There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure: a headache
darkens the universe while it lasts, a cup of tea really lightens the
spirit bereft of all reasonable consolations. Therefore I do not think it
trivial or untrue to say that there is for the moment nothing more
satisfactory in life than to have bought your ticket on the night boat up
the Hudson and secured your state-room key an hour or two before
departure, and some time even before the pressure at the clerk's office
has begun. In the transaction with this castellated baron, you have of
course been treated with haughtiness, but not with ferocity, and your
self-respect swells with a sense of having escaped positive insult; your
key clicks cheerfully in your pocket against its gutta-percha number, and
you walk up and down the gorgeously carpeted, single-columned, two-story
cabin, amid a multitude of plush sofas and chairs, a glitter of glass,
and a tinkle of prismatic chandeliers overhead, unawed even by the
aristocratic gloom of the yellow waiters. Your own stateroom as you enter
it from time to time is an ever-new surprise of splendors, a magnificent
effect of amplitude, of mahogany bedstead, of lace curtains, and of
marble topped wash-stand. In the mere wantonness of an unalloyed
prosperity you say to the saffron nobleman nearest your door, "Bring me a
pitcher of ice-water, quick, please!" and you do not find the half-hour
that he is gone very long.
If the ordinary wayfarer experiences so much pleasure from these things,
then imagine the infinite comfort of our wedding-journeyers, transported
from Broadway on that pitiless afternoon to the shelter and the quiet of
that absurdly palatial steamboat. It was not yet crowded, and by the
river-side there was almost a freshness in the air. They disposed of
their troubling bags and packages; they complimented the ridiculous
princeliness of their stateroom, and then they betook themselves to the
sheltered space aft of the saloon, where they sat down for the
tranquiller observance of the wharf and whatever should come to be seen
by them. Like all people who have just escaped with their lives from some
menacing calamity, they were very philosophical in spirit; and having got
aboard of their own motion, and being neither of them apparently the
worse for the ordeal they had passed through, were of a light,
conversational temper.
"What an amusingly superb affair!" Basil cried as they glanced through an
open window down the long vista of the saloon. "Good heavens! Isabel,
does it take all this to get us plain republicans to Albany in comfort
and safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise? Well, I
shall never be satisfied with less hereafter," he added. "I am spoilt for
ordinary paint and upholstery from this hour; I am a ruinous spendthrift,
and a humble three-story swell-front up at the South End is no longer the
place for me. Dearest,
'Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,'
never to leave this Aladdin's-palace-like steamboat, but spend our lives
in perpetual trips up and down the Hudson."
To which not very costly banter Isabel responded in kind, and rapidly
sketched the life they could lead aboard. Since they could not help it,
they mocked the public provision which, leaving no interval between
disgraceful squalor and ludicrous splendor, accommodates our democratic
'menage' to the taste of the richest and most extravagant plebeian
amongst us. He, unhappily, minds danger and oppression as little as he
minds money, so long as he has a spectacle and a sensation, and it is
this ruthless imbecile who will have lace curtains to the steamboat berth
into which he gets with his pantaloons on, and out of which he may be
blown by an exploding boiler at any moment; it is he who will have for
supper that overgrown and shapeless dinner in the lower saloon, and will
not let any one else buy tea or toast for a less sum than he pays for his
surfeit; it is he who perpetuates the insolence of the clerk and the
reluctance of the waiters; it is he, in fact, who now comes out of the
saloon, with his womenkind, and takes chairs under the awning where Basil
and Isabel sit. Personally, he is not so bad; he is good-looking, like
all of us; he is better dressed than most of us; he behaves himself
quietly, if not easily; and no lord so loathes a scene. Next year he is
going to Europe, where he will not show to so much advantage as here; but
for the present it would be hard to say in what way he is vulgar, and
perhaps vulgarity is not so common a thing after all.
It was something besides the river that made the air so much more
sufferable than it had been. Over the city, since our friends had come
aboard the boat, a black cloud had gathered and now hung low upon it,
while the wind from the face of the water took the dust in the
neighboring streets, and frolicked it about the house-tops, and in the
faces of the arriving passengers, who, as the moment of departure drew
near, appeared in constantly increasing numbers and in greater variety,
with not only the trepidation of going upon them, but also with the
electrical excitement people feel before a tempest.
The breast of the black cloud was now zigzagged from moment to moment by
lightning, and claps of deafening thunder broke from it. At last the long
endurance of the day was spent, and out of its convulsion burst floods of
rain, again and again sweeping the promenade-deck where the people sat,
and driving them disconsolate into the saloon. The air was darkened as by
night, and with many regrets for the vanishing prospect, mingled with a
sense of relief from the heat, our friends felt the boat tremble away
from her moorings and set forth upon her trip.
"Ah! if we had only taken the day boat!" moaned Isabel. "Now, we shall
see nothing of the river landscape, and we shall never be able to put
ourselves down when we long for Europe, by declaring that the scenery of
the Hudson is much finer than that of the Rhine."
Yet they resolved, this indomitably good-natured couple, that they would
be just even to the elements, which had by no means been generous to
them; and they owned that if so noble a storm had celebrated their
departure upon some storied river from some more romantic port than New
York, they would have thought it an admirable thing. Even whilst they
contented themselves, the storm passed, and left a veiled and humid sky
overhead, that gave a charming softness to the scene on which their eyes
fell when they came out of the saloon again, and took their places with a
largely increased companionship on the deck.
They had already reached that part of the river where the uplands begin,
and their course was between stately walls of rocky steepness, or wooded
slopes, or grassy hollows, the scene forever losing and taking grand and
lovely shape. Wreaths of mist hung about the tops of the loftier
headlands, and long shadows draped their sides. As the night grew, lights
twinkled from a lonely house here and there in the valleys; a swarm of
lamps showed a town where it lay upon the lap or at the foot of the
hills. Behind them stretched the great gray river, haunted with many
sails; now a group of canal-boats grappled together, and having an air of
coziness in their adventure upon this strange current out of their own
sluggish waters, drifted out of sight; and now a smaller and slower
steamer, making a laborious show of keeping up was passed, and
reluctantly fell behind; along the water's edge rattled and hooted the
frequent trains. They could not tell at any time what part of the river
they were on, and they could not, if they would, have made its beauty a
matter of conscientious observation; but all the more, therefore, they
deeply enjoyed it without reference to time or place. They felt some
natural pain when they thought that they might unwittingly pass the
scenes that Irving has made part of the common dream-land, and they would
fair have seen the lighted windows of the house out of which a cheerful
ray has penetrated to so many hearts; but being sure of nothing, as they
were, they had the comfort of finding the Tappan Zee in every expanse of
the river, and of discovering Sunny-Side on every pleasant slope. By
virtue of this helplessness, the Hudson, without ceasing to be the
Hudson, became from moment to moment all fair and stately streams upon
which they had voyaged or read of voyaging, from the Nile to the
Mississippi. There is no other travel like river travel; it is the
perfection of movement, and one might well desire never to arrive at
one's destination. The abundance of room, the free, pure air, the
constant delight of the eyes in the changing landscape, the soft tremor
of the boat, so steady upon her keel, the variety of the little world on
board,--all form a charm which no good heart in a sound body can resist.
So, whilst the twilight held, well content, in contiguous chairs, they
purred in flattery of their kindly fate, imagining different pleasures,
certainly, but none greater, and tasting to its subtlest flavor the
happiness conscious of itself.
Their own satisfaction, indeed, was so interesting to them in this
objective light, that they had little desire to turn from its
contemplation to the people around them; and when at last they did so, it
was still with lingering glances of self-recognition and enjoyment. They
divined rightly that one of the main conditions of their present felicity
was the fact that they had seen so much of time and of the world, that
they had no longer any desire to take beholding eyes, or to make any sort
of impressive figure, and they understood that their prosperous love
accounted as much as years and travel for this result. If they had had a
loftier opinion of themselves, their indifference to others might have
made them offensive; but with their modest estimate of their own value in
the world, they could have all the comfort of self-sufficiency, without
its vulgarity.
"O yes!" said Basil, in answer to some apostrophe to their bliss from
Isabel, "it's the greatest imaginable satisfaction to have lived past
certain things. I always knew that I was not a very handsome or otherwise
captivating person, but I can remember years--now blessedly remote--when
I never could see a young girl without hoping she would mistake me for
something of that sort. I couldn't help desiring that some fascination of
mine, which had escaped my own analysis, would have an effect upon her. I
dare say all young men are so. I used to live for the possible interest I
might inspire in your sex, Isabel. They controlled my movements, my
attitudes; they forbade me repose; and yet I believe I was no ass, but a
tolerably sensible fellow. Blessed be marriage, I am free at last! All
the loveliness that exists outside of you, dearest,--and it's mighty
little,--is mere pageant to me; and I thank Heaven that I can meet the
most stylish girl now upon the broad level of our common humanity.
Besides, it seems to me that our experience of life has quieted us in
many other ways. What a luxury it is to sit here, and reflect that we do
not want any of these people to suppose us rich, or distinguished, or
beautiful, or well dressed, and do not care to show off in any sort of
way before them!"
This content was heightened, no doubt, by a just sense of their contrast
to the group of people nearest there,--a young man of the second or third
quality--and two young girls. The eldest of these was carrying on a
vivacious flirtation with the young man, who was apparently an
acquaintance of brief standing; the other was scarcely more than a child,
and sat somewhat abashed at the sparkle of the colloquy. They were
conjecturally sisters going home from some visit, and not skilled in the
world, but of a certain repute in their country neighborhood for beauty
and wit. The young man presently gave himself out as one who, in pursuit
of trade for the dry-goods house he represented, had travelled many
thousands of miles in all parts of the country. The encounter was visibly
that kind of adventure which both would treasure up for future
celebration to their different friends; and it had a brilliancy and
interest which they could not even now consent to keep to themselves.
They talked to each other and at all the company within hearing, and
exchanged curt speeches which had for them all the sensation of repartee.
Young Man. They say that beauty unadorned is adorned the most.
Young Woman (bridling, and twitching her head from side to side, in the
high excitement of the dialogue). Flattery is out of place.
Young Man. Well, never mind. If you don't believe me, you ask your mother
when you get home.
(Titter from the younger sister.)
Young Woman (scornfully). Umph! my mother has no control over me!