She attacked him at another point. "What has annoyed you? What else have you been doing?"
"Nothing. I"ve been reading most of the afternoon."
"The Maiden Knight?"
This was the book which nearly everybody had brought on board. It was just out, and had caught an instant favor, which swelled later to a tidal wave. It depicted a heroic girl in every trying circ.u.mstance of mediaeval life, and gratified the perennial pa.s.sion of both s.e.xes for historical romance, while it flattered woman"s instinct of superiority by the celebration of her unintermitted triumphs, ending in a preposterous and wholly superfluous self-sacrifice.
March laughed for pleasure in her guess, and she pursued, "I suppose you didn"t waste time looking if anybody had brought the last copy of "Every Other Week"?"
"Yes, I did; and I found the one you had left in your steamer chair--for advertising purposes, probably."
"Mr. Burnamy has another," she said. "I saw it sticking out of his pocket this morning."
"Oh, yes. He told me he had got it on the train from Chicago to see if it had his poem in it. He"s an ingenuous soul--in some ways."
"Well, that is the very reason why you ought to find out whether the men are going to dress, and let him know. He would never think of it himself."
"Neither would I," said her husband.
"Very well, if you wish to spoil his chance at the outset," she sighed.
She did not quite know whether to be glad or not that the men were all in sacks and cutaways at dinner; it saved her, from shame for her husband and Mr. Burnamy; but it put her in the wrong. Every one talked; even the father and daughter talked with each other, and at one moment Mrs. March could not be quite sure that the daughter had not looked at her when she spoke. She could not be mistaken in the remark which the father addressed to Burnamy, though it led to nothing.
XII.
The dinner was uncommonly good, as the first dinner out is apt to be; and it went gayly on from soup to fruit, which was of the American abundance and variety, and as yet not of the veteran freshness imparted by the ice-closet. Everybody was eating it, when by a common consciousness they were aware of alien witnesses. They looked up as by a single impulse, and saw at the port the gaunt face of a steerage pa.s.senger staring down upon their luxury; he held on his arm a child that shared his regard with yet hungrier eyes. A boy"s nose showed itself as if tiptoed to the height of the man"s elbow; a young girl peered over his other arm.
The pa.s.sengers glanced at one another; the two table-stewards, with their napkins in their hands, smiled vaguely, and made some indefinite movements.
The bachelor at the head of the table broke the spell. "I"m glad it didn"t begin with the Little Neck clams!"
"Probably they only let those people come for the dessert," March suggested.
The widow now followed the direction of the other eyes; and looked up over her shoulder; she gave a little cry, and shrank down. The young bride made her petted mouth, in appeal to the company; her husband looked severe, as if he were going to do something, but refrained, not to make a scene. The reticent father threw one of his staccato glances at the port, and Mrs. March was sure that she saw the daughter steal a look at Burnamy.
The young fellow laughed. "I don"t suppose there"s anything to be done about it, unless we pa.s.s out a plate."
Mr. Kenby shook his head. "It wouldn"t do. We might send for the captain.
Or the chief steward."
The faces at the port vanished. At other ports profiles pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, as if the steerage pa.s.sengers had their promenade under them, but they paused no more.
The Marches went up to their steamer chairs, and from her exasperated nerves Mrs. March denounced the arrangement of the ship which had made such a cruel thing possible.
"Oh," he mocked, "they had probably had a good substantial meal of their own, and the scene of our banquet was of the quality of a picture, a purely aesthetic treat. But supposing it wasn"t, we"re doing something like it every day and every moment of our lives. The Norumbia is a piece of the whole world"s civilization set afloat, and pa.s.sing from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e with unchanged cla.s.ses, and conditions. A ship"s merely a small stage, where we"re brought to close quarters with the daily drama of humanity."
"Well, then," she protested, "I don"t like being brought to close quarters with the daily drama of humanity, as you call it. And I don"t believe that the large English ships are built so that the steerage pa.s.sengers can stare in at the saloon windows while one is eating; and I"m sorry we came on the Norumbia."
"Ah, you think the Norumbia doesn"t hide anything," he began, and he was going to speak of the men in the furnace pits of the steamer, how they fed the fires in a welding heat, and as if they had perished in it crept out on the forecastle like blanched phantasms of toil; but she interposed in time.
"If there"s anything worse, for pity"s sake don"t tell me," she entreated, and he forebore.
He sat thinking how once the world had not seemed to have even death in it, and then how as he had grown older death had come into it more and more, and suffering was lurking everywhere, and could hardly be kept out of sight. He wondered if that young Burnamy now saw the world as he used to see it, a place for making verse and making love, and full of beauty of all kinds waiting to be fitted with phrases. He had lived a happy life; Burnamy would be lucky if he should live one half as happy; and yet if he could show him his whole happy life, just as it had truly been, must not the young man shrink from such a picture of his future?
"Say something," said his wife. "What are you thinking about?"
"Oh, Burnamy," he answered, honestly enough.
"I was thinking about the children," she said. "I am glad Bella didn"t try to come from Chicago to see us off; it would have been too silly; she is getting to be very sensible. I hope Tom won"t take the covers off the furniture when he has the fellows in to see him."
"Well, I want him to get all the comfort he can out of the place, even if the moths eat up every stick of furniture."
"Yes, so do I. And of course you"re wishing that you were there with him!" March laughed guiltily. "Well, perhaps it was a crazy thing for us to start off alone for Europe, at our age."
"Nothing of the kind," he retorted in the necessity he perceived for staying her drooping spirits. "I wouldn"t be anywhere else on any account. Isn"t it perfectly delicious? It puts me in mind of that night on the Lake Ontario boat, when we were starting for Montreal. There was the same sort of red sunset, and the air wasn"t a bit softer than this."
He spoke of a night on their wedding-journey when they were sill new enough from Europe to be comparing everything at home with things there.
"Well, perhaps we shall get into the spirit of it again," she said, and they talked a long time of the past.
All the mechanical noises were m.u.f.fled in the dull air, and the wash of the ship"s course through the waveless sea made itself pleasantly heard.
In the offing a steamer homeward bound swam smoothly by, so close that her lights outlined her to the eye; she sent up some signal rockets that soared against the purple heaven in green and crimson, and spoke to the Norumbia in the mysterious mute phrases of ships that meet in the dark.
Mrs. March wondered what had become of Burnamy; the promenades were much freer now than they had been since the ship sailed; when she rose to go below, she caught sight of Burnamy walking the deck transversely with some lady. She clutched her husband"s arm and stayed him in rich conjecture.
"Do you suppose he can have got her to walking with him already?"
They waited till Burnamy and his companion came in sight again. She was tilting forward, and turning from the waist, now to him and now from him.
"No; it"s that pivotal girl," said March; and his wife said, "Well, I"m glad he won"t be put down by them."
In the music-room sat the people she meant, and at the instant she pa.s.sed on down the stairs, the daughter was saying to the father, "I don"t see why you didn"t tell me sooner, papa."
"It was such an unimportant matter that I didn"t think to mention it. He offered it, and I took it; that was all. What difference could it have made to you?"
"None. But one doesn"t like to do any one an injustice."
"I didn"t know you were thinking anything about it."
"No, of course not."
XIII.