Blue Voyage: A Novel (2 page)

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?”