending all the while that no bars were there, that all was peace and freedom. They had put on their “old” clothes — supplemented here and there with grotesque white yachting caps, which the wind ballooned on their heads. Tweed suits were strangely accompanied by glaring white canvas shoes; and binoculars, obviously new, were extracted from strapped cases and leveled, with knit brows and a heavily professional air, at remote plumes of smoke which lay faint and supine along the horizon. Every slightest action betrayed their inordinate consciousness of one another. Those who walked, walked either more emphatically than was their wont, or more sheepishly, aware of the scrutiny, more or less veiled, of the row of sitters. Those who sat in deck chairs were conscious of their extended feet, their plaid rugs and shawls, and the slight physical and moral discomfort of having to look “up” at the walkers. The extraordinary feeling of kinship, of unity, of a solidarity far closer and more binding than that of nations or cities or villages, was swiftly uniting them; the ship was making them a community. How often Demarest had observed this process! He now felt, with almost physical vividness, its powerful, secret, and rapid operation. He felt it turning the head of one passenger to another, he felt the yearning confusion of friendliness, curiosity, loneliness, and love, which made them all puppets and set them bowing and nodding at one another; smiling mechanical smiles which concealed outrageous happiness; laughing a little too loudly or a little too politely; all like automatic performants of a queer primitive ritual. Every one of them wanted to be overheard or seen, wanted to be exposed, wanted even — it seemed to Demarest — to be stripped. Those who already knew each other, or were relatives, talked to each other in a tacit mutual conspiracy of unaccustomed emphasis, loudness, and goodnature, made humorous remarks, delivered themselves of aphorisms or scraps of knowledge, with the one aim of making, in all directions, a favorable impression. It was a grotesque sort of love-dance. The young women flaunted and fluttered their ribbons, loitered in the sunlight consciously and gracefully, leaned on the railing with a melancholy abstraction which was deliberately and beautifully an invitation. The young men, beginning to talk with one another, but as yet timid about extending their adventures to the realm of the other sex, tramped the deck, a little flustered and unsteady when they passed the young women. They all desired keenly to talk with the latter, but none wanted to be the first, fearing the eyes and laughter of the community. Only the ship’s officers, coolly sauntering and smoking, were free from this singular spell. Demarest watched their adroit maneuvers, admiring their skill, and their deep social wisdom. He observed the doctor and the young wireless operator strolling appraisingly back and forth; imperturbably selecting, as they did so, the most promising fields for exploits. They were in no hurry — they felt no pressure. They were artists; and having selected their material with care, would manipulate it with the finest of tact and discretion. Ah! how admirable! They had stopped beside an old married couple and were lightly bantering with them. The wireless operator tucked up the old woman’s feet, and the old woman laughed, delighted and flattered, at something he had said. An exquisite approach! They were now in touch with the new cargo of passengers, and in the best possible way — the way which would give them, later on, the greatest possible freedom. The pause was only for a second, the merest skimming of the water with swallow-wings, but much had been set in motion: eyes had seen them, ears had heard, they were marked and sealed now as “such nice young fellows.” The young men among the passengers, who beheld this little maneuver, were frankly scornful and hostile, without knowing why; the young women were envious and reproachful, looking after the retreating officers with a faint momentary pang, soon forgotten, as of sorrow … Ah, these sea dogs, thought Demarest, what cunning devils they are! How well they know human nature! How he envied them their aplomb and cool sophistication, the effrontery with which they accomplished, in such fine publicity, the right thing! Why could he not do likewise, instead of slinking furtively along red-carpeted corridors, avoiding the too-crowded decks, or sitting for whole days at a time in the stuffy smoking room at games of chess or bridge, or vainly endeavoring to read? Why? Why?… Walking toward the smoking room, which was well aft, he passed the Irish girl, who stood with the two bearish prelates. Her eyes turned friendlily toward him, but he averted his face, pretending a distraction. Then he cursed himself. Nothing could have been simpler than to have smiled. Nor could anything, for that matter, have been easier! Her gray eyes, of an innocence not without daring, her kind mouth amiable and a little weak, her tall easy figure, the brown woolen scarf and rough brown stockings to match — he noticed sharply all these things — and noticed also the slight stiffening of shyness with which she observed his approach. Unconsciously, she had contrived to admit the fact that she was aware of him and liked him. The way in which she shifted her balance, at the same time lifting a little before her one of her brown slippers, and frowning at the bright buckle, and the way in which she broke rather emphatically into the middle of something that the older prelate was saying — ah! She would be friendly, she was prepared to like and be liked, and to make confessions by moonlight.

It was the brown woolen muffler and gray eyes which most disturbed him. Gray eyes, and brown muffler, on a ship’s deck, in sunlight, at sea — this meant one thing to him: Cynthia. Cynthia, on the Silurian, had worn such a muffler: throwing it languidly over one shoulder and around her throat as she started forward, with that odd look of distance and somber detachment in her gray eyes, sea-gazing and imperious. Good God, what an absurd pang the mere visual thought of her still gave him after a year! A disgraceful weakness. He sank into the corner seat nearest the door of the smoking room, dropping his book on the table. The pianist of the ship orchestra sat next to him, a small golden harp embroidered on the sleeve of his soiled and stained blue coat. He was a pale, ill-shaven young man, with reddish hair slicked back from his clammy forehead and watery blue eyes behind thick spectacles. His mouth was small, curled and petulant, and his voice had a complaining quality. He was leaning forward on the table, talking to an extraordinary-looking young woman whom Demarest had not noticed before.

“You’re Welsh aren’t you?”

The young woman looked at him sidelong in a manner intended to be vampirine. Her green eyes were by nature narrow and gleaming under long black lashes, and she deliberately over exaggerated this effect. An extraordinarily lascivious face, thought Demarest — the eyes cunning and treacherous, and the mouth, which might have been beautiful had it been more moderate, extravagantly red and rich and extravagantly and cruelly curved downward at the corners. A vampire, a serpent, a lamia, a carrion flower — yes, a mouth like a carrion flower, and giving out poisonous juices; for as she laughed, Demarest noticed that the lower lip, which was undershot, was wet with saliva. She lifted her strange face to laugh, giving only two short musical sounds, then lowered her face again and wiped her mouth with a crumpled handkerchief.

“Welsh? Why do you think I’m Welsh?… You ought to be Welsh, with a harp on your sleeve!”

She gave another laugh, eying Demarest; and Demarest noticed, as she again lifted and dropped her head, that her throat was singularly beautiful. The pianist turned to look at Demarest, smiled, and went on:

“Well, I don’t know if you look Welsh: except that you’re dark. But you asked if I had any Welsh songs, so what could be simpler? Eh?… What could be simpler?…” The pianist smiled oilily, showing three gold teeth. He knitted his white plump fingers together before him on the table. “What’s your name?” he then went on.

The young woman assumed an air at the same time injured and arch. She drew back a little, narrowed her eyes at the pianist’s thick spectacles, then directed suddenly at Demarest a serpentine smile, at the same time giving him a gleaming wink quick as the eye of a Kodak.

“Isn’t he smart?… And personal!.. sweet hour.”

Demarest smiled, lighting his pipe. He was taken aback, but somewhat excited. The creature was so obviously — What? While she turned, half rising, to look out of a porthole at the sea (again wiping her juicy mouth) he tried to analyze the effect she had on him. Tropical. He had never encountered at such close quarters so scarlet-flowering and rank a growth. The invitation, certainly, was tremendous. Here, close at hand, was the rich jungle — poisonous and naïve, treacherous and rich, with its tenacious creepers, its bright voracious birds, and its fleshlike fruit. Should he enter? He recognized, also, the pressure exerted upon him to do so by the mere fact of the pianist’s presence, the pianist’s prior pursuit and inquisitiveness. His impulse was to compete with the pianist: to be at the same time more tactful, more humorous, and more charming: to snatch the scarlet flower from under his very nose.

Against all this — ah! the manifold complications! For it was easy to foresee that this girl would be swarmed about by the men on the ship; swarmed about as by flies; would be talked about by every one, sniggeringly—“Yes, sir, she’s a warm baby!”—and would be signally avoided by the women. To attach one’s self to her too publicly — and any attachment would inevitably involve a publicity sufficiently rank — would be to make one’s self conspicuous and a little ridiculous … Smiling, he picked up his book and opened it. He would neither refuse nor accept.

“Oh well,” he murmured, more to the pianist than to the girl. “We’re all personal on a ship! What else is there to do?”

“Right!” beamed the pianist. “What the devil can we do if we don’t talk?”

“Talk!” sneered the vampire. “A lot of good talking does.”

“What’s wrong with it? There are worse things than talking.”

“Ha — ha!” She laughed, lifting her throat. This amused her intensely, and she contrived without much subtlety to suggest that it was a little wicked of her to be amused. Her chief means to this end was another rapid green wink at Demarest. “Worse things — I should hope so!”

The pianist grinned sharply, eager to take her up on this.

“What do you mean?” he said, leaning toward her.

“Mean?” She drew back, her face becoming hard and distant. She was rebuking him. The rebuke, however, seemed to grow with difficulty in her mind, and before it had flowered into speech (as for a moment Demarest thought it would) she relented, changed her purpose, and again gave her short empty musical laugh.

“What’s he talking about?” she said to Demarest. “I mean worse things, that’s all!..”

“He’s got an evil mind,” said Demarest. “He thought you meant a particular kind of worseness.”

The girl’s undershot jaw dropped. This was too deep for her.

“Are you talking English, or am I crazy?”

“He’s talking Welsh,” the pianist went on … “You haven’t told me your name. I’ll bet it’s Evans or Jones.”

“No, Davis, Peggy. You can call me Peggy, as we’re old friends.”

“Help! I’m married already.”

“You married?” she cried. “Well, you do look sort of married, come to think of it.”

“Oh, I say!”

“Don’t you think so? He has that look — you know, sort of meek.” She gave a hoot behind her handkerchief, gleaming at him askance. “I’ll bet he washes the dishes.” She hooted again.

The pianist flushed, grinning. “What about you? Are you married, too? I’ll bet you’re married to a dozen!”

“No, I’m a widow. My husband died last month, in Providence — that’s where we lived.”

“A widow!.. You’re a widow?” The pianist was unembarrassed.

“Yes. I had a good job too, but my brother thought I’d better come back.”

“A brother in Wales?”

“Mm! A miner. Oo, such a fine, big boy. He’s going to meet me at Liverpool.”

… Abstracting himself from the persistent dialogue, Demarest tried to read. A phrase — a sentence — but the dull dialogue which kept intruding, mingled with shouts and laughter blowing through the open porthole, and the softened sh sh of the sea, prevented him from much concentration. Malvolio, the bar steward, smirking, made a pretense of wiping the table and chairs; opened another port, smirked again at the girl; rearranged the brass spittoons, pushing them with his foot; then came and leaned his long black-haired hands (the wrists bony) on the table, the dusting cloth under one palm. He addressed Demarest ingratiatingly.

“Your friend was looking for you.”

“My friend?”

“The old man,” said Malvolio confidentially. “The one you played drafts with. He said he had something particular to say to you.”

“Oh, did he!”

“Yes. Something about those two young ladies, I think he said it was.”

Demarest felt himself blushing. Malvolio, still leaning his long wrists on the table, turned slow, greedy eyes toward Peggy Davis, who returned the look haughtily.

“Those two young ladies, eh!” pursued the pianist. “Seems to be a lot of young ladies on this ship!”

The bar steward smiled, gave one formal wipe at the table, and withdrew lightly.

“Why all the mystery?” inquired Peggy.

“No mystery. They sit opposite me at meals. Amusing kids — nothing but kids.”

“Oh, yes — these kids! Traveling alone, I’ll bet — under the chief steward’s protection! Ha ha!” Peggy hooted unctuously — dabbed her mouth — gleamed lasciviously.

“You seem to know all about it,” said the pianist.

“Ho! That’ll do for you. You don’t have to do it yourself to know about it.”

“No?”

“No … Say, aren’t you impertinent!..”

Looking at his opened book, Demarest wondered about the old man and the two girls. What was up? Smith had been frank about his interest in them — franker than he himself had been. He found the thought vaguely exciting. Had Smith made advances, taking advantage of the proximity of his cabin to theirs? He hoped Pauline — no … How perfectly ridiculous … Here he was, setting out three thousand miles to see Cynthia, and almost immediately allowing himself to be attracted by the small, impudent, brazen baggage of a vaudeville queen — good God, how disgusting! He flushed, thinking of it. “Off to my love with a boxing glove ten thousand miles away.” Disgusting? No. A pluralistic universe — as plural of morals as of worlds. The magnificent “thickness” of things … A bugle blew just outside the porthole. “Church!” cried Peggy, jumping up. “Don’t go!” the pianist replied holding her hand. She slapped him playfully and departed … Men began coming into the smoking room, evidently from a desire not to be seen on deck during the services. He rose, intending to go out and taste the Sabbath stillness and desertion which he knew would possess the ship at this hour, but as he rose a voice shouted, “Who plays bridge?” and he found himself automatically replying, “I do!” “What’s your name, Mr. — ?” “Demarest.” “Mr. Demarest”—the Jew waved a thick hand which hooked a cigar—“Meet Major Kendall, Mr. Hay-Lawrence and myself — Solomon Moses David Menelik Silberstein.” There was a laugh, slightly uneasy, while Silberstein placidly and heavily but with dexterous hands shuffled the cards. “I’m not one of those Jews,” he went on, “who thinks it’s a disgrace to be a Jew. And I always think it a good plan to be explicit on that point — if you’ll forgive my little idiosyncrasy, gentlemen — at the beginning of an acquaintance. It helps to avoid mistakes.”

“Hear, hear,” said Hay-Lawrence faintly, unfrowning his monocle, which fell on its black cord.

“I’ve got time for one rubber — or two fast ones … I’m glad I found this nice corner with you gentlemen,”—Silberstein pursued—“cut, please Major — because anything more like a mausoleum than the first cabin is, on this trip, I’ve never even considered possible. Thirteen passengers altogether, of whom half are octogenarians. One old man in a wheel chair sitting in the smoking room being uproariously rowdy all by himself, and half a dozen female century plants sitting as far from each other as they can in the drawing room. They look to me like Boston’s best … I perceived that if I was to live for another twenty-four hours I would have to seek life down here with you fellows … My God, the meals up there! It’s like a funeral … Your bid, Mr. Demarest … You come from New York?”

“Yes … One spade.”

“One spade he says. My partner’s going to say something — I can see it in his eye. It’s all right so long as I don’t see it in his hand … Sometimes the eye is quicker than the hand, on these boats. No reflections, gentlemen.”

“Double one spade,” said Hay-Lawrence, frowning his monocle into place.

“Now that’s a new one on me,” said the bald-headed Major, flushing. It was explained by Silberstein, and the game proceeded. The Major polished his pince-nez, endeavoring to look firm.

“Observe,” murmured Silberstein placidly, “the game in the opposite corner. Particularly observe the gent sitting with his face toward us. You notice that his left eye is glass — a little too far to starboard — the man, I mean, who strikes you as skull-faced. He was on the same ship with me two months ago. A professional card player, addicted to poker. Notice also the rabbit-faced timid little gent who sits two places to his left. Partners, though they pretend not to know each other. They never meet on deck, you’ll find, and they probably don’t eat at the same table.”

“Poker, what?” said Hay-Lawrence, grimacing as he peered over his shoulder. “I’d like to have a go at him. I’ve got a score to wipe out against poker. I had a little experience in my hotel the night before we sailed.”

Silberstein lifted a slow finger, diamonded, thickly reprehensive.

“Never play poker with strangers … Or bridge either. Not for high stakes.”

“Of course. I’m not a fool, man! In this case, I was bored and I took him on for pure love of adventure. I knew quite well he was some kind of sharper, but wanted to see how he would do it.”

“Well, how did he do it?”

“That’s the joke! I don’t know. For the life of me I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. He sauntered up to me while I was reading in the lounge, and asked if I’d like to play. I bought a pack of cards, and we went up to my room. Then we sat down and drew cold hands for a dollar a hand. In an hour and a half I’d lost a hundred dollars. Then I quit. He thanked me politely, put on his hat and departed … I watched him like a hawk — mind — and I couldn’t see a damned thing that looked wrong.”

“No. You never do. Those men are artists. They wouldn’t do it if they weren’t.”

“Three men asked me to play bridge with them on the train from Buffalo,” said the Major, blushing. “I refused at first, but then as they said they’d been unable to get a fourth anywhere, I joined them, stipulating that there should be no money in it. After three hands, they said there was no fun in it without a small stake — say fifty cents a hundred. ‘Good-by, gentlemen!’ I said and cleared out.” The Major giggled, blushing; then frowned severly, looking at his cards. Silberstein, with green eyes far apart, glanced at him casually and massively. The Frog Prince.

“The Major takes no chances,” he said. “Even in the Army, discretion is the better part of valor … How do you know, Major, that Mr. Demarest and I aren’t conspiring together to defraud you?… Consider the circumstances. We three meet, and look for a fourth … I sing out here in this crowded smoking room in my unabashed Jewish way, and out of all those present, and endowed with bridge talent, Mr. Demarest, total stranger, steps forward … Think it over! Looks sort of bad, doesn’t it?”

“You alarm me,” breathed the Major.

“And me too,” said Demarest. “What am I up against?”

“And as for the Duke of Clarence, my partner,” Silberstein placidly pursued, while he arranged his cards and Buddhalike serenely surveyed them with slow slant eyes from end to end of the firmly held fan, “just take a good look at him, gentlemen. I ask you, was there ever a more perfect specimen of the gentleman villain? One look is enough. Monocle and all. Raffles isn’t in it, nor Dracula, nor Heliogabalus. That bored Oxford manner, the hauteur—you know, those English go in for a hauteur—correct me, partner, if my French pronunciation isn’t all it should be — and the skillfully introduced little story of the hundred dollars lost to a New York con man — Well, I say no more.”

“Oh, dry up, Silberstein,” said Hay-Lawrence, grinning uncomfortably.

“See the guilty look?… That’s the only weakness of these English sharpers. They’re too proud and sensitive. Make personal remarks about them, and they’ll betray themselves every time … Now, Mr. Demarest here has the cold, unmoving New England face, the sacred cod; he conceals his feelings better even than the Englishman, simply because he hasn’t got any, Am I right, Mr. Demarest?”

“Perfectly,” Demarest laughed. “As for you—!”

“Well?”—calmly staring. “What about me?”

“The Sphinx, beside you, has as mobile a face as an ingénue!”

Silberstein played a card, reached his hand (cigar-holding) for the trick, then drew back as if stung.

“Ouch. He fooled me. He saved that up.”

“Yes. I saved it up,” said Demarest, tapping the trick on the edge.

“Now that we’re so well acquainted, Mr. Demarest, I should like to ask you about that young lady — the term may be taken to have some latitude — to whom you were talking just now. I wouldn’t call her a beauty, exactly — but I think it could be said with some justice that her appearance is very remarkable.”

“The Welsh Rarebit?”

“Ha!” cried Silberstein, rolling his large head back and half closing his eyes appreciatively. “Ha! is that what you call her? Welsh Rarebit is good, is very, very good. Welsh Rarebit she is … And what about her, if I may ask without seeming to be too impertinent?”

“Peggy Davis. A widow of one month — so she says. Returning from Providence, where her husband died, to Wales. Her handsome brother — a miner — will meet her at the dock.”

“Yes?… It sounds fairly circumstantial?… It convinces you?”

“The damndest face I ever saw,” said Hay-Lawrence. “It makes me ill to look at her.”

“You mean”—the Major lifted off his pince-nez and endeavored to look fiercely out of gentle brown eyes, under a brow beetling but more academic than military—“the queer-looking girl who sat over there talking with the musician?… She looked to me like hot stuff!.. He he.” He put on his pince-nez, bridling and blushing, looking naughtily from one to the other of the bridge players.

“Go to it, Major,” breathed Silberstein smokily. “We give you a free hand — go as far as you like. Only I feel it’s my duty, as one hideously experienced, to warn you that she will probably see you coming … Ha!” He took a puff at his cigar, shut narrow eyes ecstatically, and then, while the others laughed, gave another “Ha!”

“I’m no chicken myself,” said the Major. “I haven’t spent two years in Constantinople for nothing.”

“Have you got any photos of your harem?” asked Demarest.

The Major quivered with delight at so much attention. “No,” he giggled, “not this year’s.”

“I suppose,” said Silberstein, “you Orientals change the houris in your harems — (By Godfrey doesn’t that run off nicely? — houris in your harems! Have you a little houri in your harem?) — as often as we poor stick-in-the-muds change the goldfish in our finger bowls. What’s a houri more or less? And you must develop a very fine, a very subtle taste in those matters.”

“Smubtle,” suggested Demarest.

“Score two for Mr. Demarest. Yes, you Oriental potentates must be full of smubtleties. Thank you for that word, Mr. Demarest — a permanent addition to my vocabulary … A smubtle allusion! Good.”

“The poker player is mad about something,” said Hay-Lawrence, turning.

“Is it true that glass eyes sometimes explode?” Demarest leaned to look at the angry face. “I’ve heard somewhere that they do. Here’s hoping.”

“This is nothing to what will go on, on the last night, when they’ll propose a no-limit game. That will be the time to get your money back, Duke.”

“For God’s sake, don’t call me Dook.”

Smith’s cherub face appeared at a window, looking in. He waved his cigar, disappeared, and then came in through the door, soft-stepping and sedate.

“Playing bridge, I see,” he said perching temporarily on a chair arm. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Where were you at breakfast?” said Demarest. “It looked bad.”

“Seasick? Oh, no. I’m never seasick. Never … Oh, I see, I see what you mean!.. Ha ha … No — but I’ll tell you something later. Come out and walk when you’ve finished. Beautiful air this morning — beautiful.” He rose absentmindedly, stared wistfully out through the window, which careened against the smooth blue sea, then softly departed. His cherub face passed the port window outside, in profile, evenly gliding.

“He was clever,” murmured Silberstein. “He knew we were playing bridge.”

“A nice old bird,” said Demarest. “Spent his life — thirty years of it — selling sheet music and opera tickets in New Orleans. Knows every nigger song and jazz tune from the time of the flood. He’ll make life miserable for the ship’s orchestra.”

“Made a large fortune at it, I don’t doubt!”

“Enough to go back to England on. It’s really rather pathetic … He’s going back to see his childhood place, where he hasn’t got a living relative and won’t know a soul … Why does he do it?”

“Nostalgia,” blew Silberstein. “He’s looking for his mother. He wants to die, and doesn’t know it.”

“Good God,” cried Hay-Lawrence. “I believe that’s what’s wrong with me.

“And me!” said Demarest.

The whistle blew, vibrating the table. “Twelve o’clock,” said the Major and they all set their watches. Ten minutes later, the Third Officer came in, swiftly stepping over the brass door sill, a notice in his hand. He affixed this to the green baize bulletin board. The day’s run. Three hundred and one miles, fine light WSW breeze, smooth sea … “One day gone, gentlemen,” said Silberstein. “The game is adjourned till later … Some time this afternoon?” … Demarest, loitering a moment to look at the chart, saw the glass-eyed poker player slam down his cards, face upward. “Jesus Christ! I never saw such a lot of pikers!.. What’s the matter, you afraid to bet? That’s what I’ve got — a pair of deuces!” He drew the piled chips toward him. “Come on, ante. And put some ginger into it.” He turned dissociated eyes arrogantly about the room, seeking approval.

Released from church, the passengers were pacing the deck briskly, in couples, or composing themselves complicatedly in chairs, entangled with rugs, cushions, muffllers and gaudy magazines. Smith, at the forward end of the second-class deck, leaned on a stanchion, watching a sailor chalk on the polished deck the squares for shovelboard. Demarest, his back against the broad railing, hearing behind him and below him the laughter of steerage passengers and the whine of a concertina, watched the figure of Smith, small, immaculate and pathetic, cigar in hand, rising slowly against the wide arc of sea and sky, and again as slowly, with a slight swerve, descending. He stood there immovable, heroic and tragic, describing unconscious patterns against the infinite, watching the stooped sailor. Was it only the imminence of sea and sky, the immense solitude, that gave poor Smith a sort of grandeur? No. These factors did not so much confer as reveal it. Selling sheet music in New Orleans (“Cuddle up a Little Closer,” or “Every Little Movement has a Meaning All Its Own”) or speculating in opera tickets during the opera’s annual visit, or swinging like a tiny pendulum here between water and space — Smith was equally portentous. He epitomized superbly the tragic helplessness of the human … Better than himself for example — or Hay-Lawrence, or Silberstein? Yes, somehow better — better perhaps because he was less conscious of hostile destiny than these, and therefore gave the effect of being more impotent. He had also the air, somehow, of being extraordinarily complete. There were no loose ends … An ant in the grass, crawling up a dry twig, waving stupid antennas at the void; descending patiently again; exploring an enormous pebble all the way to its barren top — descending once more; and so on, and so on, one vast obstacle after another patiently and stubbornly encountered; an oak tree climbed, right out into the infinite, suspended in the blue; a stone wall, vast labyrinth of monoliths, stoutheartedly and minutely overcome. Smith!.. Who the devil was Smith?… Demarest watched him rising and falling there against the ultramarine abyss; unconscious and infinitesimal; smoking the “expensive” cigar which Mr. Charlton had given him. His whole career was poised there — hung in the blue — twinkled — and disappeared. There he was, to begin with, in the stationer’s shop in Bideford, rosy-cheeked and amiable, handing down boxes of blue envelopes for a customer, checking off returned books of fiction in the Circulating Library (two hundred volumes) and reading them all himself, particularly the works of Thackeray; on Sunday afternoons, trudging in the rain over the red fields to Hartland Point. Then the scar on his upper lip — some sort of row — over a girl perhaps? Disgrace, discouragement, love of adventure? Adventure! Straight from the stationer’s shop in Bideford, to a music shop in New Orleans, there piling and turning music for thirty years! The opera tickets. He got a corner in them once — and sold them for five dollars each. Even to angry old Mrs. Schneider! (whoever she was). That was adventure. And now his second great adventure — the return! No doubt Silberstein was right — it was an unconscious desire for death, for the mother … The sailor was pointing at the shovelboard pattern. Smith leaned, goggling, and suddenly took a couple of quick unpremeditated tripping steps, irresistibly suggested by the sea. Recovering, he pointed along the deck, nodding his head. Then gave the sailor a cigar … Yes, one saw the whole of Smith’s career transacted there on the swaying deck in sunlight, poised between sea and sky. It was amusing to run it off, like a movie film, at terrific speed, so that the whole life story unfolded itself like one of those flowers which the movie permits one to see in the act of blooming: the calyx breaking, the pointed petals whitely springing apart and curling back, and then in a little while the rapid shriveling … The sailor climbed the companion way; and Smith, turning, stared exophthalmically at the sea.

“Ah, there you are!.. I was just wondering, because I saw that slimy Jew go up the stairs … Jews! deliver me. I don’t like them. What you want to play with him for?”

“Ah, he’s harmless. As a matter of fact, he’s an extremely interesting fellow.”

“Maybe, maybe … Come down to my room. I’ll show you something. Something that’ll make your hair stand on end. Yes, siree! It’ll make your hair stand on end.” Smith revolved his cigar softly between thumb and finger, his brown eyes solemn and comic under the arched gray eyebrows.

“Lead on, father!”

“Don’t call me father. Brr. Makes me shiver. I feel my coffin … Look! There she goes now!”

He nudged Demarest violently. Mrs. Faubion came running up the companionway from the steerage deck — sea-blown, wild-haired, impetuous, — and flashed saucily round the corner and out of sight. Daisy Dacey, grinning fatuously, and picking her pink muslin skirt up a little too high (consciously) came after her. She too disappeared.

“Come along,” said Smith. He walked rapidly after the two girls, turned the corner, entered the main door aft, and descended the red plush stairs, Demarest following him a little embarrassed. No sign of them in the dining room. The rows of white tables were set for dinner. Stewards went to and fro with napkins, turned the revolving chairs into position, put down forks or linen-covered dishes of bread. Smith passed into the corridor beyond the kitchen, the same corridor off which Demarest lived; but went to the alley beyond. Down this he turned and proceeded to the end, his room being at the left. The door opposite his, which had been ajar, was shut sharply just before they reached it. Smith, beaming, tapped it with white knuckles. “Coo hoo!” he cried.

“Who is it?” The voice was Pauline Faubion’s, stridently challenging.

“The dressmaker. Any orders for lunch?”

“No. Go away! Don’t be silly!” A trilled giggle from Daisy Dacey.

“Oh, very well, very well.” He winked at Demarest, opening his own door. “Look!” he said, dramatically waving his cigar at the back of the door, which he had shut. Half a dozen dresses hung on it, suspended on hangers — black, scarlet, white, green, and two flowered muslins.

“What’s the idea?” said Demarest.

“Dresses.” Smith goggled mournfully.

“So I see! I know a dress when I see it … I didn’t know you were traveling in dresses, as the saying is!”

“I don’t as a rule. But I’m always willing to oblige.” He smiled mysteriously, cunningly.

“Well, what’s the idea?”

“Ha! I wish I knew … She knocked at the door this morning when I was shaving. She had on one of those pink things that you can’t quite see through. Good morning darling, says I! — Good morning grandpa, says she! — What can I do for you darling, says I? — Have you got room for some dresses, says she? — Sure, says I! — Well, here they are, says she! — And she give me an armful of them, and helped me to hang them up. Not hooks enough in their cabins, and they were afraid the dresses would get wrinkled staying in the trunk … What do you think of it?”

“Think of it!”

“Mm … Funny idea.” The old man gleamed cherubically. “You’ve got to hand it to father. I guess I made a good impression. What do you think?”

“Looks like it. Or maybe they think they can trust you!”

“Ha!.. Maybe — maybe!.. Nice dresses anyway.” He ran his fingers down a fold of scarlet satin. “Look at the beads on this … Cost a lot of money, that dress, I’ll bet … A party dress — cut kind of low. Soft, eh? Feel it. And there are the little straps that go over the shoulders.” He took the frock down on its hanger, and turned it slowly, appreciatively about. “Velvet, too. Must feel nice to have velvet next to the skin.”

“I wonder if she’s been on the stage,” said Demarest. “They almost look like stage frocks.”

“Don’t think so. She got married to this chap when he was stationed in Dover during the war. After the war she went out West with him …” He hung the scarlet satin up again, then lifted a fold of flowered blue muslin against his face.

“Mm!” he bumbled. “Smells nice … Heliotrope … Smell it!”

Demarest, agitated and embarrassed, pleasantly shocked by the old man’s candor, lifted the blue muslin.

“Heliotrope … Yes!.. I congratulate you.” He solemnly shook Smith’s hand. Smith smiled, but with something mournful and questioning in his puzzled brown eyes.

“Seriously,” he said, pausing to fling his chewed cigar through the open port, “what do you make of them?”

“Make of them? How do you mean?”

Meditative but twinkling, they looked deep into each other’s eyes. Why was it that Demarest felt an obscure impulse to discourage the old man?… Jealousy?… Pauline was, of course, attractive to him: and he resented the fact that her frocks hung here in the old man’s cabin. But this was superficial. Wasn’t it, more profoundly, that he enormously liked old Smith, and wanted to keep him out of trouble? Wasn’t it also that he resented, savagely resented, this evidence of the unwaning magic of sex? He pitied him. The old ox being led to the slaughter. Did he also, pitying poor old Smith, pity himself — foreseeing, with dreadful certainty, himself grown old to no greater wisdom?…

“I mean,” said Smith, rocking gently backward with the ship, “do you think they’re straight?”

“Straight!..” Demarest gave a short laugh. “God knows … My guess would be that they are. Faubion is, I should think anyway — I’m not so sure about Dacey … I saw her flirting with the Chief Steward last night.”

“Oh! You think Faubion’s straight?… I wonder!..” He ruminated sadly. He sat down on the edge of his bunk, drawing himself up like a jackknife so as not to bump his tweed hat, still ruminating. He tucked his plump hairless hands under his knees. “What makes you think so? Sit down. We’ve got a few minutes before dinner … Nice sound the sea makes through a porthole — wish they wouldn’t clamp it shut at night.”

“I wish I had a porthole at all … I don’t know, she strikes me as straight — that’s all. Straight but fidgety.”

“Straight but fidgety! No siree, Bob. I’m an old fool, and never knew a woman, if that girl isn’t—!” He lifted a twinkle, sidelong, toward Demarest. Demarest sat down on the red plush divan. A sour smell came up from it; and the clicking of the water bottle in its wooden socket, and then the loosely delayed return click, hollow and slack, made him slightly giddy. He lifted his nose toward the pure stream of air from the port. Porpoises. Flying fish. Icebergs. Cobalt and snow … A slice of porpoise, Mr. Smith? Thank you no, Mr. Demarest … Wing of Faubion, Mr. Smith? A little off the breast, please, Mr. Demarest … Faubion gazed at him, morose and somber, reserved but yielding, implacable but affectionate. Poising the bread knife, with waved edge damascene, he prepared to make Faubion an Amazon. One-breasted. Tell me when it hurts, Faubion. Does it hurt?… A-a-ah-mmm — you’re hurting—now!.. Still hurting?… Phhh—not so — much.… She turned her head far to one side, closing her eyes … This was the moment — this was always the moment; that delicious moment of utter anguished surrender: the flushed face turned extravagantly aside, eyelids shut, mouth relaxed with pleasure but curved with apprehension and rigid with pain … The dew on the forehead … Singular, that we should so desire this of all possible moments, a moment the essentially fleetingest of moments, that one must dedicate one’s life to its pursuit. A half dozen such moments in a lifetime — moments which yield the full goblet, the nymph-cry in the blood, the whizzing off into space of the body … Helen Shafter, lying face downward on the beach, crying, while it began slowly to rain … Eunice, suddenly letting her arm fall over the frayed edge of the couch, nerveless and abandoned, while with her other hand she covered her eyes, murmuring … Mary, on the hill near Banstead, looking at him through her fingers, frightened, while a little way off they heard the mowing machine clattering and slaughtering among tall grass and poppies … What is man that thou art mindful of him? Melancholy. Men, in a smoking room, recounting their conquests to one another. Was it, as always assumed, a mere boastfulness, a mere rooster crow from the dunghill? No … It was the passionate desire to recreate, to live over again those inestimable instants of life, so tragically few, so irrecoverably lost. “That reminds me of one time when I was staying—” Yes, you can see the wretched man trying to summon them back, those few paltry episodes, and make of them, for his solace, a tiny immortal bouquet.

“She’s damned attractive,” he said.

“Attractive!” moaned Smith. “She’s a ringtailed screecher. She’s got me going — yes, sir, she’s got me going. She can put her slippers—”

He broke off, pondering. Click, and then cluck, went the water bottle, while he ponderously pondered. The throb of the ship’s engines was the throb of Smith, pondering the imponderable. One could see him in the act of evoking Faubion; an old wizard, toothless and long-bearded, putting one claw out of his coffin to make the last sign, then hooking his nail over the coffin’s edge, batlike. What, to him, was Faubion? “Faubion!” cried the withered brain; and saw flames dancing scarflike in a jungle of lewd sounds and sights. Faubion, flame-bodied, wavered toward the coffin, bearing a slipper in each hand. Zebra-striped were the slippers, white and green, ophidian, with ruby eyes; and a fount of ostrich plumes jetted from each. She placed these adoringly beside the coffin, kneeling, and the bat claw was drawn in, drawing with it flames and plumes … Are you warm enough, Mr. Smith?… Quite warm enough, thank you, Mr. Demarest!.. And what is the flavor of Faubion, Mr. Smith?… Flamingo, hibiscus, and guava, Mr. Demarest!.. Take then — eat, drink, live!.. And lo, Smith lived; the coffin glowed about him, an incadescent chrysalis, burning translucently, within which lay Smith, gleaming and waxing; the fiery chrysalis flaked away, in small dissolving flakes of flame; and Smith, luminously waxing, with fiery veins and godlike nimbus, sprang up rejoicing, naked and blazing, a leafy vine of gold rapidly growing all over his body and burning off as it grew. To right and left of him jetted the ostrich plumes, spouted higher, arched flashing, and crashed upon him foaming. Caligula. King Caligula and the immortal daughter. King Caligula setting forth: after a seven days’ meditation: marched huge armies a day to the north: and in the evening took his station: on a green hilltop: peaked and—

“I wouldn’t like to make a mistake though. No, sir. Not much … Barnes — that officer — is supposed to be looking after her. Suppose my foot slipped? — Mmmm. No.”

“You’d be shot at sunrise. Walk the plank.”

“All the same — with care. And the circumstances are favorable. These dresses — and their cabin being just opposite — don’t you think—?”

“Take my advice and go slow.”

Smith blinked brown eyes under his tweed hat.

“You know — it’s bad when you get to my age. Bad.”

“When isn’t it bad?”

“You wait … Specially if you’re sort of a timid fellow like me. I never was much good at love affairs. Guess they don’t like the timid fellows. That’s where I always made my mistake …”

“Well, I don’t think there’s any golden rule for success. I’m no Don Juan myself.”

“No? You look like the sort they throw themselves at. I’ve only had one what you’d call “affair” in my life — yes, sir, just one. And that was my wife.”

“Oh … Is your wife dead?” Demarest smoothed his voice — discreetly, hypocritically.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care much. She ran away from me after six months. Flew the coop. With a little shrimp of a one-lunged candy salesman — married man, too. Sixteen years ago — all but three weeks. She wrote me a couple of years afterward and wanted to come back … Not much! No siree, Bob. She had another ‘think’ coming.”

“Was she young?”

“Young? Yes — too young. Twenty-one, and I was thirty-five. She came to work in the piano department; played the piano, too; good little pianist … Last I heard of her she was playing the piano in a movie in St. Louis … Good riddance, I guess … Of course I’ve had a little fling now and then — you know — but never what you’d call a nice girl … That’s what I’d like, to settle down for good with a nice girl.”

“Marry again?”

“Oh, well, I’m not so particular about marriage — besides, I’ve never got a divorce … But some nice young girl to wash the dishes, and look after me, and get my money when I die. I’ve got a tidy little sum saved up and nobody to leave it to.”

… I’m tired of living alone.

I’d like some young wife of my own.

Some bow-legged Venus,

To call me Silenus—

Smith had bored his young Venus? Too attentive and exacting, too worshiping. Pawing her all the time, probably. “Now, darling! I don’t want you tiring yourself out. You stay home and rest this afternoon, and I’ll come home early …” Mrs. Smith sat down at the piano when she heard the front door shut. The Holy City. Ho-sanna-i-in the highest, ho-sann-a-a-for-evAH mooore … Singing captivatingly, eyes on the ceiling, nevertheless she revolved on her stool now and then to see if anyone was coming. Nope! — not yet. Flutter — flutter. — Waltz me around again Will-ee; around — around — around. A footstep on the “stoop?” Mrs. Smith turned sharply her eager white chin and oystery blue eyes. There he was. He had a newspaper in one hand and a box of candy in the other. He tapped with the folded newspaper on the window. She rose and opened it. “Did you meet him?” “Yes, but he didn’t notice me. I’ve got tickets to Nashville. Four o’clock.” “I told you not to.” “Hurry up and pack your things.” “Don’t stand there! — wait for me at the station. I haven’t got a cent.” “Here … if you leave a note for him, don’t tell him where you’ve gone.” “Darling! Do you think I’m such a fool? I may be crazy—!” She took the five-dollar bill and the box of chocolates. Huylers: with pistachio acorns. Smiling, she put her forefinger to her lip, transferred the kiss to the back of his right hand, drawing it softly the whole length of his yellow-haired little finger, then shut the window and ran to pack … Waltz me around again Will-ee … around — around … At four-twenty Smith came in, beaming. “Coo-hoo!” he fluted, and then again softly stepping toward the kitchen, “Coo-hoo!” … No answer. “Waltz Me Around Again Willie” on the piano, and still hanging in the air. An opened box of chocolates, with only the pistachio acorns gone. A note on the dining-room table. “Frank — I’ve gone away. Try to forgive me. I couldn’t have stood it. I don’t love you and wouldn’t have made you a good wife. Terribly sorry. Will write you sometime. Miss Dillingham will be glad to take the cat. Try not to think too badly of me. I’m not good enough for you, and that’s a fact. Maydie …” Poor old Smith. Incredulous, he cried “Coo-hoo” again; then again. All a joke. He flapped his wings, goggled, and turned into a cuckoo, flying from top to bottom of the house, dashing against walls, looking repeatedly and dementedly in the cellar, the kitchen, the bathroom, the attic. “Coo-hoo!” he cried, and even put his absurd head out of the cupola window and coo-hooed at the roof, thinking she might be there. No answer. Not a sound. He returned to the kitchen, where he met Nicodemus, the cat. “Ptrnyow!” said Nicodemus. His saucer was empty, and Smith filled it. Tears came into his eyes. “Poor old Nik,” he said, “was a nice old Nickums …” Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone … He had a sense of having been excavated — a hollow, aching shell. He sat and thought. At eight o’clock, getting hungry, he opened the ice chest. And at the sight of the butter dish he burst into tears. Coo-hoo: boo-hoo. Tohubohu.