He was one of those men who live from the inside outward; he often took a
hint for his actions from his fancies; and now because he had fancied
some people going to look at steamers on Sundays, he chose the next
Sunday himself for their visit to the Hanseatic boat at Hoboken. To be
sure it was a leisure day with him, but he might have taken the afternoon
of any other day, for that matter, and it was really that invisible
thread of association which drew him.
The Colmannia had been in long enough to have made her toilet for the
outward voyage, and was looking her best. She was tipped and edged with
shining brass, without and within, and was red-carpeted and white-painted
as only a ship knows how to be. A little uniformed steward ran before the
visitors, and showed them through the dim white corridors into typical
state-rooms on the different decks; and then let them verify their first
impression of the grandeur of the dining-saloon, and the luxury of the
ladies' parlor and music-room. March made his wife observe that the
tables and sofas and easy-chairs, which seemed so carelessly scattered
about, were all suggestively screwed fast to the floor against rough
weather; and he amused himself with the heavy German browns and greens
and coppers in the decorations, which he said must have been studied in
color from sausage, beer, and spinach, to the effect of those large
march-panes in the roof. She laughed with him at the tastelessness of the
race which they were destined to marvel at more and more; but she made
him own that the stewardesses whom they saw were charmingly like
serving-maids in the 'Fliegende Blatter'; when they went ashore she
challenged his silence for some assent to her own conclusion that the
Colmannia was perfect.
"She has only one fault," he assented. "She's a ship."
"Yes," said his wife, "and I shall want to look at the Norumbia before I
decide."
Then he saw that it was only a question which steamer they should take,
and not whether they should take any. He explained, at first gently and
afterwards savagely, that their visit to the Colmannia was quite enough
for him, and that the vessel was not built that he would be willing to
cross the Atlantic in.
When a man has gone so far as that he has committed himself to the
opposite course in almost so many words; and March was neither surprised
nor abashed when he discovered himself, before they reached home,
offering his wife many reasons why they should go to Europe. She answered
to all, No, he had made her realize the horror of it so much that she was
glad to give it up. She gave it up, with the best feeling; all that she
would ask of him was that he should never mention Europe to her again.
She could imagine how much he disliked to go, if such a ship as the
Colmannia did not make him want to go.
At the bottom of his heart he knew that he had not used her very well. He
had kindled her fancy with those notions of a Sabbatical year and a
Silver Wedding Journey, and when she was willing to renounce both he had
persisted in taking her to see the ship, only to tell her afterwards that
he would not go abroad on any account. It was by a psychological juggle
which some men will understand that he allowed himself the next day to
get the sailings of the Norumbia from the steamship office; he also got a
plan of the ship showing the most available staterooms, so that they
might be able to choose between her and the Colmannia from all the facts.