A Traveler at Forty by Theodore Dreiser - HTML preview

CHAPTER LIII
THE VOYAGE HOME

THE following Wednesday Barfleur and I returned to London via Calais and Dover. We had been, between whiles, to the races at Longchamps, luncheons at Au Père Boivin, the Pré Catalan, and elsewhere. I had finally looked up Marcelle, but the concierge explained that she was out of town.

In spite of the utter fascination of Paris I was not at all sorry to leave, for I felt that to be happy here one would want a more definite social life and a more fixed habitation than this hotel and the small circle of people that we had met could provide. I took a last—almost a yearning—look at the Avenue de l’Opéra and the Gare du Nord and then we were off.

England was softly radiant in her spring dress. The leaves of the trees between Dover and London were just budding, that diaphanous tracery which resembles green lace. The endless red chimneys and sagging green roofs and eaves of English cottages peeping out from this vesture of spring were as romantic and poetic as an old English ballad. No doubt at all that England—the south of it, anyhow—is in a rut; sixty years behind the times,—but what a rut! Must all be new and polished and shiny? As the towers and spires of Canterbury sped past to the right, gray and crumbling in a wine-like air, something rose in my throat. I thought of that old English song that begins—

“When shepherds pipe on oaten straws—”

And then London once more and all the mystery of endless involute streets and simple, hidden, unexplored regions! I went once more to look at the grim, sad, two-story East End in spring. It was even more pathetic for being touched by the caressing hand of Nature. I went to look at Hyde Park and Chelsea and Seven Kings. I thought to visit Sir Scorp—to cringe once more before the inquiring severity of his ascetic eye; but I did not have time, as things turned out. Barfleur was insistent that I should spend a day or two at Bridgely Level. Owing to a great coal strike the boat I had planned to take was put out of commission and I was compelled to advance my sailing date two days on the boat of another line. And now I was to see Bridgely Level once more, in the spring.

After Italy and Holland, perhaps side by side with Holland or before it, England—the southern portion of it—is the most charmingly individual country in Europe. For the sake of the walk, the evening was so fine, we decided to leave the train at Maidenhead and walk the remaining distance, some five or six miles. It was ideal. The sun was going down and breaking through diaphanous clouds in the west, which it tinted and gilded. The English hedges and copses were delicately tinted with new life. English robins were on the grass; sheep, cows; over one English hamlet and another smoke was curling and English crows or rooks were gaily cawing, cheered at the thought of an English spring.

As gay as children, Barfleur and I trudged the yellow English road. Now and then we passed through a stile and cut diagonally across a field where a path was laid for the foot of man. Every so often we met an English laborer, his trousers gripped just below the knee by the customary English strap. Green and red; green and red; (such were the houses and fields) with new spring violets, apple trees in blossom, and peeping steeples over sloping hillsides thrown in for good measure. I felt—what shall I say I felt?—not the grandeur of Italy, but something so delicate and tender, so reminiscent and aromatic—faintly so—of other days and other fames, that my heart was touched as by music. Near Bridgely Level we encountered Wilkins going home from his work, a bundle of twigs under his arm, a pruning hook at his belt, his trousers strapped after the fashion of his class.

“Well, Wilkins!” I exclaimed.

“W’y, ’ow do you do, sir, Mr. Dreiser? Hi’m glad to see you again, Hi am,” touching his cap. “Hi ’opes as ’ow you’ve had a pleasant trip.”

“Very, Wilkins, very,” I replied grandiosely. Who cannot be grandiose in the presence of the fixed conditions of old England. I asked after his work and his health and then Barfleur gave him some instructions for the morrow. We went on in a fading light—an English twilight. And when we reached the country house it was already aglow in anticipation of this visit. Hearth fires were laid. The dining-room, reception-hall, and living-room were alight. Dora appeared at the door, quite as charming and rosy in her white apron and cap as the day I left, but she gave no more sign that I was strange or had been absent than as if I had not been away.

“Now we must make up our minds what particular wines we want for dinner. I have an excellent champagne of course; but how about a light Burgundy or a Rhine wine? I have an excellent Assmanshäuser.”

“I vote for the light Burgundy,” I said.

“Done. I will speak to Dora now.”

And while he went to instruct Dora, I went to look after all my belongings in order to bring them finally together for my permanent departure. After a delicious dinner and one of those comfortable, reminiscent talks that seem naturally to follow the end of the day, I went early to bed.

When the day came to sail I was really glad to be going home, although on the way I had quarreled so much with my native land for the things which it lacks and which Europe apparently has.

Our boasted democracy has resulted in little more than the privilege every living, breathing American has of being rude and brutal to every other, but it is not beyond possibility that sometime as a nation we will sober down into something approximating human civility. Our early revolt against sham civility has, in so far as I can see, resulted in nothing save the abolition of all civility—which is sickening. Life, I am sure, will shame us out of it eventually. We will find we do not get anywhere by it. And I blame it all on the lawlessness of the men at the top. They have set the example which has been most freely copied.

Still, I was glad to be going home.

When the time came the run from London to Folkstone and Dover was pleasant with its fleeting glimpses of the old castle at Rochester and the spires of the cathedral at Canterbury, the English orchards, the slopes dotted with sheep, the nestled chimneys and the occasional quaint, sagging roofs of moss-tinted tiles. The conductor who had secured me a compartment to myself appeared just after we left Folkstone to tell me not to bother about my baggage, saying that I would surely find it all on the dock when I arrived to take the boat. It was exactly as he said, though having come this way I found two transfers necessary. Trust the English to be faithful. It is the one reliable country in which you may travel. At Dover I meditated on how thoroughly my European days were over and when, if ever, I should come again. Life offers so much to see and the human span is so short that it is a question whether it is advisable ever to go twice to the same place—a serious question. If I had my choice, I decided—as I stood and looked at the blue bay of Dover—I would, if I could, spend six months each year in the United States and then choose Paris as my other center and from there fare forth as I pleased.

After an hour’s wait at Dover, the big liner dropped anchor in the roadstead and presently the London passengers were put on board and we were under way. The Harbor was lovely in a fading light—chalk-blue waters, tall whitish cliffs, endless squealing, circling gulls, and a bugle calling from the fort in the city.

* * * * *

Our ship’s captain was a Christian Scientist, believing in the nothingness of matter, the immanence of Spirit or a divine idea, yet he was, as events proved, greatly distressed because of the perverse, undismissable presence and hauntings of mortal thought. He had “beliefs” concerning possible wrecks, fires, explosions—the usual terrors of the deep, and one of the ship’s company (our deck-steward) told me that whenever there was a fog he was always on the bridge, refusing to leave it and that he was nervous and “as cross as hell.” So you can see how his religious belief squared with his chemical intuitions concerning the facts of life. A nice, healthy, brisk, argumentative, contentious individual he was, and very anxious to have the pretty women sit by him at dinner.

The third day we were out news came by wireless that the Titanic had sunk after collision with an iceberg in mid-ocean. The news had been given in confidence to a passenger. And this passenger had “in confidence” told others. It was a terrible piece of news, grim in its suggestion, and when it finally leaked out it sent a chill over all on board. I heard it first at nine o’clock at night. A party of us were seated in the smoking-room, a most comfortable retreat from the terrors of the night and the sea. A damp wind had arisen, bringing with it the dreaded fog. Sometimes I think the card room is sought because it suggests the sea less than any place else on the ship. The great fog-horn began mooing like some vast Brobdingnagian sea-cow wandering on endless watery pastures. The passengers were gathered here now in groups where, played upon by scores of lights, served with drinks and reacted upon, one by the moods of the others, a temperamental combustion took place which served to dispel their gloom. Yet it was not possible entirely to keep one’s mind off the slowing down of the ship, the grim moo of the horn, and the sound of long, swishing breakers outside speaking of the immensity of the sea, its darkness, depth, and terrors. Every now and then, I noticed, some one would rise and go outside to contemplate, no doubt, the gloominess of it all. There is nothing more unpromising to this little lamp, the body, than the dark, foggy waters of a midnight sea.

One of the passengers, a German, came up to our table with a troubled, mysterious air. “I got sumpin’ to tell you, gentlemen,” he said in a stage whisper, bending over us. “You better come outside where the ladies can’t hear.” (There were several in the room.) “I just been talkin’ to the wireless man upstairs.”

We arose and followed him out on deck.

The German faced us, pale and trembling. “Gentlemen,” he said, “the captain’s given orders to keep it a secret until we reach New York. But I got it straight from the wireless man: The Titanic went down last night with nearly all on board. Only eight hundred saved and two thousand drowned. She struck an iceberg off Newfoundland. You, gentlemen, must promise me not to tell the ladies—otherwise I shuttn’t have told you. I promised the man upstairs. It might get him in trouble.”

We promised faithfully. And with one accord we went to the rail and looked out into the blackness ahead. The swish of the sea could be heard and the insistent moo of the fog-horn.

“And this is only Tuesday,” suggested one. His face showed a true concern. “We’ve got a week yet on the sea, the way they will run now. And we have to go through that region—maybe over the very spot—”

He took off his cap and scratched his hair in a foolish, thoughtful way. I think we all began to talk at once, but no one listened. The terror of the sea had come swiftly and directly home to all. I am satisfied that there was not a man of all the company who heard without feeling a strange sensation. To think of a ship as immense as the Titanic, new and bright, sinking in endless fathoms of water. And the two thousand passengers routed like rats from their berths only to float helplessly in miles of water, praying and crying!

I went to my berth thinking of the pains and terrors of those doomed two thousand, a great rage in my heart against the fortuity of life—the dullness or greed of man that prevents him from coping with it. For an hour or more I listened to the vibration of the ship that trembled at times like a spent animal as a great wave struck at it with smashing force.

It was a trying night.

I found by careful observation of those with me that I was not the only one subject to disquieting thoughts. Mr. W., a Chicago beef man, pleased me most, for he was so frank in admitting his inmost emotions. He was a vigorous young buck, frank and straightforward. He came down to breakfast the next morning looking a little dull. The sun was out and it was a fine day. “You know,” he confided genially, “I dreamed of them poor devils all night. Say—out in the cold there! And then those big waves kept hitting the ship and waking me up. Did you hear that smash in the night? I thought we had struck something. I got up once and looked out but that didn’t cheer me any. I could only see the top of a roller now and then going by.”

Another evening, sitting in the deepest recesses of the card room he explained that he believed in good and bad spirits and the good spirits could help you “if they wanted to.”

Monsieur G., a Belgian, doing business in New York, was nervous in a subdued, quiet way. He never ceased commenting on the wretchedness of the catastrophe, nor did he fail daily to consult the chart of miles made and course traveled. He predicted that we would turn south before we neared the Grand Banks because he did not believe the captain would “take a chance.” I am sure he told his wife and that she told every other woman, for the next day one of them confided to me that she knew, and that she had been “stiff with fear” all the night before.

An Englishman, who was with us making for Calgary gave no sign, one way or the other. The German who first brought us the news was like a man with a mania; he talked of it all the time. An American judge on board talked solemnly with all who would listen—a hard crab of a man, whose emotions found their vent in the business of extracting information. The women talked to each other but pretended not to know.

It took three days of more or less pleasant sailing to relax the tension which pervaded the whole vessel. The captain did not appear again at table for four days. On Wednesday, following the Monday of the wreck, there was a fire drill—that ominous clanging of the fire-bell on the forward deck which brought many troubled spectators out of their staterooms and developed the fact that every piece of hose employed was rotten; for every piece put under pressure burst—a cheering exhibition!

But as the days passed we began to take heart again. The philosophers of the company were unanimously agreed that as the Titanic had suffered this great disaster through carelessness on the part of her officers, no doubt our own chances of safely reaching shore were thereby enhanced. We fell to gambling again, to flirting, to playing shuffle-board. By Saturday, when we were passing in the vicinity of where the Titanic went down, only much farther to the south, our fears had been practically dispelled.

It was not until we reached Sandy Hook the following Tuesday—a hard, bright, clear, blowy day, that we really got the full story. The customary pilot was taken on there, out of a thrashing sea, his overcoat pockets bulging with papers, all flaring with headlines describing the disaster. We crowded into the smoking-room for the last time and devoured the news. Some broke down and cried. Others clenched their fists and swore over the vivid and painful pen pictures by eye witnesses and survivors. For a while we all forgot we were nearly home. We came finally to quarantine. And I was amused to see how in these last hours the rather vigorous ardors of ship-friendship that had been engendered by the days spent together began to cool—how all those on board began to think of themselves no longer as members of a coördinated ship company bound together for weal or woe on the bosom of the great deep, but rather as individuals of widely separated communities and interests to which they were now returning and which of necessity would sever their relationship perpetually. I saw, for instance, the American judge who had unbent sufficiently after we had been three days out to play cards with so humble a person as the commission merchant, and others, begin to congeal again into his native judicial dignity. Several of the young women who had been generally friendly now became quite remote—other worlds were calling them.

And all of this goodly company were so concerned now as to whether they could make a very conservative estimate of the things they were bringing into America and yet not be disturbed by the customs inspectors, that they were a little amusing. What is honesty, anyhow? Foreign purchases to the value of one hundred dollars were allowed; yet I venture to say that of all this charming company, most of whom prided themselves on some form of virtue, few made a strictly honest declaration. They were all as honest as they had to be—as dishonest as they dared be—no more. Poor pretending humanity! We all lie so. We all believe such untrue things about ourselves and about others. Life is literally compact of make-believe, illusion, temperamental bias, false witness, affinity. The so-called standards of right, truth, justice, law, are no more than the wire netting of a sieve through which the water of life rushes almost uninterrupted. It seems to be regulated, but is it? Look close. See for yourself. Christ said, “Eyes and they see not; ears and they hear not.” Is this not literally true? Begin with number one. How about you and the so-called universal standards?

It had been so cold and raw down the bay that I could scarcely believe, as we neared Manhattan Island that it was going to be so warm and springlike on land as it proved. When we first sighted Long Island and later Long Beach it was over a thrashing sea; the heads of the waves were being cut off by the wind and sent flying into white spindrift or parti-colored rainbows. Even above Sandy Hook the wind made rainbows out of wave-tops and the bay had a tumbled surface. It was good to see again the stately towers of the lower city as we drew near—that mountain of steel and stone cut with its narrow canyons. They were just finishing the upper framework of the Woolworth Building—that first cathedral of the American religion of business—and now it reared its stately head high above everything else.

There was a great company at the dockside to receive us. Owing to the sinking of the Titanic relatives were especially anxious and all incoming ships were greeted with enlarged companies of grateful friends. There were reporters on hand to ask questions as to the voyage—had we encountered any bodies, had we struck any ice?

When I finally stepped on the dock, gathered up my baggage, called a few final farewells and took a taxi to upper Broadway, I really felt that I was once more at home. New York was so suggestively rich to me, this spring evening. It was so refreshing to look out and see the commonplace life of Eighth Avenue, up which I sped, and the long cross streets and later upper Broadway with its rush of cars, taxis, pedestrians. On Eighth Avenue negroes were idling at curbs and corners, the Eighth Avenue type of shopkeeper lolling in his doorway, boys and girls, men and women of a none-too-comforting type, making the best of a humdrum and shabby existence. In one’s own land, born and raised among the conditions you are observing, responsive to the subtlest modifications of speech, gesture, expression, life takes on a fresh and intimate aspect which only your own land can give after a trip abroad. I never quite realized until later this same evening, strolling out along Broadway to pay a call, how much one really loses abroad for want of blood affinity and years and years of residence. All the finer details, such as through the magnifying glass of familiarity one gains at home, one loses abroad. Only the main outlines—the very roughest details—stand revealed as in a distant view of mountains. That is why generalizations, on so short an acquaintance as a traveler must have, are so dangerous. Here, each sight and sound was significant.

“And he says to me,” said one little girl, strolling with her picturesque companion on upper Broadway, “if you don’t do that, I’m through.”

“And what did you say?”

“Good night!!!”

I was sure, then, that I was really home!

END