BETSEY had been a bit disturbed by the swiftness of my plans. On her
arrival in town she said to me:
“Look here, Socrates Potter, I'm no longer a colt, and you'll have to
drive slower. What are you up to, anyway?”
“A surprise-party!” I answered. “Cheer up! It's our honeymoon trip. I've
decided that after a man has married a woman it's his duty to get well
acquainted with her. What's the use of having a breastful of love and
affection and no time to show it. To begin with we shall have the best
dinner this hotel affords.”
Our table, which had been well adorned with flowers, awaited us, and we
sat down to dinner. Richard Forbes came while we were eating our oysters
and joined us.
We talked of many things, and while we were eating our dessert I sailed
into the subject nearest my heart by saying:
“I kind o' guessed that you'd want to send a message.”
“How did you know it?” he asked.
“Oh, by sundry looks and glances of your eye when I saw you last.”
“They didn't deceive you,” said he. “Tell them that they may see me in
Rome before long. Miss Norris was kind enough to say in a letter that
they would be glad to see me. I haven't answered yet. You might gently
break the news of my plan and let me know how they stand it.”
“I'll give them your affectionate regard--that's as far as I am willing
to go--and I'll tell them to prepare for your presence. If they show
evidence of alarm I'll let you know. I kind o' mistrust that you may be
needed there and--and wanted.”
“No joking now!” he warned me.
“Those titled chaps are likely to get after her, and I may want you
to help me head 'em off. You'd be a silly feller to let them grab the
prize.”
“The trouble is my fortune isn't made,” said he. “I'm getting along, but
I can't afford to get married yet.”
“Don't worry about that,” I begged him. “Our young men all seem to be
thinking about money and nothing else. Quit it. Keep out of this great
American thought-trust. Any girl that isn't willing to take hold and
help you make your fortune isn't worth having. Don't let the vine of
your thoughts go twining around the money-pole. If you do they'll make
you a prisoner.”
“But she is used to every luxury.”
“And probably will be glad to try something new. Her mama is not looking
for riches, but noble blood, I suppose. Norris's girl looks good to
me--nice way of going, as they used to say of the colts. We ought to be
able to offer her as high an order of nobility as there is in Europe.”
“I'm very common clay,” the boy answered, with a laugh.
“And the molding is up to you,” I said, as we rose to go.
“Tell them that Gwendolyn's heart is American territory and that I shall
stand for no violation of the Monroe Doctrine,” said he.
We bade him good-by and went aboard the steamer in as happy a mood as
if we had spent six months instead of six hours getting ready. So our
voyage began.
Going over we felt the strong tides of the spirit which carry so many of
our countrymen to the Old World. The _Toltec_ was crowded with tourists
of the All-Europe-in-three-weeks variety. There were others, but these
were a small minority. Every passenger seemed to be loaded, beyond the
Plimsoll mark, with conversation, and in the ship's talk were all the
spiritual symptoms of America.
We chose partners and went into the business of visiting. The sea shook
her big, round sides, immensely tickled, I should say, by the gossip.
Our ship was a moving rialto. We swapped stories and exchanged
sentiments; we traded hopes and secrets; we cranked up and opened the
gas-valve and raced into autobiography. Each got a memorable bargain. We
were almost dishonest with our generosity.
“Ship ahoy!” we shouted to every man who came our way and noted his
tonnage and cargo, his home port and destination.
How American! God bless us all!
Within forty-eight hours it seemed to me that everybody knew everybody
else, except Lord and Lady Dorris, who were aboard, and the adoring
group that surrounded them.
The big, wide-world thought-trust was well represented in the
smoking-room. There were business men and boys just out of college, all
expressing themselves in terms of profit and loss--the wealth of this or
that man and how he got it, the effect of legislation upon business, and
all that kind of thing. Thirty-five years ago such a company would have
been talking of the last speeches of Conkling and Ingersoll or the last
poems of Whittier and Tennyson.
There were many keynotes in the conversation. If one sat down with a
book in the reading-room he would abandon it for the better display of
human nature in the crowd around him. There were some twoscore women all
talking at the same time, each drenching the other in the steady flow
of her conversational hose. The plan of it all seemed to be very
generous--everybody giving and nobody receiving anything. I used to
think that among women talk was for display or relief, and whispering
for the transfer of intelligence. Since I got married I know better:
women have a sixth sense by which they can acquire knowledge without
listening in a talk-fest. They miss nothing.
It was interesting to observe how the edges of the conversations
impinged upon one another, like the circles made by a handful of pebbles
flung from a bridge into water. Now and then some strong-voiced lady
dropped a rock into the pool, and the spatter went to both shores. The
spray advertised the thought-trusts of the women:
“I felt so sorry for poor Mabel! There wasn't a young man in the party.”
“It was a capital operation, but I pulled through.”
“Yes, I've wanted to go to Italy ever since I saw 'Romeo and Juliet.'
Those Italians are wonderful lovers.”
“It was so ridiculous to be throwing her at his head, and she with a
weak heart and only one lung!”
“I don't know how I spend it, but somehow it goes.”
“Oh, they have been abroad, but anybody can do that these days.”
“Poor man! I feel sorry for him--she's terribly extravagant.”
“We don't see much of our home these days.”
“My twentieth trip across the ocean.”
“Our children are in boarding-schools, and my husband is living at his
club.”
I wanted to smoke and excused myself from Betsey and went out on the
deck, now more than half deserted, and stood looking off at the night.
Family history was pouring out of the state-room windows, and I could
not help hearing it. Grandma, slightly deaf, was saying to her daughter:
“Lizzie must be more careful when those young men come to the door. This
morning she wasn't half dressed when she opened it.”
“Oh yes, she was.”
“No, she wasn't; I took particular notice. And every morning she wets
her hair in my perfumery. Then, sadly, It's almost gone.”
I knew enough about the sins of Lizzie, and moved on and took a new
stand.
An elderly lumber merchant from Michigan was saying to his companion in
a loud voice:
“Yes, I retired ten years ago. I am studying the history of the
world--all about the life of the world, especially the life of the
ancients.”
I moved on to escape a comparison of the careers of Alexander and
Napoleon, and settled down in a dusky corner near which a lady was
giving an account of the surgical operations which had been performed
upon her. So the conversation, which had begun at daybreak, went on into
the night. It was all very human--very American.
The Litchmans of Chicago had rooms opposite ours. Every night six
or eight pairs of shoes, each decorated with a colored ribbon to
distinguish it from the common run of shoes, were ranged in a row
outside their door. The lady had forty-two hats--so I was told--and all
of them were neatly aired in the course of the voyage. The upper end of
her system was not a head, but a hat-holder.
Their family of four children was established in a room next to ours.
As a whole, it was the most harmonious and efficient yelling-machine
of which I have any knowledge. Its four cylinders worked like one. At
dinner it filled its tanks with cheese and cakes and nuts and jellies
and milk, and was thus put into running order for the night. It is
wonderful how many yells there are in a relay of cheese and cake and
nuts and jelly and milk. When we got in bed the machine cranked up,
backed out of the garage, and went shrieking up the hill to midnight
and down the slope to breakfast-time, stopping briefly now and then for
repairs.
A deaf lady next morning declared that she had heard the fog-whistles
blowing all night.
“Fog-whistles! We didn't need 'em,” said Betsey.
It was a symptom of America with which I had been unfamiliar.
We were astonished at the number of manless women aboard that ship. Many
were much-traveled widows whose husbands had fallen in the hard battles
of American life; some, I doubt not, like the battle of Norris, with
hidden worries that feed, like rats, on the strength of a man.
Many of the women were handsome daughters and sleek, well-fed mamas
whose husbands could not leave the struggle--often the desperate
struggle--for fame and fortune.
There were elderly women--well upholstered grandmamas--generally
traveling in pairs.
One of them, a slim, garrulous, and affectionate lady well past her
prime, was immensely proud of her feet. She was Mrs. Fraley, from Terre
Haute--“a daughter of dear old Missouri,” she explained. It seemed that
her feet had retained their pristine beauty through all vicissitudes,
and been complimented by sundry distinguished observers. One evening she
said to Betsey:
“Come down to my state-room, dearest dear, and I will show you my feet.”
She always seemed to be seeking astonishment, and was often exclaiming
“Indeed!” or “How wonderful!” and I hadn't told any lies either.
We met also Mrs. Mullet, of Sioux City, a gay and copious widow of
middle age, who appeared in the ship's concert with dark eyes well
underscored to give them proper emphasis. She was a well-favored,
sentimental lady with thick, wavy, brown hair. Her thoughts were also
a bit wavy, but Betsey formed a high opinion of her. Mrs. Mullet was a
neat dresser and resembled a fashion-plate. Her talk was well dressed in
English accents. She often looked thoughtfully at my chin when we talked
together, as if she were estimating its value as a site for a stand of
whiskers. It was her apparent knowledge of art which interested Betsey.
She talked art beautiful, as Sam Henshaw used to say, and was going to
Italy to study it.
There were schoolma'ams going over to improve their minds, and romping,
sweetfaced girls setting out to be instructed in art or music, beyond
moral boundaries, and knowing not that they would take less harm among
the lions and hyenas of eastern Africa. When will our women learn that
the centers of art and music in Europe are generally the exact centers
of moral leprosy?
There were stately, dignified, and inhuman people of the seaboard
aristocracy of the East--the Europeans of America, who see only the
crudeness of their own land. They have been dehorned--muleyed into
freaks by degenerate habits of mind and body. A certain passenger called
them the “Eunuchs of democracy,” but I wouldn't be so intemperate with
the truth. One of them was the Lady Dorris, daughter of a New York
millionaire, who came out of her own apartments one evening to peer
laughingly into the dining-saloon, and say:
“I love to look at them; they're so very, very curious!”
Yes, we have a few Europeans in America, but I suspect that Europe is
more than half American.
Then there was Mr. Pike, the lumber king, from Prairie du Chien, who
stroked his whiskers when he talked to me and looked me over from
head to toe as if calculating the amount of good timber in me. He had
retired, jumped from the lumber business into ancient history, and was
now reporting the latest news from Tyre and Babylon.
In this environment of character we proceeded with nothing to do but
observe it, and with no suspicion that we were being introduced to the
persons of a drama in which we were to play our parts in Italy.
So now, then, the orchestra has ceased playing and the curtain is up
again, and, with all these people on the stage, in the middle of the
ocean word goes around the decks that there is a ship off the port side
very near us. We look and observe that we are passing her. It is the
_Caronia_, and we ride the seas with a better sense of comfort, knowing
that Wilton is behind us.
[Illustration: 0077]